AFRICA-DEVELOPMENT: More Than Just Internet Connections Requiredby Gumisai Mutume TORONTO, Jun 24 (IPS) -- As the development of the World Wide Web roars ahead, only eight African capitals remain locked out of the global information highway without any immediate hope of logging in. The capital cities of Cape Verde, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Mauritania, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia and Western Sahara still do not have full Internet connectivity, nor do they have any known plans of getting hooked up soon, say experts at the Global Knowledge Forum being held here. While the fact that Africa will virtually be fully on-line represents a major leap ahead for a continent that barely had four countries hooked up in 1993, the major concern now haunting developers is the lack of local, relevant content produced by Africans for themselves. Making the Internet relevant to the majority of the 4.7 billion people living in developing countries is one of the major challenges facing the 2,000 policy-makers from 124 countries, non- governmental organizations and financiers who travelled to Toronto to attend the June 22-25 Forum. ''There is no point in having full Internet access unless there is content,'' Mike Jensen, an independent Internet consultant based in Johannesburg, South Africa, told the conference, co- hosted by the World Bank and the Canadian government. Pinpointing another source of concern, Jensen noted that 70 percent of Africa's people live in remote, rural areas and therefore need innovations such as using satellites for Internet services. Out of the countries now with full Internet connectivity, only Burkina Faso, Mauritius, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and Zimbabwe have local dial-up facilities outside of their major cities. In this regard, