The Internet was definitely delivering value daily by 1990
Yes, the Internet was delivering daily value in 1990, but only to a very, very small group of users. I was in grad school then, but the Internet was not a factor in my environment. Networking was carrying floppies from here to there.
Same thing with cryptocurrencies. It's delivering value to a small group of users, though that group is much more than the small group served by the Internet in 1990. Mining and trading in cryptocurrencies have millions for some, so it's serving them well.
Mining and trading do not create value. Like speculation in other commodities, it's basically gambling. Except that the markets for, say, oil futures let people buy insurance to mitigate risks in the underlying commodity that they don't want to take. But since Bitcoin doesn't have a similar underlying value yet, the speculation can't be justified as possibly creating value.
The one group I have to admit is getting value from Bitcoin is criminals. E.g., it's the technology of choice for ransomware. But that just doesn't strike me as a use case that will help Bitcoin cross the chasm.
Tribalism and the "killing each other" thing is not unique to Africa. On the latter, Europeans have Africa beat. If you're an America, I'll suggest you make a study of your ancestors history.
War seems to have stopped in (Western) Europe though. That is until the Russians take advantage of the current power vacuum to start one, or a spark ignites between ethnic groups that haven't been around in large enough numbers until very recently.
On the other hand, Africa is at war today. See: article being discussed and [0].
I'm glad you qualified that, because splitting Yugoslavia was not peaceful. And Kosovo and Serbia is still a hot spot.
But yes, wars stopped because after WW II, they decided the madness had to stop. That led to the formation of the EU. Countries that belong to the same economic group seldom go to war. ECOWAS serves the same purpose in West Africa.
Assuming you're an American, you should be blaming your govt. rather than Russia for the what's happening around that region. I know you won't believe it, but that doesn't change the facts.
"War seems to have stopped in (Western) Europe though"
There might be differen reasons than giving up on tribes.
Afaik the biggest wars we had were totally not tribe related, but rather "Nation" and than "Race".
And the original tribes in central europe are loong gone, replaced by feudalism and christianity over 1000 years ago.
My point is that Africa is at the lower end of that scale (tribes) where the West is at the upper end (Unions). Or was, until Trump and Brexit.
My point is that progress in Africa is hampered by unnecessary divisions between people. It's obviously not the only problem, but it's not helping, either.
It's something that takes tons and tons of practice. The more positions and tactics and openings you burn into your long term memory the less you need to keep in short term memory.
The best players in the world have put so many thousands of hours into the game that they can beat casual players trivially without thinking more than one move ahead. They owe this ability to having vast knowledge of fundamentals and theoretical lines in all the most common positions. This is how they are able to win simultaneous exhibitions against a large number of casual players.
it's not always about thinking many moves ahead with chess - often it's a case of looking for interesting patterns on the board that you can turn into an advantageous situation. Did the other player king-side castle? Look for ways to pick away at their pawns. King and queen/rook within 2 knight moves of each other? Could be an opportunity for a fork. You pick up more of these patterns over time, and you can start to scan for chains of these types of attack/defense.
My Nigerian friends will read his statement and say, "He's right."
From what they tell me, some parts of Nigeria have never had electricity, especially in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Hard to believe, but that's the way it is.
A few years ago I recall that IBM announced a plan to set up something in Kenya.
But don't blame the industry for not having a major datacenter anywhere on that continent. You need a stable power supply for that to make sense, which very few countries there have. Even Ghana that used to brag about that is now a basket case, last I checked.
> You also need a stable and at least substantially non-corrupt political situation...
That rules out a lot of countries in the world including Russia, USA, and Brazil :/
All facetiousness aside, I am really glad to learn of this development. It goes to show the dynamic potential locked up and waiting to be exploited in Africa.
The infrastructure problems are not insurmountable and the high returns accruable to investors will more than compensate any willing entrepreneur.
Africa is not an investment destination for the future. It is an investment destination for today.
(On a related note, a company I am inolved with is starting a training school for the next generation of elite developers from Nigeria and we are searching for international technical and financial partners. I'd love to hear from any interested HN readers.
That happened when Hancom issued a motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that the company didn’t sign anything, so the license wasn’t a real contract.
