MP's email hacked: Are Ghana's security agencies equipped to fight cyber crime?

After the email account of the Ho West member of parliament, Emmanuel Bedzrah, was hacked, he took the opportunity to urge the security agencies to intensify the fight against cyber crime. But how exactly are the security agencies supposed to do this?

Given the utter and embarrassing cluelessness of the Ghana Police Service and the Bureau of National Investigations about less ingenious crimes that occur in the country, one wonders if this call can be heeded even if the slouchy behemoths had a change of heart. For me, this is nothing more than wishful thinking.

Why do we keep wasting money on ID cards?

Registrant recording his thumbprints

I was impressed that the Electoral Commission (EC) could register 13.5 million people in forty days in the Biometric Voters' Registration (BVR) Exercise. Considering the various impediments to registration--the never-ending queues with their characteristic molluscan tardiness, the violence at some centres, and the frustration that results from the awareness that this whole exercise might be a waste of time as it could easily be avoided or sped up--perhaps, it is a sign that Ghanaians really do want to vote. Over the years, we have acquired a reputation for holding regular presidential and parliamentary elections on a continent for which such processes are a rarity, so it behoves us to maintain the record. Ensuring the sanctity of the register that enables citizens to vote is an important first step in this endeavour, but did we really need to spend as much money and time on that exercise? Why can't I vote with my driver's licence? What about my passport? And even if one wanted to create these new cards, why couldn't the many literate registrants be made to fill their forms at home?

The last time I posed these questions to a friend, he was startled. "Voting with passports and driver's licences? There are too many fake ones in the system," he countered. According to the EC, there were at most 15,000 duplicate registrations which they are seeking to reconcile. To make a valid argument against driver's licences and passports, one would have to argue that the number of fake passports in the system far exceeds the proportions for the new voter's id cards. I would be surprised to learn of the existence of 15,000 fake passports but will grant that for the sake of argument. The reason we are not using other valid photo ids for elections is that we can afford not to.

It is disgusting that we have to print new id cards for almost every election cycle. Even more disgusting is the fact that we do not pay for this renewal of id cards on our own--the process is generously subsidized by donor nations and agencies--so we don't care.

Of course, there would be teething problems to deal with no matter what system we adopt, so that should not be an impediment to doing what is right. We already have biometric passports as the new standard for passports in the country. The more pervasive driver's licences also sport the relevant data that we have collected in the past for voter's ids. The missing ingredient in this recipe is the will to cut down on waste, but, alas, this will is quenched with milk from the teats of our perpetual benefactors of whose care we are yet to wean ourselves.

Interview with Raindolf Owusu, developer of Anansi OS

Raindolf Owusu with his Anansi OS in the background

Tech Digest (TD): Who developed the Anansi Operating System?
Raindolf Owusu (RO): Raindolf Owusu, a 21-year old second year student of Methodist University College, Ghana studying Information Technology. I am also the founder of Oasis WebSoft, an IT start-up.

TD: Why did you develop it?
RO: I am a strong advocate of free and open source software. I realized that proprietary operating systems are being entrenched in our society. Companies and the government spend so much money on paying for licenses for these software whereas these monies could be used to improve other sectors like education. These proprietary software contain so many bugs and also can easily be attacked by viruses and malicious software. I believe that the way forward for advancement in technology is the collaborative use of open source technologies. Africa is on the move, and software and technologies are a powerful tool for boosting economic growth and poverty reduction.

TD: What tools did you use and why?
RO: Building an operating system from scratch is not a one man job so I decided to use the Linux kernel which is open source, as the main platform that Anansi OS would be built on. Linux is stable and has so many code contributors around the world and operating systems like Ubuntu and Fedora were built using this strong kernel. I cloned Open Suse, a Linux distribution, to be a strong engine behind Anansi. I wrote the main Anansi tree with C, with some hardware-specific code using Assembly language. I wanted a simple but user friendly desktop environment so I used Gnome 3 and I integrated it with the main kernel using C++ and C#. 

TD: How long did it take you to develop it?
RO: It took me close to a year to develop it. I spent most of my time in my school’s library and on the Internet researching about Unix and the Linux kernel.

TD: What has been the response so far and how does it relate to what you were expecting?
RO: It has been great. It’s been almost a week since I launched it on-line and it has had over a thousand downloads from Ghana, Britain, Kenya and other parts of the world. Open source communities are creating download mirrors for others to download and also www.distrowatch.com has included my OS as an upcoming Linux distro to watch. I was expecting this because, I am a firm believer in open source and it makes no sense to build software and hide the source code. When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people fix bugs. Intelligence should be open for everyone to learn something from.

