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Economic Commission for Africa African Development Forum '99 Discussion List Summary, 9/6-18/6 1999 |
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Economic Commission for Africa African Development Forum '99 Discussion List Summary, 9/6-18/6 1999 |
| Economic Commission for Africa African Development Forum ’99 Discussion List Summary 9 – 18 June 1999 This summary continues and expands upon the themes of last week’s discussion: namely, what sort of policies and programmes are needed to strengthen Africa’s Information infrastructure. Beginning the 21st June discussion will broach the subject of Africa and the Information Economy. We look forward to your contributions. WHERE TO BEGIN? Some discussants suggested that the implementation of ICTs needs to be prioritised based on the practical realities of where they could best be put to use. "There is a perception out there that you always have to focus all the available resources on the poor or the have-nots. How about those who have just a little capacity that need[s] nurturing for success?" This group, the contributor continues, is marginalised by its knowledge and is truely the "forgotten people of Africa" today. Instead of equipping "peasants with laptops", it was suggested that ICT implementation should aim for better education and training overall as a means to bridge the gap. Start by placing ICTs in universities and schools where students are well-positioned to take advantage of technology. Students today will be the managers of tomorrow who will build more telecentres and train more of the populace expanding the pool of ICT users. SUPPORT Now that support for ICTs in Africa seems to have been accepted by many African governments and policy makers in words, it needs to be matched in deeds. Many ICT proposals fail to bear fruit because of lack of support – from both government and stakeholders – in implementation. The problem is institutional: how can African countries create vibrant public ICT institutions that understand opportunities and move the private sector and others forward? The modernisation of the telecom structure in Senegal with the involvement of Sonatel was cited as a good example of positive institutional change with dynamic private sector involvement. There is a tendency to generalise the approach of delivery of assistance to Africa without taking into account varying levels of literacy and technical competencies from country to country and village to village. It must be kept in mind that the political and economic environments and infrastructure support of ICT vary considerably. Support for ICTs must be two-pronged: private sector investment in combination with development of local capability. The profit motive can work as a driving force but only if the investment environment is enhanced by conducive government policies and infrastructure. Additionally, as one participant inciscively notes, Africa has been the largest per capita exporter of skilled, home-grown manpower. Many Africans of the diaspora are hesitant to invest because they feel the environment in their home countries is hostile to enterprise. Thus, in addition to encouraging a favourable investment climate, policies should also encourage the repatriation of native expertise. "Policy, resolve and wisdom are as important – more important – than technology."
DIGITAL DIASPORA What will prevent those students who benefit from ICT in academia from becoming part of the diaspora? Most good graduates of African universities inevitably join the brain drain, points out a contributor, himself a living statistic of it. ICTs offer the opportunity to repatriate intellectual capital. For one, they can link local sites with expertise abroad. In a telling example of ‘digital diaspora’ being put to work locally, the example was cited of the Lebanese overseas who helped in the rebuilding of war-torn Beirut. Secondly, electronic access reduces the pressure to become part of the diaspora and creates a temptation to return. It can even be argued that "digital diaspora" is a contradiction in terms: ICTs mean that location no longer limits. The expertise of digital diaspora can only be tapped if a digital environment is created at a local level in African countries. Given the right technologies digital knowledge can be tapped from anywhere and many members of the diaspora are eager to volunteer their participation. CONTENT On the prospect of "peasants with laptops" a discussant asks: "Laptops for what?" raising the vast and difficult issue of developing an ‘African’ content. We have brought up the issue of equipping Africa with computer access; the ensuing question is access to what? The real needs of the intended beneficiaries of ICT application must be clearly defined in order to answer this question. Content will develop by targeting users on the basis of literacy, traditions, social infrastructure, lifestyle and personal priorities. But don’t expect a village farmer or herdsman to be immediately impressed by your laptop, a contributor warns. Unless the gadget expressly addresses his or her immediate concerns it is nothing but that – a gadget. The mere awareness of technology will not impel people to use it unless they can see its relevance to their lives. This is easily imaginable among professionals and scholars, but less so among peasants and other marginalised groups. Rural peoples need data on income generation, leadership, literacy support, government policies on rural development and soil conservation. If the goal of implementing ICTs in Africa is to bring these latter groups in from the margin, we must build not only access, but content, that is directly applicable to them. Or is the case "give people access and the content will follow"? A quotation from the discussion on content:
