Flashing around the media
I’ve been quite amazed by the proliferation of Flash drives in Mozambique since 2006. When we left Mozambique at the end of 2005 it was rare to see anyone with a Flash drive. When we returned a year later they had practically become standard apparel for the urban Mozambican professional.
Here they are sometimes called “barata,” the Portuguese word for cockroach. But I most commonly hear them referred to as “um Flash.” All the students at our school are required to use a Flash drive to store their files. Nothing is supposed to be saved on a school computer. In practice, students borrow a friend’s barata if they can’t afford one of their own. Besides their shape and proliferation, another similarity these have with cockroaches is their filthiness. I plugged a friend’s Flash into my computer and the virus software started beeping like a fire alarm. There were more than forty viruses and spyware on the single Flash drive.
Informal social networks ensure that data is freely shared in Africa. If I have a Flash drive full of mp3s or software or even viruses, I will share it with anyone who asks. This is a real opportunity for those who wish to share media for development. You could mass produce Flash drives with pre-installed software like localized versions of AbiWord and actually release it commercially. As the technology saturated the market a particular product would be able to piggy-back on it and find people who are naturally looking to access digital data.
