NigeriansTalk

I recently went to Bar­Cam­pAfricaUK here in Lon­don. For those of you who don’t know what a Bar­Camp is, it’s gen­er­ally a gath­er­ing of peo­ple around a topic, where all the atten­dees can con­tribute by host­ing a talk, or by actively get­ting involved in a dis­cus­sion. There is no for­mal struc­ture, you turn up, you see what’s hap­pen­ing, who is there and pick what you want to join in with.

It’s taken off a lot in pre­vi­ous years and there was even a Bar­Camp­Nige­ria in Lagos ear­lier this year. The theme of Bar­Cam­pAfrica was as you guessed…Africa. I will say that I am part of this grow­ing trend that really won­ders if we will ever move past this habit of refer­ring to the con­ti­nent with its 1 bil­lion inhab­i­tants as one coun­try, but anyway..I digress.

It was a fan­tas­tic day, most of the talks I went to were inter­est­ing, it was edu­ca­tional, quite inspir­ing, but like most one day things, it wasn’t prac­ti­cal. It’s hard to find some­thing prac­ti­cal to do that grounds every­one on the sub­ject of Africa, but it’s still worth­while to get active and engaged minds into a space to talk, col­lab­o­rate and explore. You never know, a good idea may have been born that day and we’ll hear about it some­time soon!

The talks included Blog­ging from Africa, One Lap­top Per Child and Sugar Labs, Liv­ing Build­ings (really inter­est­ing, the link is to her TED talk), Young African Inno­va­tors Com­pe­ti­tion and End­ing Poverty with Open Hard­ware to name just a few. It’s this breadth of con­tent I found inspir­ing; peo­ple think­ing cre­atively around chal­lenges, not just throw money at poor peo­ple and their problems.

One par­tic­u­lar talk really caught my atten­tion; Dr Fred­er­ick Wamala is a Ugan­dan work­ing for the British Gov­ern­ment in some top-secret capac­ity (he had to caveat that every­thing is his own opinion…oh what secrets he could tell!). He spe­cialises in data secu­rity and he wanted to talk about the poten­tial for eco­nomic devel­op­ment with the arrival of super­fast broad­band, but the flip side of the emerg­ing Hacker’s Paradise.

So, as recently as 3 years ago, a hacker would not have wasted their time in Africa, if you get a con­nec­tion, it drops so quickly you just can’t be both­ered. And this access issue applied both within and out­side the con­ti­nent. Besides, where is the money in it? Well, fast for­ward to this year and the arrival of Sea­Com cable to South Africa and the East African Marine sys­tem which con­nects East Africa to the fast speeds and sud­denly, hack­ers have a clean line to the continent.

On the pos­i­tive, the broad­band speeds mean being able to pro­vide out­sourc­ing ser­vices for other coun­tries. A Data ware­house would be com­par­a­tively cheap com­pared to plac­ing it in west­ern coun­tries and he pointed to the exam­ple of Ghana already stor­ing hos­pi­tal records for the US (I won­der how com­mon this knowl­edge is as I can’t find a link anywhere!).

Now, to the neg­a­tive. Ear­lier this year the ANC web­site was hacked and some­one placed Penis enlarge­ment and porn on their home­page. Also this year, the for­eign office web­site of Tan­za­nia was hacked by a 17 year old who replaced the President’s face with a car­toon. That young man has been given a 25yr jail sen­tence, as the Pres­i­dent didn’t find it as funny as any­one else would have.

What’s even more wor­ry­ing about these is the fact that in nei­ther case did they know they had been hacked. It took the ANC two weeks to dis­cover and rec­tify the issue…..and we’re talk­ing about the rul­ing party in South Africa, arguably the most devel­oped coun­try on the continent?!

So should you and I be wor­ried? Yes. Not only will it be pos­si­ble to hack into a web­site with a steady con­nec­tion, but there are no clear laws on use and secu­rity of per­sonal data in any African coun­try accord­ing to Dr Wamala. If it is cheaper for a com­pany to put your per­sonal infor­ma­tion in Africa because they don’t have to pro­tect it as vig­or­ously as they do in the west, well then trust that at some point they will. When it comes to profit ver­sus secu­rity, you can be sure profit will win.

And if you think this isn’t an issue for Nige­ri­ans be wary. I would bet money on the fact that as soon as these cases start to come to light, the hack­ers will be per­ceived to be Nige­ri­ans whether the real­ity reflects it or not. There are some stereo­types and badges that once applied, never wear off.

When the Niger­ian gov­ern­ment all stop argu­ing about who gets to play pres­i­dent and hid­ing money in use­less brand­ing exer­cises, they may well find them­selves the last to put in place suf­fi­cient leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect itself from harm.