Among
the washer women, carpenters, busy waiters and squabbling children
sweltering under the midday sun on this dusty Dakar street an internet
revolution is taking place in the world's first tablet cafe. Next to the
workshops, meat stores and barbershops on what could be any bustling
street in sub-Saharan Africa, a grey concrete building stands out with a
garish sign advertising the Tablette Cafe.
"This
is the first tablet cafe in the world, a cafe that works with tablets,"
said Tidiane Deme, the head of Google in French-speaking Africa. The
concept, introduced by the internet search giant, is a simple twist on
the traditional cyber cafes which have been springing up across Africa
as the internet boom takes hold, ditching PCs for tablet computers.
When
Medoune Seck, 33, opened his Equinoxe cyber cafe six years ago, he
quickly discovered that frequent power cuts and exorbitant electricity
bills were a major headache for him and his customers. Then along comes
Google which offered funding last year to turn one cyber cafe in Africa
into a pilot tablet cafe. Seck applied and his cuber cafe was picked as
their guinea pig.
While tablets have taken
advanced industrialised countries by storm and pushed cyber cafes
further to the margins, in the developing world they could lead to their
renaissance. Tablet cafes could take hold in Africa because most people
cannot afford to buy the devices, and tablets use batteries and mobile
data connections which make them immune to power cuts.
The
Equinoxe now sports 15 tablets and has installed cabins for private
video chats. Three PCs stand in a corner, but they do not generate much
interest among clients, who recline on the cafe's bright orange and blue
sofas, jabbing at their touch screens. Seck says his tablets cost more
than PCs but they save on power bills as they consume 25 times less
electricity.
He believes they can help revive
cyber cafes which, according to Google, are in something of a slump
precisely because of the high cost of electricity and frequent power
failures cutting into business.
"Tablet
computers will revolutionize Africa, and Senegal," said Seck. The
simplicity of using the touchscreen devices could help bring computing
to scores of new people. The Tablette Cafe charges the same price as its
predecessor did for PCs: 300 CFA francs (80 US cents) per hour.
"Our
hope is that cyber cafes attract new customers interested in a more
simple and interactive way of going online, and make significant savings
on their number one operating expense: electricity," Alex Grouet,
Google's business development manager in Francophone Africa, said in a
blog post.
Cafe owners should be able to
invest the savings on electricity costs into improving their connection
speeds, he suggested, thereby boosting their clients' experience.
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