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Missing ingredients in Smart Rwanda Days [New Times, The (Rwanda)](New Times, The (Rwanda) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Dr. Tom P. Abeles Rwanda should see the Internet as a utility and refocus serious resources to upgrade its knowledge base in all sectors. (File) A number of years ago, many small towns in the United States built "industrial parks" by installing roads and infrastructure. The idea was that these were sites that would attract economic development. Today many of these still lie waiting. High speed Internet with every greater broadband capability is a utility in a more complex variance of the industrial park idea. The critical twist here is that the ubiquitous nature of the Internet means that for most knowledge industries, location is neutral as long as access is available whether in East Africa or Australia. The Internet is an accepted and required utility, like water and sewage. For that reason, the entire matrix of utilities become important independent from whether the companies are knowledge-based, trade in products, or provide services. For Rwanda, as an example, this would include transportation for inter and intra movement of goods and commodities both as a consumer of bandwidth and as a utility serving business. For defense purposes, the United States built the Internet so that it was redundant and path independent. Thus, unlike roads and physical transport systems, there is no "center" or single path. An email from Kigali to Nairobi could travel through Paris. An engineer's drawings in New York could travel to Mumbai in India for detail work and be delivered to a contractor in Kigali through a complex of global pathways. Unlike transportation, such as airports, there is no "center". Not being connected to the Internet is like a town not having an entrance to a restricted access highway system. But once connected, without other core physical assets, guarantees that the community will continue to be a net importer of knowledge as it does with physical goods. As a utility, the Internet is but one service that can be provided to a business. All communities can provide basic utilities with the quality being only one differentiator. Thus, more importantly, and conspicuous by its absence at the Kigali conference on Smart Rwanda Days, is an acknowledgement of the need for a competency-based work force that would have an operating presence in the country. This includes sectors such as agriculture, mining, business management, value-added processing and even ICT focused enterprises. Broadband and smart grids are important, much like water systems, but without a broad-based workforce, highly competent within traditional industries, there exists a serious gap for those enterprises that must be located in country. This requires a strong education system supported by all government sectors such as agriculture and infrastructure. Utilities inform and support all public and private sectors and not the reverse. In the same way that architects, engineers and contractors provide services to clients, the developers and providers of the ICT infrastructure need to be responsive to and not just be advised by all the other sectors of the government of Rwanda. The Smart Rwanda Master Plan and much of the discussion at the Smart Rwanda Days have the plan inverted or upside down. Rather than a newly minted, separate silo for ICT, it needs to be seen as a utility infrastructure in service to content creators, consumers and the needs provided by the government through its ministries from agriculture to health and infrastructure. The Internet, by its presence demands collaboration across disciplinary silos that, in turn, should shape the form and function of the services provided by the utility. While the first Internet was devised, in response to the needs for security and redundancy for the military, Internet 2 was designed for speed and capacity to meet the needs of research universities that needed to collaborate. It is recognised that major university centers have seen clusters of enterprises develop around them. In today's world both these nodes and the ability to connect, globally, have provided significant contributions to economic development. While the research is a contributor component, it is layered on the strength of the graduates from these institutions. What the evolution of the Internet has shown is that there is an increasing need for collaboration, exchange and participation in all dimensions of education in all disciplines from agriculture to medicine, political science and philosophy. The knowledge centers are part of a set of nodes, each requiring a blend of virtual and physical presence. What makes the information highway different than roads, rail, and air travel is that knowledge can move seamlessly across geo/political boundaries. It moves at the "click of a mouse" that, from a technical delivery perspective, does not bind producers and users to a spatial location. Additionally, with wireless, satellites and similar systems, where that knowledge is stored and how easily it moves is more dependent on social/political issues than ones of technology. Like all utilities, the Internet is an enabler. Without utilities or a limited capacity, it can encourage development in many dimensions from citizen participation to economic growth through local entrepreneurs or increased foreign direct investment. Without a concomitant knowledge society in all sectors, the larger potentials held out for ICT will be still born. With the introduction of 4G LTE and increased access in Rwanda, there will need to be a significant and sustained increase in filling that knowledge void made present by the new capacity. This is a major consequence introduced by the Internet and a critical issue for an under-resourced government. In the movie, A Field of Dreams, the idea is that if you build it, they will come. A knowledge-driven private sector, in a flexible, global, Internet world, is not place-based constrained. It is that value proposition that the space, itself, must present when knowledge moves at mouse-click. Until Rwanda sees the Internet as a utility and refocuses serious resources to upgrade its knowledge base in all sectors, the dream will not be fulfilled. (c) 2014 The New Times Publications S.A.R.L All rights reserved Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info). |