إلي مريم بنت الحسين عن أسواق سودانيزأونلاين والتجارة الإلكترونية "للمهتمين"

Salam Alaa'.. Anwar.. Maryam.. Burhan.. and all

the discussion is going all over the place, and it's getting a little difficult to follow all the thoughts at once. i'll try to shed some light on a couple of points that caught my attention

on the topic of infrastructure.. although it seems that sudatel does have a somewhat decent telecom infrastructure, but the way that organization is being managed is a nightmare. i can't belive they still have a monopoly and can shut down anybody that they don't like. this is not good for busniess and doesn't help ... in the long run, it can prove to be catastrophic. the Information Technology infrastructure is what we lack. telecomm is an important peice, but there are other factors that can make or brake an effective e commerce experience

On a more strategic level, i think there is a problem in getting our priorities straight. Maryam is talking about an 80% success rate for e commerce in sudan, but is excluding a crucial part.. the customer. well.. creating that web site is not the bigger problem, the bigger problem is getting enough people to effectively use that site. and how can they do so if they don't have access to a computer that is connected to the internet in the first place?a

now back to the priorities issue.. i would think it is more important to give more people access to computers, and raise their awareness level to make sure they can use them effectively, than trying to get people to change their shopping habits and start buying stuff online. after we have a resonable individual- to- computer ratio, and the population becomes more savy , then we can start thinking about e commerce and other sophisticated applications. i am not being pesimistic, but e commerce proved to be not that big of a deal even in the most advanced regions in the world. it is more hype than something that adds real value to the human life, and the dot com buble burst is not a distant memory yet. granted there are successfull e commerce applications, but in our case.. in sudan.. i believe the focus needs to be on more basic issues.. and slowley but surely we'll get to the advanced stages

very good discussion.. i hope this post doesn't go to the bottom.. and sorry for having to write in english.. it's the lame excuse.. i don't have an arabic keyboard

wassalam
Khalid