TD: Do you have any competition? How is that affecting your business?
RO: Yes. So many people grew up with Windows so it will be very difficult for them to transition to use my operating system. I have devised a way to solve that in the sense that you could still use your default operating system and run Anansi OS on a live CD. Although it will take time but I have a strong belief that we will get there soon.

TD: What advice do you have for people developing such apps?
RO: Always ask God first to direct your path, look for a relevant problem around you, find the right tools  and technology to build the solutions. There are so many relevant data made available online to make your work easy. Use these technologies and don’t limit yourself creatively.

TD: When did you start programming and what languages and platforms did you start with?
RO: I started when I was 16. I started with web development (HTML, CSS, Javascript, FBML) and later transitioned into software programming (Java, C, C#, C++, Python and, Ruby on Rails).

TD: We do not yet have a mass market software product made in Ghana. By mass market I mean a product that many people use (say 100,000 users per day eg. Windows, Facebook, Twitter, etc). What do you think is the reason for that and how can software developers rectify the situation (if it needs rectification)?
RO: Most developers limit their products to only Ghana and Africa. We should be able to build software locally but think globally.Also the reason why products abroad are that successful is because of how they are marketed, we need strong marketing strategies to market our software products to reach the masses.

TD: Is there anything else you want to say?
RO: It is time for our environment to stand firmly behind young African men and women developers who are always up at dawn working on something they believe in. It is not enough to congratulate them vocally for their achievements, it will be right if you can support them with your resources be they financial, intellectual, and so on. Anansi OS is free to use, and if you're using Anansi OS and feeling generous, consider a donation. All donations are sincerely appreciated. Thank you and do check out my website www.oasiswebsoft.com.

Do we need the Germans to tell us to back up our data?

The cost of negligence can be immense (Courtesy backup.info)

The German ambassador to Ghana visited the minister of foreign affairs on Wednesday to present him with soft copies of signed bilateral agreements between the two countries. This became necessary after fire gutted the offices of the ministry three years ago, destroying decades of papery archives scarcely preserved in other forms. I was wondering exactly what precipitated that meeting. Could it be Ghana, as represented by the ministry, claiming to have lost or forgotten the contents of such important documents?

This is yet another example of a major Ghanaian institution playing dumb with tech. With the proliferation of cloud-based backup solutions, not to mention the availability of cheap solid-state and disk-based storage mechanisms it sounds silly that we would lose such important documents because of a fire outbreak. If the documents were important to us we would have scanned and stored them in multiple locations for safe-keeping.

Electronic payment solutions still subpar

Hacker News was all agog yesterday for details on the operation of MPesa, a mobile payment solution that was featured by National Geographic in an article yesterday. The venturesome tech community featured a wide range of opinions from cautious optimism to downright dismissal. I observed the conversation with cynical amusement but found it refreshing to find some knowledgeable patrons unobtrusively steering a productive discussion.

Part of the dismissal stemmed from a suspicion that the article was a shameless marketing job by a journalistic hireling masquerading as mainstream untinged reporting. I must admit that I felt a little bit of that suspicion when I read the article even though I could let that pass granting that the wanton disregard for technical depth stemmed from the author not having a Hacker-News-esque readership in mind.

The fact that I had written a piece about on-line and other electronic--basically seamless, cashless--transactions the day before made the reading a little weird but welcome. "This issue still piques the interest of dissatisfied market actors," the reasoning went. In my piece, I intentionally avoided a discussion of the numerous mobile money and proto-credit card solutions that have arisen in the past few years because I am not thrilled by them. I acknowledge them as progress in the vein of "steps in the right direction," but they simply do not cut it because they fail to answer the basic question: "Why can't I use my debit card (my money in the bank) to buy things on-line?" Gargantuan problems may be best solved by nibbling around the edges for a while, but I reject that as an excuse for tardy progress.

The issue with online payment systems in Ghana

Courtesy theonlinepaymentsystems.com

The ability to identify money-making opportunities without being able to take advantage of them is a frustrating experience for entrepreneurs everywhere. However, in Ghana and other African countries, this problem is pronounced on-line where even though there are millions of Internet users (at least one million in Ghana alone), there aren't any convenient ways of making money on the platform.

The consequences of this state of affairs for tech entrepreneurs cannot be overstated as many of their ideas are automatically censored for a lack of monetization prospect. The problem is not with customers not having money to purchase goods. The problem is with the banks who do not see any need to initiate the processes that would facilitate the so-called cashless economy. Why should I have a bank account and not be able to trade on-line with my debit card? I am yet to see a Ghanaian bank that is troubled by this question. For most (all?) banks, customers don't even have the ability to transfer money from one account to another for two accounts with the same bank over the Web. What most banks think of as on-line banking is spamming the customers with endless emails about one's balance and their trivial, often-valueless products.

