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January 23, 2001

The Wall Street Journal Europe
Page 26

Technology Journal:
Entrepreneur Has High-Tech Hope for Africa. 

By Jeanette Borzo WSJ.com
 
When a Free South Africa movement demonstration outside the South African embassy in Washington in 1985 got too close to the embassy, protesters were arrested. Among them was 17-year-old Rebecca Enonchong . Today, as founder and chief executive officer of Application Technologies Inc. (www.appstech.com), Ms. Enonchong remains passionate about her native Africa.

"I vowed never to give up that struggle," she says. "We're still revolutionaries, only now we're revolutionaries with money."

Born in Cameroon, Ms. Enonchong moved to the U.S. in 1982. Having worked as an accountant during college and while finishing her master's degree in international political economics, Ms. Enonchong got a job selling accounting software at an Egghead software store. Customers interested in accounting would wait until Ms. Enonchong was on duty to shop, she recalls, and a business idea was born.

Launched in 1999, Application Technologies helps companies set up and run financial and enterprise-resource planning software systems. The Bethesda, Maryland, consulting firm now has nearly 60 employees and offices in the U.S., Europe and Africa.  In October, Ms. Enonchong helped found the nonprofit Africa Technology Forum (www.africatechforum.com) to encourage the growth of high technology in Africa.

While in Paris working on her forthcoming book, "Oracle Financials 101" (Osborne McGraw-Hill), Ms. Enonchong , 33 years old, talked about her aspirations for Africa and how the Internet can help the world's poorest continent.

What is the state of the Internet in Africa today?

The statistics look dismal. Less than 1% of the African population is online. But I think the statistics are misleading. They don't take into account the fervor people have for technology in Africa. In the past four or five years, the spread of mobile telephones and Internet cafes has completely revolutionized the way Africans perceive technology. Mobile-phone penetration is higher than for fixed phones. My father doesn't have a phone in his (law) office, but he has a mobile phone.

Africans no longer see (the Internet) as something that is of the Western world only, as something unobtainable. A young person today at university has an e-mail address. It's not something unusual. They don't have a computer, but they go to cybercafes or a friend's house. The statistics can be very misleading.

How many African businesses use the Net?

Less than 1%. They haven't got to the point where e-commerce is a possibility, primarily because there are very few credit cards. The Internet is used mainly as a way to get information on businesses. Africans -- to get their information or find a supplier -- do their research on the Internet. Our offices in Cameroon are right next door to a cybercafe. Well, we call it a cafe, but there are just computers -- there's no coffee. I spent a lot of time there and it's amazing how many people come in to do their research on products on the Internet.

Which countries in Africa use the Net the most and which countries are the laggards?

At the top is South Africa, Zimbabwe . . . Basically, the southern African countries do the most. The laggards would be countries like Central African Republic, the Congos, Chad, Sudan . . . We have people working with us (at Application Technologies) from those countries. And I really believe individuals can make a difference. I believe we will be able to change this.

What are the primary benefits the Net can bring to Africa?

I think the Internet has the ability to alleviate poverty on the continent. In India, technology has alleviated poverty and brought hundreds of thousands of Indians job opportunities. That's the primary benefit I see for Africa. When we look at the goods and services that Africa exports now -- primarily raw materials -- prices have come down tremendously. We need to look for alternative means to develop our markets.

The world needs technology professionals more than anything. And despite the lack of (technology) infrastructure, I have been amazed at the quality of technology professionals that come from Africa. Once in Cameroon I traveled with my portable printer and converter. I plugged it in and used the wrong converter. It blew up. There was smoke coming out of the printer. I was in our office. Within one day, one of my software engineers had taken the printer chip and rebuilt the chip, put it back in the printer and had the printer working again.

What are the key barriers to greater use of the Net in Africa?

Infrastructure is falling way behind what the people want. There are so many regulations that impair the development of technology on the continent. In some countries, VSAT (very small aperture terminal satellite) technology is illegal -- in the Ivory Coast, for example. And that's the kind of technology we need in Africa.

You can't base the future of technology in Africa on traditional technology; we'll never be able to catch up. We have to make sure there are training programs so that more people can be trained in technology, not just at the university level, but also at the professional-school level. We need to put more computers in the hands of these training institutes -- we already have so many (training institutes) on the continent, training people on things like population control, agriculture, how to start a small business.

We also need to let people in developed nations know that there are technology resources available (in Africa). Offshore programming doesn't just happen in India. It doesn't just happen in Russia. Africa should be considered.

As an American company doing business in Africa, what are some of the hidden challenges there?

African clients want Europeans or Americans to come in to do the work. A person (at a partner company) described one incident where she had one really excellent trainer who happened to be African. They sent him to do the training (with a client in Africa) and the client said, "For this amount of money, you should have sent us a European." Those are the types of things that we face as Africans trying to do business in Africa. It is very difficult. But there are a lot of things we can do if we put our minds to it.