There has been a lot of concern about the level of electronic waste that is flooding Africa. Most of this wastes included used computers and accessories, most of which come from advanced countries, where the pace of technological change is well above that of Africa.
Virtually all African governments are unsure how to contain this dumping of garbage in their countries. They are caught between the desire to promote ICT education among their population through the use of cheap computers that arrive and the uproar of environmentalists about the damage this is causing to the environment of the continents. In fact, it is a difficult position for any government.
Most African countries are setting up community-driven ICT centers where computers (mostly those brought in from the West as waste) are installed and equipped for use by a given village or community. However, most of these initiatives typically don’t go very far due to the relatively high overall cost of operating the computers. Needless to say, the cost that will be incurred in running a pirated copy (that’s what we can afford) of Microsoft Windows XP on a computer that was designed for Windows 95 and 98.
Most of the used computers that are brought to Africa practically end up in the garbage dump because most people simply cannot get them to run the resources of an operating system called Windows. It is in this sense that I firmly believe that African governments can take advantage of the electronic “waste” that is generated by looking for very easy, cheap and powerful software alternatives called Open Source.
A computer is not complete without the software necessary to run it. If you have the computer and you don’t have compatible software, you can’t use it yet. So if the computers are too old, so running Windows on them is next to impossible, why not try the free and open source operating system like Ubuntu Linux and Fedora? Ubuntu, for example, can run on very old hardware with memory as low as 128MB.
This free, powerful, and resource-efficient Linux operating system can breathe new life into computers that would otherwise be considered dead. So in my opinion, if African governments really want to make some sense of the environmental situation they face, then I think educating people and taking steps to promote resource efficient software will help a lot.
All that needs to be done is to restore the used computers and install free software like Ubuntu and Open Office on them. Giving old computers a new life through open source and free software will help reduce environmental degradation, improve people’s access to ICTs, create jobs for those who will do the restoration, and educate young people and the next generation about better and free alternatives to Microsoft’s. hoarder of resources and expensive products.
With Open Source, it is a win-win situation. Share your thoughts.