The solution to the problem will begin with a bank or some other financial institution. The obvious solution is to invite the companies who have solved similar problems in other jurisdictions to assist in crafting a satisfactory solution; however, this is unlikely to happen as none of the banks is likely to break ranks with the cartel. Hence, the solution may take the latter form, where a budding entrepreneur circumvents the great bank oligarchy. This entrepreneur would implement his system with a virtual currency that would sport an isomorphism with traditional legal tender even though that may not be the focus in the beginning.

The benefits to the one who provides the solution to the problem are immense and obvious but I understand the hesitation. The problem is so huge that it seems unreasonable to tackle it. With the current state of affairs this problem may seem to be of the same order of magnitude as that of achieving African unity.

Where is the de facto Swahili search engine? (Part 1)

The three most popular search engines in
sub-Saharan Africa, according to Alexa

Search engines help you navigate the world wide web (the Web). They help you find things, they help you know what others think is important, and, most importantly, they help the builder set the agenda. All of these three functions are connected. For instance, you usually cannot find information that others consider unimportant. Also, since these are the first points of entry for most browsers, the one who controls them decides what most browsers should see, etc. Hence, it is important who builds search engines and what their agenda is.

The emergence of Google reduced the barrier to entry for most content providers who were not necessarily interested in selling a product or promoting their material. Before then, search engines were just portals that listed websites that marketers fancied, so the entrance of one that considered the structure of networks of web pages to rank them meant the discounting of the opinions of deep-pocketed players--a welcome intervention in the opinions of most browsers. However, that was just the beginning of what a search engine could become.

A study the structure of the Web requires an analysis of the connections and what they mean to both content creators and consumers. This enterprise requires data and algorithms to handle the scale of information that is generated. But it also requires the discretion of the developer. Firstly, there is the discretion to discriminate against which pages to include in the map of the web that one uses for analysis. Then, there is the discretion to discriminate between different meanings of a query--a task that can sometimes be accomplished with the help of natural language processing algorithms. These two liberties that the developer is free to exercise lead to differences between search engines that would otherwise be, for the most part, algorithmically identical. For a long time, some did not appreciate the significance of this point, arguing the impartiality of search algorithms and the blandness of data, but just a cursory examination of some search queries in a language that one understands, or a search for a terminology whose context one could reasonably assume is unfamiliar to the developer of a search engine would reveal how the developer chose to exercise these liberties.

I will continue in another post bearing with our continually diminishing collective attention span.

Chaos at Spanner

It's 6pm. Spanner Junction is choked with stranded passengers. The time-strapped ones will charter taxis home. The rest will try their luck by waiting for the elusive trotro. Everybody knows of this problem--when will it be solved?

Short of building a respectable road network--which won't happen in the next decade--there are many things an entrepreneur could do to profit from the status quo. One of such solutions is a transportation system that can assure certitude of departure time. If a transport company could ensure that there will be a bus at a certain bus stop every half-hour, most passengers would be willing to queue for such a service. This would reduce the chaos at all such bus stops where, currently, the stronger and more unruly passengers reckon that it is not in their interest to queue as they can overpower other rowdies for limited spots in the trotros. Over time, as the company builds trust, some passengers would be willing to purchase advance tickets to patronise such a service, yielding a sustainable business.

Another area of uncertainty that exists in the current market is taxi fares for the so-called dropping. Taxi drivers exploit their information advantage much to the detriment of passengers, leaving most of them unwilling to take the taxis except as a last resort. What if there were a time and distance tracker installed in all taxis that would reliably determine what the fare should be for a given distance and a given time, and perhaps, even a given time of day? Certainly, drivers would make less money, even though they would still make a profit. The money they would lose would go back to the passengers. Again, our budding entrepreneur just has to paste bold stickers on his taxis to brand them as "the taxis that charge fairly," in order to distinguish himself from the rest.

I envisage that, over time, even taxi drivers who don't belong to his franchise would enlist to get certified by his company as most passengers would choose the "fair" taxis over the others, again, yielding a sustainable business.

These ideas are straightforward and don't cost much to implement: anybody who owns multiple taxis or trotros could start. Let's see how long it takes for them to do so.

