Given the policy set to promote home grown solutions to our local problems, it is important to highlight their importance in different aspects. Some solutions already exist at global level but we prefer to craft them in local context to maximize the profitability.
Keeping our data home, should be part of those solutions which will not only stimulate our national economy but it will be part of national pride, named Kwigira (Self-Reliance)! Everyone should admire the Rwanda government for the heavy investment made in technology for the past 10 years, from policy designing to infrastructure set up to easy internet environment growth. However there’s a long way to go, when looking to investment made, you may have this feeling that, there’s an under-utilizing of the investment made to meet high goals set to make Rwanda a country with knowledge economy driven ,and more precisely becoming a technology hub for Africa.
As we have an increase of online presence of different services, either public or private supported ;it is the right time to know how important it is to host all data home, not only we will be effectively using the heavy investment made, moreover there are many profits out of keeping our data home. We probably don’t notice how extremely important to have data hosted in our houses or we simply don’t care! In this article, i shared the reasons why we should host locally and the impacts this will have to the internet ecosystem.
You will meet people complaining about the cost of internet, only at university people don’t feel the pain of consuming the data of 1$ in less than 1 hour while living standard for many Rwandans still is below 1$/day. The main reason behind this cost, is due to the content which has to travel through international links to reach us, then Internet Service Providers are there to do business not charity, don’t expect the difference.
Content providers prefer to host outside because of lower cost, compare to local cost which may be even almost 10 times expensive. This is a good financial decision which involves saving some good money for those who host Data, however this affect the cost of Internet. Because data are hosted oversea, it imply international transit cost for ISPs to deliver the content to local users, therefore internet cost go high and the end user will suffer for real.
As content has to travel through international links, it means that at other side you (Content consumer) will have to find your own way to keep you busy, otherwise you will have to be patient enough and please don’t complain! The cumulative effect can make the overall Internet experience slow and frustrating, with a corresponding negative impact on usage.
The report produced by Internet society in January 2015, indicated the significant latencies in accessing content hosted overseas from Rwanda: frequently 350ms latency for accessing Rwandan website sites hosted in the USA or Europe, and peak latencies of 8001000ms during congested evening hours. This compares to latency of around 10ms for sites hosted in Rwanda. Such latencies in turn decrease the throughput of downloading a webpage. The load delay experienced by users in Rwanda can frequently be 5 seconds or more, and this can increase for webpages composed of multiple elements.
You’ll get surprised by creative people and Online business will be profitable than ever!
Because Internet costs a lot and access content take longer, the quality of content we have is critical and the local content consummation still lower! How someone will create a cartoon or game when no one is ready to enjoy that, of course I can’t be in trouble to open a new website and again take risk to try an engaging content such as game! The same way, we will not have chance to know those talented people who are capable to create interesting game or animated video like Ugandan www.katoto.ug which tell stories of Ugandans! The less content produced, the poor quality available, it is only in competition people note that only high quality sell!
“Pray to have data hosted locally, so that you can prove us what you are capable of, from production to consummation”
The other time, I was discussing with friends about how many websites which should be uploaded per day at national level and we realized that it is very hard to prove that more than ten websites get live at daily basis, imagine that for a country which may record more than 100 businesses in Rwanda Development Board and aims at being a knowledge based economy. Forget that number, and look at job we create for foreigners every time we send our data abroad. The job goes to people who will maintain our content, giving us support, protecting our data…. Don’t forget that the more we send that abroad, the more we transfer our economy to someone else to take of it!
You can mention other advantages of keeping our data in the house, and convert their important in different values…Whatever the benefits you can list, it will be only important to start working on bringing back our data home and facilitate all players involved in internet ecosystem to keep our data home.
Author: SHIKAMA Dioscore
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