Networking Helps Uganda Take First Steps in Long Journey

by Fred Baker, News@Cisco

They tell me that Uganda has more thunderstorms than anywhere on earth. We landed virtually on the equator, at Entebbe airport, on Lake Victoria, and visited Kampala, the capital city. I was impressed on two accounts: on how little they had to work with, and on how much they had accomplished with it. Uganda is rich in some resources and poor in others; her human potential is vast. The question is how to enable Ugandans to translate that potential into actuality.

I went, with Christine Hemrick and Erin Walsh, to celebrate the opening of a Cisco Networking Academy at Makerere University's Department of Women and Gender Studies. This is Uganda's third, joining another academy in Makerere's Institute of Computer Science, and a well established academy at the Uganda Communications Institute. These are sponsored by Cisco's Least Developed Country Initiative. Our overall objective was to talk with the various CCNA-level academies in Uganda, and promote the use of the Internet in Uganda. We wanted to explore the possibility of opening a CCNP-level academy as a national institution. I also wanted to establish research relationships at Makerere. And I wanted to visit business, ISPs and their customers, to see for myself how Internet technology improves the way Ugandans work, live, and play. We made great headway on each of those objectives.

In the course of our visit, we met with the Vice President of Uganda, the Minister of Gender, Labor, and Social Development, the Minister of Communications and Public Works, and the Minister of Education and Sports. If I learned anything from them, it is that Uganda has had a difficult past, and its leaders want to lead it into a stable and prosperous future. They believe that to accomplish this, they must educate and empower their people, including both genders and all tribes.

The classic story is that of Zoe Bakoko Bakoru, the Minister of Labor, which she told us over dinner. Under Idi Amin, in the 1970's, her people and her family were strictly persecuted; several family members were murdered, and she found herself hiding in a tree from men intent on her demise - when eight months pregnant. She escaped into exile in the Sudan, which has had forbidding problems of its own, and has returned to teach her people to live together in peace. Looking at the prospect of elections three years from now, her greatest wish is that the transfer of power to the new government be peaceful, whether she is included or not.

A strong democracy depends, of course, on an educated, informed, and engaged citizenry. The country remains largely illiterate, but has taken on the daunting task of providing primary education for four children from every family, and promoting secondary and university education for as many as it can.

Information and engagement depends on communication among its people, and between its people and their peers worldwide. Growing up in Cleveland Ohio, the 45-minute drive to my grandparent's house was considered interminably long. As a result, I saw them only a few times a year, for holidays or special events. I met few people who lived outside my own town. Internet communications and modern air transport mean that I can now have daily email contact with counterparts eleven time zones away, and can realistically discuss collaboration on research projects. To harness this capability, a country must develop a useful communications policy, one that supports distance learning and promotes collaborative communication for educational and business purposes. In Uganda, the banks and universities may lead the way. Dr. Tusubira, of Makerere University and the Uganda Communications Commission, has taken on the task of developing this policy; the Ministry of Works plans to issue the draft report in this calendar year.

The stories of others I spoke with look to a better future. Dr. Baryamureeba, who likes to quote Archimedes statement "give me where to stand, and I will move the earth", heads the Computer Science Department at Makerere. He has two instructors teaching the CNA classes there. I would like to see his department involved with Cisco's University Research Program, working on issues of importance to Uganda, which might include user interface research. I think that while the desktop motif popularized by Apple has made computers far more usable, interfaces remain far too complex for non-technical users, especially those for whom English is a second language. One suggestion made was to investigate voice interfaces - text to speech, speech to text, and speech activation. We do this now, but imperfectly; pushing the state of the art here may help promote Uganda's economic vitality.

Speech-based interfaces tell us something of the requirements of computer networks, and the need to understand and manage voice as an application. Fiber networks will provide the necessary capacity, and wireless will help with issues of right of way. Issues of service quality, both in networks and in codecs, will have to be addressed to ensure that the quality is adequate for the purpose. In the end, though, the limiting factors will be the capacity businesses can purchase from the fledgling ISPs, the mindset that promotes communications as a way to do work, and the availability of trained people to operate those networks. To that end, I visited the Uganda Chapter of the Internet Society, which promotes Internet education, and the Uganda Internet Exchange, meeting on the premises of Africa Online, an ISP. They celebrated the success they have had to date, and discussed strategy for furthering the business use of Internet communications.

I enjoyed Uganda. It finds itself on the first steps of a long journey, and just getting on the road has been a process. But there is great reason to hope that it will find its way to a prosperous and vital future. Computer Networking will help them on the way.