Give Man a Fish and You’ll Feed
Him for a Day, Teach Him How
to Fish and…He Will Overfish
Jussi impiö

Nokia Research Center Africa | [e-mail]
Title from G. Pauli’s
“Biomimetism and
Other Zero Emissions
Ideas,” Lift France 09.
http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=35SnYcM
XTzY/
[ 1] Wikipedia notes the
water hyacinth was intro-
duced to Lake Victoria
through the Kagera River
from Rwanda. I stick to
version I heard from the
Lake Victoria fishermen.

[ 2] I knowingly use “Africa” here when referring to 53 countries, more than 2000 languages and cultures in sub-Saharan Africa.

May + June 2010

[ 3] “Industrial world”
is an unsatisfactory
definition to describe
the wealthy part of
the world—including
Europe, the U. S., Japan,
and other parts of Asia
where, despite the pov-
erty, the-well-to-do mid-
dle class is significant
in size. Other definitions
used are the West, the
North, G20, etc.

I had arrived to Kisumu, Kenya, some hours earlier,
and I was waiting for dinner in a two-table outdoor
food joint by Lake Victoria, ice-cold Tusker (local
beer) in hand. I have always liked the rhythm of
this lakeside town. There were stars in the sky, and
a fresh breeze was humming from the majestic
lake. After Nairobi, the breeze smelled especially
good. In a state of serenity, I admired the perfume
in the wind, when I suddenly realized the simplest
thing. It turned the perfume into a stench and
made me open a new, slightly darker perspec-
tive on my work. Water hyacinth: The enchanting
smell came from the beautiful flower called water
hyacinth. This free-floating perennial was brought
to Africa from Brazil by a British gardener in 1986
because of its beauty and scent and planted to
decorate the ponds in private gardens in Nairobi
[ 1]. Now it covers large parts of Lake Victoria and
many of the freshwater reserves in Africa com-
pletely [ 2]. Little did the gardener know that the
plant has sticky seeds that stick to the feet of water
birds and, without its natural enemies, water hya-
cinth spreads like a disease with pretty similar
consequences. In some seconds my professional
life flashed in front of my eyes. While studying
what good ICT and mobile technology could bring
to developing countries and developing new com-
munication tools for the low-income communities,
could it be we might be actually introducing digital
water hyacinths? Seemingly harmless, even use-
ful beauties. Could it be that technology developed
in the industrial world, to assist and allure, could
have different consequences and side effects when
introduced to an environment whose “ecology” is
fundamentally different [ 3]? This article speculates
on these thoughts: the potential of unintended side
effects of communication technology in Africa and
how to avoid the darkest scenarios.
Eventually my meal arrived. Nile perch. Another
species that Westerners with good intentions intro-
duced to Lake Victoria. Now it has eaten more than
200 species to extinction. Most of these existed
only in Lake Victoria. I started to lose my appetite;
I needed to talk to somebody. I called a biologist
friend to ask him how biologists study the intro-
duction of new species to a new environment. He
thought about it for a while and called back with an
answer. He said it is probably not conclusive, but it
will do as an example: the five main questions that
biologists study before starting a pilot plantation.
Introducing new species to the new habitat:
1. Why? What is the benefit of the introduction?
2. What are the potential effects to the environ-
ment?
• Which endemic/localized species are in that
same ecological niche?
• Will they be endangered? How?
• Attracting and supporting harmful species?
• Resources: water, nutrition
3. Can the benefits and harmful effects be mea-
sured and weighted?
4. Can the harmful effects be controlled?
5. How to make it survive?
Traditionally, the last question in the list is the
only question ICT R&D ever asks. How to make
the service, application, or device accepted, used
and paid for. I started to wonder if the other ques-
tions were also relevant for ICT4D (Information and
Communication Technology for Development) and
M4D (Mobiles for Development). We are working to
introduce technologies developed in the industrial-
ized world to remote, low-income African locations,
where interaction with the surrounding world has
been very limited. Are there potential uninten-
tional consequences with rapidly spreading tech-
nology? How suitable are the Western models of