Hi Brian,

As you rightfully indicate in your post you are coming in late on this discussion, this is the problem with a mailing list unlike a blog or forum the history of a discussion is not maintained.

Thus just to get us on the same page your arguments are actually in support of my position, which is that we need to develop local content and hosting capacity as well are reliable country wide connectivity before the arrival of the fiber optic marine cable.

The road analogy was to explain my point that the cable is a highway which needs to arrive when we have already created linkages to the rest of the country and not what we seem to be doing which is waiting for the marine cable as the panaceas to all our slow internet issues.

You do bring an interested issue in your point on the objective of the roads as a means to cart off our resources, could the fiber optic cable be a modern approach to the same?

Regards

Robert Yawe
KAY System Technologies Ltd
Phoenix House, 6th Floor
P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200
KEnya

Tel: +254722511225

----- Original Message ----
From: brian <brian@caret.net>
To: robert yawe <robertyawe@yahoo.co.uk>
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>; info@mediacorp.co.ke
Sent: Tuesday, 11 December, 2007 1:44:53 AM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Faith in local web hosting

I am coming late to this debate .... more follows:

On Wed, 5 Dec 2007 06:03:46 +0000 (GMT), robert yawe <robertyawe@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Your analogy of a Road from Mwea to Kericho is an interesting one, if you
> have noticed all roads have led to Nairobi for many years it is only after
> those satellite locations have grown sufficient traffic through Nairobi
> that we have developed direct linkages. A case in point is the road
> connecting from Machakos to Thika, Kitengela to Rongai, and the now being
> constructed Njambini Road.
>
> Why didn't we develop this roads at independence?

I differ strongly on this. Most roads in Africa were built to support the largely extractive industrial practices of colonial masters and the post-independence regimes which turned a blind eye to the economic pillage of our countries. Most of these roads are what we continue to re-carpet, repair and depend on for our basic transport. Same applies to telecommunications and other major infrastructure.

Any new infrastructure in an African country, be it a road, an airline route or an optic fibre cable needs to be thought out from a fresh standpoint and a mindset that leans towards building internal capacity or providing the platform/environment/atmosphere for local/internal capacity to be built.

I have elaborated on this in an AfrISPA position paper - "One Voice - A VOIP Position Paper" while Mucheru has highlighted the market structure and regulatory regimes to support African country's emergent and blossoming ICT sectors in another AfrISPA position paper entitled "The Rules of Engagement" Copies of these papers can be availed freely upon request.

Mblayo