Can Africa produce a Google, Facebook or Microsoft?
are there hackers in africa and other 3rd world countries? and can they produce companies like google, facebook or microsoft?
Eg South Africa produced Thawte which at one time had > 40% of the world market in SSL certs. Bought by Verisign for $500m, allowing its founder (Mark Shuttleworth) to become the 2nd paid space tourist, to create an early-stage VC called HBD, and to move on to things like Canonical (Ubuntu Linux). At the time, played differently, it could have been Thawte that bought Verisign (but Mark did not have an interest in that).
IIRC he is based from the UK these days (in part because of tax reasons), but very much maintains his ties to Africa. And Thawte is still based out of Cape Town.
Arguably, all the "negatives" actually have an advantage, and African hackers can actually get to be really good -- because the environment forces them to innovate and be creative. (Which is why they can do things like build LEO microsatellites for under $5m -- eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUNSAT).
There are of course several cases of (ex)-Africans founding successful companies in the USA (Paypal being a notable example) -- which is admittedly a little different.
Arguably environment is just another "tool" in the entrepreneur's toolbox -- some will gain advantage by changing environment, others by exploiting uniqueness in theirs and finding ways to deal with the challenges.
An interesting comment made once by Mark Shuttleworth, was that if a fashion company establishes in Paris (or a financial one in New York), it is immediately a challenge to be more than just average in that domain, to "stand out" as it were. He claimed this was a significant advantage for Thawte at the time.
Otherwise it's much easier to produce a 37signals, just like everywhere else, I guess.
Disclaimer: I'm an African in Africa. In my day-job, I work for a non-profit developing a Rails application for managing delivery for HIV medication (baobabhealth.org)
That said, there has been speculation lately that Africa might well be able to leapfrog over a lot of industrial development and jump straight to developing a knowledge economy, but with the cultural and political issues (and "issues" is an understatement) African countries have with (and within) each other, this seems overly positive for the short term.
This actually has to do with access to capital markets.
It is a common pattern for these companies to decide to list on LSE or NYSE, since it allows them broader access to more capital. (Consider for example that Telkom, SA's goverment telco, is itself listed on the NYSE for this same reason).
To some companies, LSE is attractive because London is the "closest stop" from Johannesburg, travel-wise (and an easy timezone diff). In SABMiller's case, they are cross-listed in London and Johannesburg.
This makes sense when you talk to stockbrokers in the USA (or Canada) that tell you they will execute a trade on the JSE @ $250 minimum commission -- but that they must advise against it because the markets are so volatile (which to me seems an exageration).
In any case, I am willing to defer to those more knowledgeable about African economics in this thread :)
After the fall of apartheid, SAB could expand very rapidly in overseas markets. However, its ability to grow internationally was limited by foreign exchange controls that restricted its use of cash from its South African brewing operations to fund overseas expansion. Thus it wanted to acquire access to the global share market to further its growth in the international business.
The strategy on LSE listing incidentally is mentioned on their site: (http://www.sabmiller.com/sabmiller.com/en_gb/Our+business/Ou...) "..the strategy is to develop and expand its international beer and other beverage operations and to invest in the rapidly-growing gaming industry in South Africa."
For an African company seeking to expand internationally (ie Europe, USA etc), I do not see what relevance trading within Africa really has -- surely any company setting up shop everywhere, wants to facilitate investors coming in from everywhere. And it is true that investors anywhere in the world can invest via LSE, NYSE etc much more easily than they can into the Johannesburg JSE, or Thailand, or whatever.
This does not make SAB a British company, nor does it make Telkom an American company, just because they are set up to access capital markets via the UK/USA.
This is not really markedly different to (say) a USA multinational deciding to base itself out of the Cayman Islands for tax purposes. (Surely this would not be deemed "abandoning the USA").
If SAB had ceased its operations in Africa, different matter -- that would have been a statement on the commercial climate. But they certainly have not done this.
But hey, the initial question was related to whether Africa could produce a large (possibly multinational) company -- and SAB is clearly an example not just of this, but of being able and willing to apply whatever strategy is required to get the desired result (even if you choose to construe this as "abandoning Africa"). From this viewpoint, it seems almost irrelevant whether one considers SAB to be a British or an African company in the present time.
Since Naspers has been mentioned elsewhere, it is perhaps worth using them as an example of an African company which has achieved international expansion while remaining firmly listed only on the JSE.
