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.