COST ISSUE Several contributors raised the issue of cost of access, mainly due to high tariffs and lack of infrastructure. Lack of infrastructure also inhibits regional integration, keeping the costs of telecom links – where they even exist – high. Government needs to go further than transforming state monopolies into private monopolies: it must also liberalise to encourage new entrants in the field. In tandem, regulatory agencies must be strengthened before full privatisation to ensure a level playing field. Of course, privatisation in Africa has proven to be a slow-moving process. Perhaps, adds another contributor, the "bottom-up" approach, where investment begins with less risky and more short-term businesses, is an alternative. TECHNOLOGY: WESTERN OR UNIVERSAL? "If Africa’s adopting of ICTs is seen as ‘embracing’ a foreign technology, then Africa is in real trouble," one participant commented. Even if it was developed in the West, ICTs should be taken as universal technologies that can and should be applied world-wide. Unfortunately, the skills to make the most out of ICTs are not yet universal. THE SOCIAL ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY One participant made the point that ICTs can be used only as a ‘medium’ to facilitate social cohesion in Africa and warned us not to stray too much from the true goal of the Forum: harnessing the power of ICTs to combat poverty. That said, if the indigenous media were to have ICT access, it would nourish both political and cultural dialogue and interaction, contributing to communication amongst social groups. Last week it was noted that development in Africa must be "people-driven and ICT- supported." A contributor from Botswana claims that baseline ICT capacity is as yet too low to provide support for people-driven development. A COMPUTER ON EVERY DESK? Telecentres are set up to work in support of grassroots organisations, ideally staffed with members trained to act as intermediaries for the general population. It would be a mistake for Africa to imitate the consumer society model of individual use. A participant suggests an alternative name for telecentres: ‘community information centres’. The key issue is not individual access to ICT in a village, community or rural setting; it is the productive role for such access even if access is through a trained intermediary. Don’t fall into the Western trap of aiming for a computer on every desk, he warns. NAKASEKE TELECENTRE EXAMPLE A joint project between ITU, the British Council, Uganda Public Libraries and UTL, the Nakaseke Telecentre is located about 50 km north of Kampala, Uganda. The project provides telephone lines, internet access and computers, serving and training the community in IT and internet. Participation is high, says a discussant, but there are some problems. The centre is struggling to get phone lines, the hospital is not connected yet and the community is 80% illiterate Can a telecentre-type project succeed where 80% of the population are illiterate? There was a resounding ‘yes’ from at least one discussant. The 20:80 ratio is more than adequate to transform a rural community: for example, one literate school boy can translate letters, read newspapers and enlighten other members of his village. A participant proposed that the ECA use the Nakeseke project as a practical prototype or case study for the future. Another remarked that telecentres are cheap to fund and high status for donors. WIDE Web of Information for Development (WIDE) is an on-line database being developed in collaboration with CESAR, a non-profit institute in Recife, Brazil. WIDE online is part of the UNDP’s TCDC WIDE initiative, soon to be formally announced, an initiative which recognises that the electronic venue can be used for more decentralised, more localised collaborative efforts at south-south technical co-operation and capacity building. The intent is for the WIDE initiative to represent a best practice use of the electronic venue. FROM THE BOTTOM UP... There IS a history of rural and urban grassroots efforts to make use of ICTs by those whom the top-down efforts are intending to help. Well-meaning top-down initiatives, using a rationale based on access by the poor and marginalised, will not only fail to draw on that expertise and experience, it will damage those efforts in the name of helping them. MEDIA STUNT Via a live Internet link-up, an "impoverished African woman" questioned British Chancellor Gordon Brown on cancelling world debt. Mrs. Elinata Kasanga, a subsistence farmer, spoke to Mr. Brown in London from her hut in rural Zambia., BBC News On-line reported. The link-up was part of a campaign by a group of charities known as Jubilee 2000 which is urging the British government to cancel world debt to help alleviate Third World poverty. Web producer Terry Gibson admitted that the Tearfund Website link-up was "a stunt" but one that was necessary to bring the debt issue to the public’s attention. The event conveniently also hits many of ADF’s themes. UTILITIES-IN-A-BOX A contributor from International Business Initiatives (IBI) consulting firm writes on a new development that deals with the issue of hooking up rural communities that don’t have electricity. Utilities-in-a-Box is a "distributed, integrated infrastructure unit" to provide electricity, water and telephone service to communities of 5,000 to 100,000 people. For more information, see the web site listed below.
Internet Sites: For practical examples of telecentres http://www.idrc.ca/pan/telecentres Project of the El Salvador Learning Society (in Spanish with an English summary available) Archives on computer conference to develop digital networks with diaspora population (Spanish and English) http://www.vita.org/technet/esls/eslsarch Universal Service Agency project http://www.internews.org/nigeria Mamelodi Community Information Service (MACIS) http://mweb.co.za/mamelodi/main1.html African Connection programme http://www.africanconnection.org Assessment of Kingo Mchombu's study on More information on Utilities-in-a-Box http://www.ibicorporations.com
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Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) |