Interview with Michael Ocansey, the developer of kuzima.com

Michael Ocansey - Developer of kuzima

Tech Digest (TD): Why did you develop kuzima.com?
Michael Ocansey (MO): To help improve the customer service culture in Africa a country at a time, starting with Ghana.
TD: What tools did you use and why?
MO: I used PHP and jQuery as the scripting languages, and mySQL as the database. I used PHP because it is my favourite language and I code faster using that language. I used mySQL because it's free and reliable.
TD: How long did it take you to develop it?
MO: 14 days
TD: What has been the response so far and how does it relate to what you were expecting?
MO: The response has been great especially since all we have done is promote it through social media. The impact will be greater if we do radio and billboard advertising. People find it convenient using the mobile web version from the smart phones.
TD: Do you have any competition? How is it affecting your business model?
MO: Gripeline from Nandimobile and Nevahold are doing something similar but I don't really consider them a competition because the models vary in some ways. Nevahold is focused on Europe and the US.
TD: What advice do you have for people developing such apps?
MO: One thing that sets an app apart is how much it is on point. Functionality and aesthetic wise. They should focus on building world class apps that appeal to the end user.

Is it still fashionable to play dumb with tech?

The beginnings of innovation elicit a fairly typical response from incumbents: denial, ridicule, reluctant acceptance, and then, regret of former folly--this is my theory.

Many Ghanaian institutions appear to be at the denial and ridicule stages with regard to their attitudes towards new ways of doing things. I was at the Electoral Commission (EC) about two months ago when a conversation about the publication of election results transpired. An official of the EC tried to convince me of the reason why they don't publish election results in machine readable formats: "We are afraid people will distort them," she said. Even though I considered the excuse bogus, I let it pass because I figured there must be other reasons she wasn't willing to disclose.

It was not until I heard they had given a similar excuse to someone who wanted to interview an official that I was prompted to question their real motives. According to an official from Ghana Decides, the Electoral Commissioner is refusing to give interrviews because he is afraid people will distort what he says. I find it preposterous that they would unilaterally decide to ward off all communication because of fear of what somebody may make of their remarks or data. How could somebody distort data from the EC and succeed in presenting it as credible? Is the hoarding of information the solution to this problem?

The solution to the supposed problem they are trying to avert is to flood the system with information. Every communication or interview they grant that is meant for public consumption should be made public via their own media. This is not just a matter of safeguarding what was actually said; it is imperative because the information belongs to the public who fund the EC with their taxes. Election results should be published in machine readable formats for easy manipulation and analysis. The fears of distortion are unfounded because if the information is easily accessible on, say, their website, anybody can check and cross-check results making the efforts of forgers futile.

But the EC should know this, shouldn't they? Who advises them on such matters? I think they have the liberty to play dumb on these issues because nobody has shone the spotlight on them. Ghanaians are generally content to have election results published in newspapers. They probably don't care about doing their own analysis with the data. They probably don't care about hearing from the Electoral Commissioner on general issues either, so dubious excuses like these will endure for quite a while.

Is Ghana Decides an inefficient anti-politics machine?

I borrow from the title of James Ferguson's book because the issues with the anti-politics machine he describes and the one I'm about to lament overlap.

Ghana Decides is a Blogging Ghana project funded by donor agencies through STAR Ghana, an NGO. It aims to use social media to sensitise the Ghanaian electorate on the impending elections. Their specific goals include (or have included):

1. Educating Ghanaian youth, especially those on social media about the upcoming elections

2. Increasing participation in the biometric voter registration exercise

3. Educating civil society and public institutions on the effectiveness of social media for social change

I was wondering if an organisation with the explicit mandate to be non-partisan was the best tool for achieving these goals in Ghana. There are two major political parties in Ghana. This means that every issue is viewed through a partisan lens, squeezing out audience for seemingly contrary discourse even if it could be reached by assuming a not-necessarily-partisan premise.

An example of such discourse would be the coverage of the Ferdinand O. Ayim memorial lectures and the ensuing analysis. Can one discuss such an event without venturing into politics? For any fruitful discussion to be made about the issues raised, I suspect we would need sober partisans with an understanding of the economic issues that were raised. Unless Ghana Decides wants to just report the news, which I don't think is their goal, any productive discussion of the lectures must be curtailed (and indeed it was, as evidenced by the sole bland comment, "Cool," on the discussion on their Facebook page after about six stories on the subject were posted) since the platform and the issues were inherently political. Hence, a fine opportunity to discuss the political-economic condition of the country was dashed because it was a partisan event.

On the issue of voter registration, what better way to mobilise the electorate than to get agents on the ground mobilising the youth in vans to the registration centres? If you were tasked with investing $5,000 in a project to get to get as many people who would otherwise not register as possible to register and you had the following two options, which one would you choose?

1. Give the money to Ghana Decides to continue their social media campaign of sharing videos and photos of people who have registered in order to motivate others to do same.

