Getting African Businesses Online

Yesterday I spent the day with two colleagues from Google at the West Africa Trade Hub ICT Conference. The two other Googlers, Eve and Estelle, and I gave training sessions for small business owners from Benin, Togo, and Ghana to help them develop basic web presences with Google Sites. It was fascinating to work with these small exporters, some of which did not speak English or had never used a computer or the Internet before. By the end of the day, over a dozen small enterprises were online with email addresses and easy access to their content, but the SME owners weren't the only ones who left better for the experience. As you might expect, we probably learned just as much from them as they did from us.

Our Strategy in Africa

First of all, full disclosure, everything I discuss in this series of posts has been approved for external dissemination by the PR folks at Google, so you're not getting any insider information from me. That said, obviously this comes with my own personal commentary, so that's something! The plan is to write four posts about Google's objectives and strategies in Africa; this first one will be a general overview and the next three will be deep dives into each of the obstacles we're seeking to overcome. Here goes...

TEDxAccra: A Day of African Luminaries

On Monday morning, many of the world's great thinkers and doers gathered in solidarity around the world to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the unveiling of the UN Millennium Development Goals. This worldwide event was termed TEDxChange, styled in the format of the TED conference, and convened by Bill and Melinda Gates on behalf of their foundation. In an open letter, Melinda declared the aim of the gathering to be "to reflect on the Millennium Development Goals ten years in, and to look forward to where we’ll be [by 2015, the MDG deadline]."

Very luckily for me, I got to be a part of this movement, this moment in time.

"Would You Like Fries With That?" Western Cuisine Meets West Africa

Chicken and avocado wrap from Smoothy's.

When I travel abroad, one of my absolute favorite activities is to sample the local cuisine. You can learn a lot about a culture by the types of foods they eat, the types of seasonings, and so on. Italian food, for instance, is robust, flavorful, passionate, whereas French food is more subtle, complex, and dry. So one of the first things that really hit me when I got to Ghana was that traditionally Western food seemed vastly more prevalent than African food around town. Sure, I had gotten used to seeing burger and pizza joints across Europe, but I expected something a little different when I came to Africa. And perhaps that's exactly what I got: a little different.

Broadband Dongles & Malaria Pills

Since I got to Ghana, two technologies have become especially important to me, one that we in the high tech industry would normally perceive as "technology" and one that we wouldn't. The two things I'm talking about are mobile broadband dongles and anti-malaria pills. Within my first few days here, these two objects became essential parts of my daily life, though obviously for drastically different reasons.

One Week In: The Culture Shock Sets In

Almost exactly one week ago, I landed in Africa for the first time, in a different world, far away from home and anything I had ever known. And it's been quite a week since then. My first week of work here was relatively uneventful with the office being mostly empty, and Friday was actually a national holiday for the end of Ramadan, so it ended up only being a three-day work week for me. On Friday, I met up with a friend of a friend whom I had been introduced to, and she showed me around the downtown area of Accra. (Really, when I say downtown Accra, I really just mean one main road called Oxford Street, perhaps the only road in the city that just about everyone knows by name.) It was my first time really seeing any of the city, and I have to say, it was a lot to take in. Besides obviously being singled out by all the vendors on the street, the most remarkable observation from the experience was just the abject poverty of the area. My friend, Kimmie, introduced me to a local girl around our age and her mother. We saw where she lived, in a house without running water, any sort of temperature control, or electricity. We started talking with the mother, and mentioned how she knew my friend, through a UN program that provided food for her because she was HIV-positive. Like I said, a lot to take in.

They Call Me Monday: Naming in Ghana

A few days ago, I got to speaking with a fellow Googler who's spent a lot of time in Ghana, and among the many useful pieces of advice she gave me, one interesting bit stood out. "You need a Ghanaian name!" I soon discovered that in Ghana it's traditional to name children based on the day of the week they were born. What's more, each day of the week is supposed to have certain characteristics associated with it. A child born on Sunday, for instance, should tend to be passive, sensitive, and warm, and also a good secret keeper. I also learned that being able to introduce yourself with a Ghanaian name makes a big difference when interacting with locals, so clearly I should have one!