[UgaBYTES] Computer viruses slow African expansion

[Mwathi Francis]

Alan Mercer was at his desk in the regional capacity building bureau in
Assosa, western Ethiopia <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/ethiopia>, when a
man burst into his office, distraught. Right at the end of a four-year
master's degree programme, he had lost the only copy of his thesis to a
computer virus. Mercer, an IT trainer with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO),
wasn't surprised. "Show me an Ethiopian computer without a virus and I'd ask
which foreigner it belongs to," he says.

While western countries have partially learned to neutralise the threat of
computer viruses, Africa has become a hive of trojans, worms and exploiters
of all stripes. As PC use on the continent has spread in the past decade (in
Ethiopia it has gone from 0.01% of the Ethiopian population to 0.45% through
1999-2008), viruses have hitched a ride, wreaking havoc on development
efforts, government programmes and fledgling businesses.

Read On<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/12/ethiopia-computer-virus>


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