Bypasses, bananas and Big Tech

Plus, I am just really tired of having to buy Ecuadorian bananas when I could be buying ones from Angola, Tanzania or Nigeria

I must admit that, while I love writing this column, there are some months where I struggle to decide what to write about. This month I considered writing about the following:

1. How the temporary bypass that was constructed on the B1 highway between Windhoek and Rehoboth proved once again how Namibians love to complain. Rather than marvel at the fact that a (temporary) solution had been created to prevent vehicles from having to drive hundreds of extra kilometres, the front pages of the newspapers were carrying stories about how people were upset that only a single lane had been constructed, and that it was not a proper tar road! (Based on my column last month about how I hope the new government starts to think ahead, I was very happy to hear that the Roads Authority stated that the planned permanent bridge will be built in such a way as to accommodate the fact that the road will soon be converted to a freeway; rather than just building a two-lane bridge and then having to build another one later on.)

2. How our new president and some of her ministerial appointments have given me a sense of optimism and hope for the future. Yes, it could be a case of “the new broom”, and yes, there may be some controversy surrounding some of the appointments, but watching the way in which some of the new ministers, deputy ministers and cabinet members have “hit the ground running” has me looking forward to what can, hopefully, be achieved in the next five years.

3. How April Fool’s Day reminded me once again of, firstly, just how much false information is circulated daily without ever being questioned and, secondly, how easy it is for so-called “bad actors” to manipulate people into doing exactly that. What many people do not seem to realise is that there is an intentionality about this. Disand misinformation is not just created by accident; it is created for a reason and is being weaponised and funded, while the fact-checking organisations that are trying to fight it are being deplatformed and have recently lost large portions of their funding through severe cuts in US aid spending.

4. How US president Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs might at least mean we finally get to see more African products on the shelves of our supermarkets. I am no economist and have no idea if the tariffs are a good or bad thing for Americans, but based on the reaction from the rest of the world they definitely seem to be a bad thing for everyone other than Americans. What is also evident is that, while the formulas used to calculate them seem suspect at best, they do seem to have spurred a sense of unification among many countries in much the same way as a drill sergeant does to his/her troops – by providing a common enemy. The European Union appears to have agreed to increase trade amongst themselves, and hopefully the African continent can do the same through the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement. Yes, there are obstacles, like infrastructure that needs improving and regional conflicts threatening to spread, but with a potential market of around 1.3 billion people, the World Bank projects that, if we can get it right, it could “lift 30 million Africans out of extreme poverty, boost the incomes of nearly 70 million people and generate $450 billion in income by 2035”. Plus, I am just really tired of having to buy Ecuadorian bananas when I could be buying ones from Angola, Tanzania or Nigeria.

5. How, in much the same way as we sleep-walked our way into freely giving all our data and so much more to “Big Tech”, we are busy doing the same thing with AI. Do not get me wrong, there is definitely a place for AI and a way that it can be used for good, for example by training it to spot different kinds of cancer, or to run extremely advanced simulations that would take far too long to do manually. However, the increasing use of it to “create” art, literature, etc. rather than hiring a person to do so – especially when its output is based on stealing the intellectual property of the same creatives it is busy replacing – is definitely not the way it should be used.

Maybe in the months to come I will be able to make a choice and write in more detail about one of these topics, though it is way more likely that I will find myself once again wondering what to write about.

Either way, until next time, enjoy your journey.

David Bishop