2. Give the money to NPP and NDC youth organisers to mobilise their base to register en masse at the various centres.

The latter option appears to me to be more promising than the former.

Anti-politics machines are known for their grandiose and noble goals (potential output), but their inefficiency in the mathematical and physical senses of work output being disappointingly low compared with the work input are often overlooked, because their goals are hard to criticise. Who would disagree with educating Ghanaian youth before the impending elections? Who would oppose giving funds to a non-partisan organisation to mobilise the citizenry to register for the elections?

Is it really the case that they can't find programmers?

A well-known excuse given by some elements in government and corporate Ghana for outsourcing software projects is that they could not find people in Ghana who could do the job. Could this possibly be true?

I have heard this excuse given for other professions, in particular, medicine, where wealthy people, in their bid to explain why they prefer to go abroad for treatment, claim that they cannot find suitable doctors to cure their ailments at home. These excuses are often met with rebuttals from the doctors who argue that they are capable of treating the ailments; so there must be other reasons why some choose to go abroad. Indeed, it is not hard to fathom the reasons why a wealthy or famous person may prefer not to make their health a matter of public discussion, but should that warrant an outright lie that threatens to insult the intelligence of a whole school of professionals?

I think programming is suffering the same fate in the hands of incompetent administrators who make the final call on the important decisions in the high places of our companies and government agencies. First of all, do they know who a programmer is or what he does? If so, do they know where programmers are trained? Thirdly, do they want to give the job to a Ghanaian programmer?

I posit that, often, the answer to the first two questions is affirmative while that to the last one is negative. I can understand the benefits an administrator could gain by outsourcing: kickbacks, favour from donors, the avoidance of the threat of an empowered local techie, etc. Otherwise, if one knew what programmers do and where they are trained, would one have an excuse for not knowing where to find them?

Vim Series: 2nd Edition

The second edition of the Vim Series took place yesterday at Esoko, just like the first meeting.

It was facilitated by BloggingGhana and Ghana Decides and centred on how the tech community could make the Ghana Decides campaign, a campaign to sensitise the Ghanaian electorate on the impending elections via social media, more effective. Kwabena Oppong Boateng, the speaker, gave a general overview of the work they do and what their goals are. He then digressed into the area of brand marketing and the usefulness of social media in brand promotion. It was then that a lively discussion ensued as some participants took exception to some of his views.

There was also discussion on other pertinent issues such as the progress made so far, the fundamental question of whether Ghana Decides should exist in the first place, and by what metrics the campaign was going to measure its success.

The presentation and Q&A session ended around 8pm, allowing time for networking and playing of table tennis. There was a general air of camaraderie as participants spent about an hour after the meeting catching up with one another and having other conversations--a signal that the meeting may have been too short for their liking, even though productive.

Why This Tech Blog?

We wish there were a central repository for all things tech in Ghana where one could be assured to find news about the most recent happenings in the local tech industry. Ideally, such a website should have many contributors from diverse backgrounds (software, hardware, telecom, government, VC, media, education) who are involved in the tech community in one way or the other, so that information could filter quickly to them through their already-existing sources and networks.

The goal for such a site would be to gain credibility and goodwill from the industry and also from the general press in Ghana so as to become an avenue for advertising progress and achievements in the tech industry.

Through conversations amongst ourselves (Gameli, Jojoo, Kwabena, Kweku), we realised that we had all been “waiting” for such a site to appear on the scene. One of us (Kweku) had even had the idea for a long time and had started work on it via his Showcase app (showcase.ilugi.com) that was meant to be a repository for all software applications built in Ghana. With such a repository of information about the technology used to build the apps, founders, executives, and early employees of tech companies, we would have a veritable list of contacts to fall upon for news. We would also have a valuable source for research for both angel and institutional investors who may want to financially support the burgeoning industry in Ghana. We think it would be a good addition to this site.

Currently, there are a few sources for tech news in Ghana such as individual blogs of tech entrepreneurs and the obligatory tech vertical of the large news websites, but none of them has gained sufficient attention to serve all the purposes listed above. For one, none of them has a repository or directory for all tech companies in Ghana. The tech verticals of major news websites such as myjoyonline.com and citifmonline.com do not feature fine-grained tech news from Ghana. They mostly feature tech news from abroad since they mostly aggregate from the recognised outside sources.

We believe a concerted effort to get technologists in Ghana involved through the regular submission of articles, ideas for articles, sources, etc. would help get the traction needed for getting the news about happenings in the industry into the mainstream consciousness. Hence, we launch this website in the hope of it becoming all we wish for it to be.