The world has been taken over by the sticky web, no not the world wide web that has been around for a while now. The web of social media/social networks.
In recent months articles from all around the tech world and even the mainstream news channels all praised the role that Facebook, Twitter and the like have played in the movements that we have seen in the Arab nations of northern Africa.
On Saturday 9 July 2010 we saw the introduction of a new state the 54th member of the African continent. South Sudan clearly faces many challenges amongst them are the splitting of revenue from the southern oilfields, poor health care and education.
So I ask the question what role can social media play in meeting the challenges that face a new born nation. Think back to South Africa 17 years ago. Had there been such well established social media platforms how would the transition been better informed or possibly hampered (considering that any one is free to publish their opinion even those that are sceptics or resistant to the change).
No doubt, these platforms are only as strong as the infrastructure that they are built upon. On a continent like Africa where broadband costs are said to be amongst the highest in the world, and where many rely on cellphones to access the internet we can clearly see that if South Sudan is to benefit from social media it will need mobile operators that can not only offer the promise of stable and affordable voice services but the same must be said of the data service.
As the democracy is established the boarders are likely to open up to volunteer and humanitarian aid groups that might have previously been disallowed or even the philanthropist that might have feared to work in a more turbulent pre-democracy Sudan.
All these groups I believe would benefit from a structured system to which they can affiliate and have access to real time information about where the greatest needs are at any point in time. The benefit of social media is that it also removes elements of bias or propaganda that might be found in your traditional news sources.
Of-course all this requires time and hard capital. Mobile operators will want to be sure that if they invest their money towards building and supporting this infrastructure they will get returns as they need to account to their shareholders. Facebook and Twitter are wonderful resources but I believe that a more dedicated platform is needed. Even with Opensource software it would require time to set up dedicated social networks, these networks can not promise to give the same relative yields as mainstream networks. There is a need for the “digital philanthropist”.
