Localisation

Localisation is usually associated with mere translation of technology in to local languages; however it actually means adapting to local needs. A technology that may work in one country does not necessarily work in another even if their languages are the same, due to geographical and environmental differences. Adapting to local needs may include language translation to make it understandable to the local population.

Various Afghan institutions have been heavily involved in Localisation, including private/public sectors and the non-governmental organisations (NGO). While their work is worth admiring, it is subject to many flaws that are yet to be filled.

Bandwidth is an expensive commodity worldwide but especially in Afghanistan. A mere double (128Kbps) of a dial-up (56Kbps) speed costs 300 US Dollars (~ £160) per month. It is therefore important to be optimised to accommodate more users and to bring costs down. Over one billion users are connected to the Internet worldwide. Making access to the internet accessible to all those who can in Afghanistan would mean giving those Afghans over one billion opportunities to explore, learn from, do business with, socialise with, make friends with, etc.

Optimisation is far from being achieved here (in Afghanistan), it is actually being wasted. The ISPs (Internet Service Providers) seem to be more concerned with making money rather than making the internet market grow. I say this because the current internet users in the country mostly use windows and a killer for bandwidth that is associated with windows is its updates. Currently every windows user downloads updates directly through the backbone (via satellite) [See Figure 1 as an example]. The load on the backbone makes less available bandwidth and hence not only prevents the ISP from giving new connections out to new users but also affects the speed for the current users. Investing in a local cache server would avoid the repetitive download of the updates by each user separately [see Figure 2 for an example]. If a user wants to install the updates 10 times, it would not affect other users but only his own.

The other issue concerned with the localisation at the moment is the lack of awareness about the software and its costs. The average income of an Afghan is between $200 and $350 per year. A legal copy of Windows XP costs about $560 locally. For Afghanistan to be able to sell its software in the international market it would first need to comply with Intellectual Property and Copy Right laws. However, if most people cannot afford to buy the software, then enforcing the law becomes a problem. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and its localisation is therefore important to provide Afghans with something they can afford. Although there is no lack of support for FOSS in the ICT sector itself but it is struggling to gain the support it needs from the government and financial support institutes (donor community). The awareness amongst the public as to why they should change to open source is also lacking.

For a system to have flaws, it will have to exist first. In a place like Afghanistan it is difficult to foresee the future clearly; hence the work is usually carried out to fulfil the immediate needs without full analysis. It might be due to those reasons, that everything was/is done superficially. However, the good thing is the ICT industry is growing rapidly and the necessary improvements may clearly be seen as the number of professionals increase in the country. Despite its flaws, if there is a success story in Afghanistan, it would have to be the growth of its ICT sector. It has come a long way in the past five years but still has a long way to go. A well developed ICT sector will boost the economy and serve as an enabler tool for development and education. It will also address the divide between those who have access to information and those that do not.

Some ministries are working on e-governance. It wouldn’t be effective if the population has no access/limited access to the internet. The importance of internet can be summarised in the words of Stuart Lynn, President of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names) in a presentation to the United Nations ICT Taskforce (October 2002), “If you can’t be found on the Internet, you don’t exist.”

Making local adaptation of ICT available and affordable is critical for the progress of Afghanistan. Let’s hope it will be very soon! There is a dedicated organisation just for the ICT sector – National ICT Alliance of Afghanistan (NICTAA) – an umbrella association of the ICT related private sector, academia and civil society. Its work has already made a huge difference and I hope it will continue its contribution to the progress of the Afghan ICT sector.