Celebrating African Heroes - CaptainThomas Sankara

Captain Thomas Isidore Noel Sankara ( December 21, 1949 - October 15 , 1987) was the 5th president of Burkina Faso. He changed the countries name from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso which mean "country of the upright men". Thomas Sankara had a tremendous charisma. For the 4 years of his presidency, he established his revolution by promoting equal opportunities for women , health care for the poor , new agricultural techniques, fighting corruption. His most striking quality was his integrity. He believed head of office should serve the people and not the other way around. He was killed in a coup d'etat by a former president. His memory will always live in the heart of african youth. He showed us that if we really want to take Africa out of poverty , we , Africans , have to put our mind to it. With more revolution like the one Captain Sankara did , Africa will be in the path to development.

BUILDING A WIRELESS NETWORK in a developing country part 2

Part II : Management

The main tasks required when managing a network are monitoring and troubleshooting. In monitoring the the network , analysis tools should be use to properly determine traffic flow , utilization , an many other performance indicators. Accurate and effective monitoring a network can lead to many benefits: detection of network viruses and intruders , simplification of network problem troubleshooting, and optimization of network performance.
Here are a few statistics management should track when monitoring a network : Wireless ( Received signal , noise , radio data rate ) , Switch (bandwidth usage, packet loss , error rate), Internet (internet usage , DNS request, ping times), System health ( Memory usage , system load).
To achieve all these means , many tools are available for network administrators to use. Network tools display information such ad signal strength. Spot check tools run for a short period of time and comprise program such as ping and protocol analyzers. Trending tools perform monitoring over a long period of time. Throughput testing tools provide actual bandwidth between two points in the network. Intrusion Detection tools search for undesirable traffic and take necessary action. Benchmarking tool estimate maximum performance of the network.
The network can face many problems ranging from misconfiguration to components failure. A few common problems and usual fixed are discussed here. Locally Hosted Websites that allow outside users to access it are prone to being "spidered" by search engines. A common fix is to have a mirror image of the site hosted on a public server.
Open proxies: A proxy server should only be access by user in its internal network user, not from the rest of the internet. Usually people will use open proxies to avoid paying for international bandwidth charges.
Open relay Hosts: Spammers use misconfigured mail server as relay hosts to send bulk email and spams. Mail servers should only be relay hosts for specifies local machines.

With all these tools , monitoring the LAN , the WAN and troubleshooting common network problems provide the network administrator proper means to manage efficiently the network.

Africa needs Fair Trade not Aid

I truly believe that Africa's path out of poverty should be focused on new technologies and appropriate business models. Nevertheless , I would like to take a minute to talk about a non-technology related organization that would help Africa in the same way.
Agriculture employs 50% of the population in developing countries and constitutes more than 33% of their GDP. Yet, Africans are not able to make a decent living through crops culture. A social movement called Fair Trade aims to remediate this situation. The Fair Trade movement is backed by the international Fair Trade Association. Its goal is to promote fair price for developing country's agricultural products sold to developed country. African farmers rarely get a fair price for their crops for many reasons. They lack as access to market information, to markets and credit thus they are unable to adapt production techniques in responses to market information. The result is obvious. African crops are always undervalued and underpriced in the global market. Fair Trade establish a minimum price that correctly reflect the cost of production . They provide farmers with perfect market information to bargain for the true value of their crops.
With the money gain from Fair Trade a lot of farmers are able to develop their communities create schools , small hospitals and bring clean water and electricity to their household. Let's help this initiative by buying products originating from Fair Trade farmers.
Fair Trade certified products sales surpassed 2.3 billions and more than 6 millions disadvantaged farmers in developing countries were able to fund community development projects from Fair Trade certified products sales.

BUILDING A WIRELESS NETWORK in Developing Countries ( Part 1 )

Building a wired network can be quite challenging in developing countries. The biggest issue is that it requires a tremendous amount of investment those countries can't easily obtain. To face this problem , wireless network can be build to provide internet connectivity to the masses. It's cheaper to build , easier and faster to install , and easier to maintain. This is the first of an eight parts article that will challenge the main obstacles faced by people trying to implement a wireless network in those countries :power, management, installation , money , distance, partners and customers , security, information and licensing .


PART I: POWER


First we can use wind power. It is best designed for systems build on hills or mountains. To be effective , wind generator should be 6m higher than any other objects within a distance of 100m , and the average wind speed over the year should be at lest 3 to 4 meter per second. On of the advantage is that the wind generator can charge the batteries even at night as long as there is sufficient wind. Nevertheless, for most locations , the cost of a good wind generators is not justified by the meager amount of wind power it will add to the system.
Secondly , we can use solar power. Solar power uses the ability of certain material to convert solar energy into electrical energy. A few organizations have produced maps that include average values of radiation for different regions. For most of those regions, especially sub-Saharan, the minimum daily radiation is 4,000 watts per meter squared. The amount of power required by wireless equipment depend not only on the architecture but also on the network interfaces and traffic. Generally, a low consumption card will use between 3 to 4W. A high power card consumes around 6W and a repeating station with two radios requires 8-10W. The components required to set up a solar power system are : solar panels, regulator, and batteries. The regulator's role is to avoid overcharging and overdischarging the battery. The cost of implementing this system without taking into account installation cost is about $2,300.
Power Over Ethernet (POE) can be used to provide power to devices. In this case , power is provided to wireless equipment using unused pairs of a standard Ethernet cable. A maximum of 13W can be provided over the cable without interfering with date transmission on the wire.

Solar energy used to power African Villages

An NGO is helping villages to get affordable electricity using solar energy. The sun , a nonperishable source of energy ( at least for billions years to come) on top of being free it's also available for all. Currently, the set up price for a home solar system is between $500-1000 which is way beyond the revenue of an average African. The NGO use fund from various international organizations. The solar energy could definitely be a breakthrough in Africa especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Solar energy can widely spread electricity to remote and rural areas. This would greatly help in the development of technologies , use of computers , access to internet. So we need the government, and company to focus more on solar power to bring the prices down and make it affordable for the average Africa.

More on this story.
Solar energy powers up villages in Cameroon

Unrest in Cameroon - The untold story

Last week in the city of Douala, Cameroon , a peaceful March initiated by the Taxi Drivers Union turned into nationwide unrest in at least 10 cities. The Union demanded a substantial decrease in gas prices that were not affordable anymore by taxi drivers.( At the time , gas price was $1.41 per liter which correspond to $5.31 per gallon. Just for comparison the average gas price in the US in less than $4 per gallon) A couple of days later, the march was overtaken by a variety of people who manifested for their own motives and their own ambition. First, you have those manifesting against the amendment to the constitution the actual president , Paul Biya in office for 25 years now ,is trying to make to stay head of state for another term. Then, you have those marching against the hiking prices of perishable foods ( meat , pasta , rice). Food prices doubled in the past decade in the Central African country as salary were cut in half and unemployment tripled. Finally, and I regret to say it , they were looters. Young people , mostly unemployed took advantage of the chaos to burn cars and buses , loot grocery stores, and gas stations. The police , the army and a few special armed forces were unleashed to bring the peace. The media talks about 100 deaths but the toll is way higher than that, from 200-300 actually.
What the Cameroonian we actually trying to say is that: WE ARE TIRED. We are tired of corruption.We are tired of neo-colonialism. We are tired of foreigners taking our resources. We are tired of not profiting from our resources. We are tired that a small numbers of corrupted bureaucrats brings poverty to our families. We want a new Africa. We want to be able to use our resources , to produce our own oil, build our own industries, to use what we produce and produce what we need.

Celebrating African Heroes-Part 1 ; Patrice Emery Lumumba

Let's celebrate our heroes . The people that gave their lives for freedom , equality , justice and independence. We start with , the first Prime minister of Congo (Kinshasa) , the father of their independence from Belgian imperialism: Patrice Emery Lumumba (2 july 1925 - 17 january 1961).