Sure there are (many) problems -- but where there is a will there is a way.
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.
I think it's possible and more likely so in a niche specific to developing countries like Malaria/HIV software, low-bandwith solutions, etc.
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)
I think we need to look a step back. Africa can barely produce a Ford or a General Electric!
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.
Africa isn't completely befeft of large scale corporations - there are the big mobile phone companies Celtel, MTN, plus Naspers (Pay TV, newspapers, internet in SA, interests in online companies in Eastern Europe), the big mining operations, De Beers?
I would be interested to know what precisely the word "tellingly" means in this context ;)
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).
You have essentially stated the facts I could use to support my somewhat cynical "tellingly." Africa is not going to be an economic world power until it has the ability to trade within itself to the extent that, say, Europe was 50 years ago. That a successful South African country has chosen to base itself (not just list) in Europe seems like a statement on Africa's commercial climate to me.
In any case, I am willing to defer to those more knowledgeable about African economics in this thread :)
That's why I ask the question -- it seems this is the easy conclusion people jump to (ie to construe this type of a move as "abandoning Africa") -- while in fact it is a strategy designed to benefit both African operations as well as international expansion.
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.
The short answer is no. Google, Microsoft, Apple. (Does Facebook deserve to be listed here?). These are huge multinational companies that require huge educated talent pools simply to exist. But thats just one reason. The real question is why is the U.S. such fertile ground for companies like these.
These may be huge multinationals now, but they were not so at the beginning. I guess the question of "can they produce companies" is really (at least) 2 questions: the one pertaining to the initial creation itself of something like a Google, the other to surviving long enough and growing to become what something like Google is today.
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.
assuming that a 19-year-old in a dormroom with two or three friends created Facebook, why does it matter what the status of 56 nations/territories are if only two or three single-minded hackers create something people want?
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)
We surely can. It a matter of we sitting and deciding what product we can come out that best fit and solves most of our continent problems. If african hackers can come together, certainly sure we can be giants like Google, Facebook or Microsoft. Take a look at this post, it tells you we're getting somewhere. http://whiteafrican.com/?p=992
OK so there's been some discussion here on the second sentence ("can they produce..."), but maybe its also worth zooming in on the first sentence: are there hackers in africa and other 3rd world countries?
i would say decidedly not. a lot of ink has been spilled regarding silicon valleys ascent to its cemented position as the number one place to start a high tech. likewise, people question why silicon valley has excelled over other places in the us (boston, new york, austin, etc.) then broaden the your net and include europe, russia, israel, brazil and asia and you have to conclude that the last place it will happen is in africa.
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.)
I know Egyptians in Egypt who have the skills and know how, so I would say yes. I out source tech work their instead of India these days because the value of the work coming out of their group is exceptional and the documentation is extremely accurate.
I'm certain Africans (the people) can do it, but probably just in South Africa (which is most stable) and certainly not in the Sudan, Ghana, Zimbabwe (which ironically is inside ZA), Nigeria or all the other countries (almost all?) with social unrest.
Zimbabwe is not inside SA (its also bordered by Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique). But even if it were, would this not be a bit like Canada being "inside" the USA?
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.
I guess you mean Internet conection costs being too high, also 3rd world countries are mostly beset with war, hunger and famine, with little or no basic infrastructure, so would be hackers would find it extremely hard becoming hackers.
I don't think hunger and war are a major problem to hackers actually. I thik war-tone countries are a minority in Africa and only affect rural people who are a majority and obviously non-hackers. I'm a hacker in Malawi and have never experienced war or hunger but that's because I'm a minority living in city.
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.
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.