In his April 6th 2014 post, Sunny Bindra poses a question, “What is your child being educated to become?”. I will pose a techy version of this question to all the nerd heads out there but now in terms of the solutions they are coming up with to fulfil the demand for business support systems.
Let me give a small anecdote. I was recently approached by a university student who wanted help in doing their final year project. This student wanted me to do for them a system to automate a service offered by some organization. He was more concerned about ensuring the system works than addressing a real-world problem. Right there, some issues come to light. First, there is an ethical issue and second the innovation problem. Ethical issues can be talked about and we won’t get to the bottom of the matter so let’s explore innovation.
90% of Kenyan university software projects are usually in this format: “{some allegedly unique name} management information system” e.g Library Management information system. This is where the problem starts. Developing a so called information management system is more like conforming with the standard and simply being able to create a system that works. It’s nothing more than towing the line and as Bindra puts it in the above referenced article, ensuring that one passes their exams. Just like a colleague of mine likes to joke whenever any one of us has a problem, “there is an App for that”. This is to say that at this point in time, there is a management information system for virtually everything. Ranging from Secondary school management, league management, exam scheduling and results management e.t.c.
It’s therefore important to think outside the box if the current and future crop of students need to make Kenya the technology hub we have christened it. This means creating solutions to local problems or following the current tech fever of trying to be the next Zuckerberg. Exploring a bit of examples here on the local tech companies that have made it big it will be noted that these companies have something in common.
1. M-KOPA – Uses M-PESA as its mode of payment.
2. KOPO KOPO – The Company behind the use of M-PESA to pay for goods and services.
3. Fat Boy Animations – The Company behind the “maskwembe” advert.
4. Africastalking – SMS gateway.
5. Jambo Pay.
6. Pesa Pal.
7. Ticket sasa.
The one thing in common about these companies except fatboy animations is that there is some sort of integration. What I mean is that information does not originate from the companies themselves but from elsewhere and all they do is add value to it. Management information systems on the other hand are the Alpha and Omega of information. Am not saying this is a bad thing but there is an African proverb that says, “He who has only eaten from his mother’s cooking says she is the best cook”.
In the 21st century, collaboration is key because most often than not, the information we are trying to create electronically by building an information system to capture it already exists elsewhere. This is where APIs(Application Programming Interface) come into play. APIs are basically hooks that are provided by one system for others to hook in and either provide or consume information. The companies I have given examples above implement APIs massively and this is one thing that makes them have the competitive advantage they have. M-KOPA for instance can concentrate on providing better solar products integrated with GSM technology and not worry about how to handle payments since Safaricom and its M-PESA platform have it covered.
A simple example of not re-inventing the wheel is found in managing user account security. If a university student is building an application which is natively a social application then they need not design the login process and user management from scratch. All the major social networks(Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Flickr) provide APIs where user can can login to third party systems.
The Bitcoin technology is still very raw and some online payment portals are already accepting payments in Bitcoin. That’s a Goldmine right there.
Infosec is one of the most misunderstood yet most vital areas in Technology. All students doing research need to check this article out on why they need to give some serious thought to infosec.
All the points provided above are not to say that we don’t have awesome developers here in the motherland. Again, the companies I have listed are all backed up by locally born and bred developers. Just like wealth we have a large divide between the haves and the have nots; The crazy awesome developers and the rest. This divide has been greatly attributed to the system of education simply being exam oriented and not research oriented.
A request to all IT project coordinators for university students is that if the project justification contains some line similar to this; “The current way of doing things is manual and this system will seek to automate the processes”, throw the project out! It’s the only way that we can raise this game. It’s the only way we can have the next Zuckerberg from Kenya.
