THE WIRING OF A CONTINENT

Critics don't deter Internet visionary

Ghana's chief computer geek uses Digital background, pressure tactics to bridge his country's digital gap

By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff, 7/24/2001

Nelson Nganga of Kenyatta University using a satellite link to pipe in college classes from the United States. (Globe Photo / Khalil Senosi) SUNDAY: New undersea cables will provide Africa with its first world-class connections to the global telephone network and the Internet. Africa goes online A $1.8 billion ring around Africa MONDAY: Thousands of people are flocking to African cybercafes to get online. Entering the queue Internet visionary hopes his plan has the E-Touch TUESDAY: To put its fledgling telecommunications infrastructure to use, Afriva needs all the computer programmers and technicians it can get. Dearth of talent frustrates fledgling Internet efforts Critics don't deter Internet visionary

CCRA, Ghana - Years ago, when the Internet was a lot smaller, a gray-bearded Californian named Jon Postel held so much power over the global network that his friends nicknamed him ''God.''

Nobody ever mistook Nii Quaynor for God. But he does have a gray beard, and when it comes to the Internet in the West African nation of Ghana, Quaynor has nearly as much power as his friend Postel had before his death in 1998.

Some of Ghana's Internet pioneers aren't exactly thrilled about his demigod status, but Quaynor doesn't care. ''They are like little boys,'' he said of his rivals, whom he also likes to describe as ''ignorant'' and ''dumb.''

His competitors make similarly unkind remarks about Quaynor, but never on the record. ''Nii Quaynor is a great man,'' conceded Ashim Morton, founder of www.ghanaclassifieds.com, a local Web portal, adding, ''If he ever changed the way he does business, he could be a hero to Ghanaians.''

Already Quaynor is Ghana's chief geek, maybe the most influential in all of Africa. A Dartmouth graduate and former research scientist at Digital Equipment Corp. in Massachusetts, he returned home to start one of West Africa's first Internet providers, Network Computer Systems of Accra.

Quaynor counsels the United Nations and the World Bank on the Internet in Africa. He's the only African member of the international body that controls Internet domain names, and he's on the board of the International Telecommunications Union, which sets global policy and standards for communication networks. Quaynor is also in charge of .gh, Ghana's national Internet domain, and he advises the Ghanaian government on Internet matters, as well as Togo, Gambia, Nigeria, Liberia, Swaziland, and Ethiopia.

All quite impressive to some Ghanaians, perhaps, but not to Quaynor, who used to help design clusters of interconnected VAX minicomputers in a Marlboro, Mass., laboratory. ''I'm a pure research scientist,'' Quaynor said. Compared to his 14 years at Digital, ''what I'm doing here is nothing.''

His office is still a shrine to DEC. There's a Digital pocket calculator on Quaynor's desk, Digital clocks, and even old advertising posters on the walls. ''Certainly it was the best company ever,'' he said.

But in the end, Digital couldn't survive as an independent company, and was absorbed by Compaq Computer Corp. Long before that, the firm had begun to lose its grip on Quaynor. He launched NCS as a part-time venture in 1988, to design internal computer networks for Ghanaian businesses and government agencies.

By 1992, Quaynor was ready to move back home, run NCS full time, and serve as a UN technology adviser. By 1996, he foresaw the need to connect Ghanaians to the Internet, so he began the costly and complex process of establishing NCS as Ghana's first pipeline to the World Wide Web.

By the end of the year, Ghana is expected to have direct Internet access via Telkom South Africa's SAT-3 undersea cable now being dropped along the continent's west coast. But for now, the Internet must be piped in via satellite at staggering expense. Internet bandwidth that would cost less than $1,000 in the United States must be beamed to Quaynor through a satellite link to Canada, at about $40,000 a month.

Quaynor has to buy more overseas bandwidth than he'd like, because little interesting Internet data is stored on Ghanaian computers. Most NCS customers want to search for information at California-based Yahoo, or send an e-mail message using Microsoft Corp.'s Hotmail service, based in Washington state. These two sites account for half of all NCS traffic.

Meanwhile, many Ghanaian firms host their Web sites in the United States or Europe, where Internet connections are faster. ''That's freeloading,'' grumbled Quaynor. ''They're not training people, so the work is being sent to the US. They're not helping build infrastructure.''

So Quaynor pressures his customers to change their ways, using tactics that would outrage American Internet users. NCS monitors the traffic of its major accounts. If Quaynor feels that too much is going to non-Ghanaian sites, he'll jack up the customer's bill, or even adjust the network to reduce that user's allotment of bandwidth.

If that sounds intrusive, consider this: Quaynor also thinks Internet users in the United States, Europe, and Asia should cover part of the cost of wiring remote regions of the world, such as Ghana. He points to the international telephone market. When an American calls Ghana, he has to pay a fee to the Ghanaian phone company. But if that same American sends e-mail to one of Quaynor's customers, NCS doesn't get a dime, even though the company is paying over $1,000 a day for its Internet connection.

It's the digital divide at its worst, said Quaynor. ''The de facto policy is, screw you,'' he complained. ''It's your problem to come into the Internet. So you have to pay the whole cost to come.'' Quaynor's solution: a special fee to be imposed on Internet users in affluent lands to be spent on faster, cheaper network links in Third World countries.

The Internet Society, a worldwide oversight body, takes the idea seriously. ''I think there is some moral obligation to assist developing nations to get on the Internet and make better use of it,'' said David Maher, the group's vice president for public policy.

Quaynor, not surprisingly, is president of the Internet Society's Ghanaian chapter. That won't give him enough clout to raise prices for Web users in rich countries, but it will earn him a respectful hearing, befitting his status here as an Internet demigod.

This story ran on page A10 of the Boston Globe on 7/24/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.