And just to make this reply even longer ;), a further example of what has come out of Africa: Naspers pay TV ops (via MIH) developed and deployed to Africa digital satellite TV (DVB) way before digital was available to Europe. (And made significant contrib to DVB standard itself). Although digital satellite in the USA slightly predatd this, Naspers / MIH technology had HD and MPEG2 deployed before even the USA -- and they deployed it to Africa first.
(Though this seems a trivial example in the greater scheme of things, it should illustrate the contrast between the economic argument -- and the ability to pull off something of this magnitude).
This is just one example where I have on occasion overheard Europeans complain how South Africa often seemed to get cool technologies before they did.
But there are countless others of various sizes -- e.g. Dimension Data ($1.4bn market cap, also listed on LSE but based in Jhb), Omnipless which had firm grip on Inmarsat terminal antenna market & sold to a UK concern, etc etc.
if there is enough infrastructure for any African bloggers or hackers, then there is enough to create a "Google, Facebook, or Microsoft"
why can't an African "make something people want?" (I didn't realize this was location dependent)
Arguably surviving and growing is "cheaper" in the USA than Africa -- but that doesn't make it impossible in Africa.
I don't know that the "huge multinational" argument to sustaining growth, really holds water. By definition, a multinational has to rely on talent pools in multiple countries -- so does it really matter then where the multinational originated?
Consider eg Naspers (mentioned elsewhere) which is a multinational in various of its interests, such as internet access, mobile phone networks and Pay TV. In fact, last time I looked (which was 5 yrs ago), their Pay TV interests was the fastest growing pay TV operation in the world, with interests everywhere including the USA (in fact it owned OpenTV for a while there, which it sold prior to embedded linux getting a foothold).
An interesting comment from a gent at Naspers to me once, was that their experience with operating in the USA suggested that if Africans attempt to open offices / businesses there directly, this tends not to work nearly as well as purchasing an American company and essentially creating the impression to the casual observer that the business is in fact American.
Here is an article from the IEEE Spectrum, titled "The African Hacker": http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aug05/1699
SA is pretty modern, stable and has some money (middle income) although it is not free from problems (like any country)
i think africa has to get the basics down first. then we'll see. by no means am i saying that they lack the individual brilliance. in short, what they lack is the institutionalized backing of a solid higher education system, vc and, oh ya, general infrastructure (transport, food, electricity, telecommunications, security, etc.)
Sometimes, I just feel like cancer could have been cured 100% but the kid who was suppose to cure it was born in the wrong country ... (e.g. Iraq)
Internet connection yes. Most hackers in Africa have internet access at work only where they work on custom enterprise software or general IT (non-programming) jobs and have to code hacker-interesting stuff off-line at home (if they have a computer) or evenings and weekends at work.
Anyway, by extension of this logic, then also places like Israel, Palestine, and even (in the not too distant past) Ireland, should not be expected to be candidates for such developments either.
I echo the sentiment from elsewhere, that if a few guys in a dorm room could hack together a facebook -- then that dorm room could be situated anywhere in the world (including, say Ghana). And by running on AWS or AppEngine (say), infrastructure is largely isolated from country-specific stability concerns. In fact, users probably won't know or care where the HQ is, and nothing stops any organization from procuring expertise in whatever country it needs to further its aims.
This seems to address the first part of what is necessary. For the second part -- growing the business -- no argument this is more tricky from places like Africa, because of perception issues, African VCs largely being focussed on the largest deal sizes possible (e.g. putting up a mobile phone network), etc. etc. From this perspective, Africans look at Silicon Valley and think how "easy" it all appears. Some move their operations, and do really well. Others find creative ways around -- like Thawte for example (for the growth question & VC environment for small growing tech companies, in my opinion, there is not much difference between SA and the rest of Africa).
But for the most part, many Africans seem to be happy to build solutions for themselves, and don't immediately expect the rest of the world to be interested. From my experience, the main reason for this is physical distance -- many Africans just don't get to talk to people from the USA and Europe on a regular basis to realise there may be broader appeal, and so in many cases you just don't see a drive to want to scale something up to the size of Google.
There is also an implicit belief by many Africans that they are simply not capable of doing something like this. People like Mark Shuttleworth have gone to a lot of effort in Africa to try and address this perception.
Africans hold to a principle of shared humanity -- which is called Ubuntu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28philosophy%29). Interesting the resonance with open source principles here. It is not a coincidence that Mark Shuttleworth's Ubuntu Linux carries this name.