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Zimbabwe: High-Tech Help
Boyd Clark, PBS.org
September 24, 2007

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2007/09/zimbabwe.html

The clearest sign that Zimbabwe's economy is drifting ever closer to total collapse is its shockingly high inflation rate: Officially, it's 6,500 percent, down from an all-time high of 7,500 percent in July. That's still by far the highest rate in the world.

"A loaf of bread could cost 7,000 Zimbabwean dollars one month, then 30,000 the next," says Brenda Burrell, a co-founder of kubatana.net, an online clearinghouse for civil society groups in Zimbabwe. "You can see how much cash you have to have just to survive."

The country -- once a regional economic powerhouse -- recently introduced a 200,000 dollar note so its citizens wouldn't need to carry wheelbarrows full of cash around with them.

I also recently read this disturbing news item: "Zimbabwean state media reported today that two people, one of them a 15-year-old school boy, were crushed to death in a stampede of shoppers trying to buy sugar." Sugar is just one of the basic goods that have all but disappeared from Zimbabwean shelves.

Zimbabwe's economic woes started back in 2000, when President Mugabe moved to seize thousands of white-owned commercial farms. That, experts say, spelled doom for the nation's once-strong agriculture-based economy because many of the farms were turned over to Mugabe's political cronies, who proved unwilling or unable to run the farms productively.

But Mugabe prefers to blame Western sanctions for the current crisis. In June, he moved to stem the rampant inflation by ordering retailers to slash prices by half. Storeowners balked, saying that if they sold goods at those prices, they would lose their shirts. Shelves started to empty, and retailers did not restock. Hoarding and panic buying soon followed, and Mugabe deployed the Zimbabwean armed forces to ensure price cuts.

Faced with this kind of financial situation, it's little wonder that many Zimbabweans have left the country. The Zimbabwean diaspora numbers at least 3 million. And while the majority of those Zimbabweans are in neighboring countries in southern Africa, many have ended up in Great Britain and North America. No matter where they sought refuge, most left family and friends in Zimbabwe, and they want to help them.

Of course, these Zimbabwean expats send remittances back home in the form of hard currency, such as US dollars or British pounds. The problem? Zimbabweans aren't legally allowed to use that money.

That's where technology comes in. A number of Web sites have recently sprung up that allow Zimbabweans living outside the country to buy goods and services online, with hard currency, and then have those goods and services delivered to recipients in Zimbabwe.

Among the most popular of these Web sites is Mukuru, which means "respected" or "awesome" in many southern African dialects. Rob, who wants to use only his first name, is a founder. He came to Britain from Zimbabwe in 2002 and started working in Cambridge at a high-tech firm that deals with content for mobile phones.

In his spare time, Rob would get together with expat Zimbabweans and talk about what the high-tech community could do for friends and family back home. That's when they hit upon an idea.

"We thought we could set up a system where a first-world buyer, say in London or the States, could use a text message to send value to their relatives in Zimbabwe," Rob tells me.

Mukuru works a little like Amazon.com or most other ecommerce Web sites -- you go there and choose from a variety of goods. The most popular, Rob says, is fuel. "A shopper throws 60 liter of fuel into their online shopping cart, and when they check out, they designate a recipient in Africa with just their name and their mobile phone number."

Mukuru then fires off a text message to that recipient and to the company's office in Zimbabwe. The messages contain a unique 10-digit code. The recipient in Zimbabwe goes to the Mukuru office with mobile phone in hand and allows the agent to verify the code and the identity of the recipient. From there, the agent issues a paper voucher for the fuel. Vouchers can be redeemed at a number of gas stations across the country.

But fuel's not the only product that Zimbabweans can buy online for folks back home. Zimbuyer.com allows them to purchase things like toilet paper, soap and cooking oil. "Our most popular products right now are electric generators," says Zimbuyer founder Lazarus, who also only wants to use his first name. "Because of late there have been 20-hour power cuts in Zimbabwe."

Zimbuyer gets around the current in-country shortages by working with providers outside the country. Most orders through Zimbuyer are filled in South Africa, and then brought into Zimbabwe for delivery.

There are, of course, drawbacks to using the Internet and mobile phones to help alleviate the suffering in Zimbabwe. For Mukuru and Zimbuyer, the problems mostly center on credit card fraud. Both companies say that they sometimes receive orders from people using stolen credit cards.

Inside Zimbabwe, there are issues of access. "We do have congested mobile phone networks here," says Kubatana.net's Burrell. "And with the power problems, it's not always easy to access computers or charge your mobile phone." She also notes that while there is good cell phone penetration in Zimbabwe, the poorest of the poor probably wouldn't be able to take advantage of Mukuru or Zimbuyer.

And it's still not clear how Mugabe's government feels about these Web sites. Recently, he signed into law a measure called "The Interception of Communications Act," which gives the Zimbabwean government the power to essentially monitor any form of electronic communication.

But Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and a long-time Africa watcher, says that Mugabe and his government can't afford to take the country offline. "They have to keep the Internet open and they have to keep mobile phones open. Those technologies allow remittances to take place, and the remittances are what are allowing the economy to survive."

Burrell, though, worries that remittances are a double-edged sword -- they may, in part, be responsible for making Zimbabweans complacent when it comes to changing their leadership and their country. "If they can rely on a remittance from a relative abroad," she asks, "to what extent are people motivated to change the status quo in Zimbabwe?"

* Clark Boyd is a technology reporter for PRI's The World. In our October 2006 broadcast story, "A Little Goes a Long Way," Boyd reported on the success of mircroloan programs in Uganda.

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