AfricaFeed

Kenya’s Tech Innovations, Japan’s Digital Divide

If you follow my blog, you know that I like to report on the many technological innovations coming out of East Africa, especially Kenya. There is no shortage of subjects to report on, from the nationwide spread of mobile money to portable solar solutions, but also the inventiveness of individual “hacks”, such as SMS-powered remote locking systems and home-made mobile phone sonar fishing devices.

While Kenya’s young tech entrepreneurs show no shortage of ingeniousness, the lack of technological advancement in Japan, of all places, is becoming a major cause of concern for policy makers and analysts.

“Police stations without computers, 30-year-old “on hold” tapes grinding out Greensleeves, ATMs that close when the bank does, suspect car engineering, and kerosene heaters but no central heating.”

In a recent piece for the BBC entitled Revealing Japan’s Low-tech Belly, Michael Fitzpatrick paints an alarming picture of a nation whose hi tech prowess was once the envy of Germany and the US.

“Japanese banks, post offices, government offices, all are staffed with three to five times the employees because they must do every process once on paper and then again on computer.”

An aging technophobic population, a government bureaucracy which refuses to go digital, local phone manufacturers rapidly losing market share to Apple, “tech standards and business practices incompatible with anything beyond its borders”. This is the digital divide crippling Japan that we rarely hear about.