Africa's brilliant network info system

Here's an elegant information management network which I observed in Senegal's Gares Routieres (Bus Stations) last week. These apparently chaotic and formless empty spaces are crammed with ancient vehicles, beggars, rubbish. Nothing to suggest that any system at all is operating, let alone a textbook network design in gathering and locating information.

A SEPT-PLACES (seven seater) is big car that departs when it is full, for a pre-set fare. Passengers' waiting decisisions are quite simple - they sit there until the seats are all taken, or they buy up other seats if they are impatient. We waited over two hours at Kaoloack, central Senegal, for a sept places to our destination to fill up - and had time to observe how the drivers make their waiting decisions.

Any driver wanting to run any given route writes his car number on this wooden board in a biro. Each car that departs gets crossed off. The driver can see the length of the queue of cars in front of him, make an estimate of how long till his turn comes, and decide what routes they should offer. So far so simple - just a fair queuing system.







The real genius of it is that the number on the board is also an index to locate a much more complex body of information. Working from the number, the drivers can reference someone who is likely to know the route conditions. During the wait, the drivers use the numbers to find colleagues who ran their route sector earlier that day, and get road updates. So the passengers have the benefit of latest information. A driver will always be able to tell you at the start of the journey, how long the previous driver took for that route. It's storytelling, basically, but indexed by geo-location so everyone finds the story they want,

Quality of personal contact - as in all networks - is what makes this system work. For drivers from out of town, there is a supervisor, who has a his own version of the index - a list of all next departures to all destinations written on the back of an unfolded Marlboro box. He can confirm that fairness is applied to all, and suggest routes and predict waiting times. Here he is.



What I like about this network is that the balance between the information recording system, and the roles of the human participants, is very even.

What our digital information networks often miss, is present here: the data system is above all an index to human stories and so it enables us not just to access some factual details, but also to cement networks that start with data, into personal relationships of trust and familiarity.

Also, it's real time. Information more than a few days old is discarded and doesn't clog things up. It successfully exploits the fact that the communication channel is always online.

I'd like to use this system as the basis of solving a problem where suppliers need to exchange rich information in real time. Any kind of sales management or delivery system organised this way would be very effective.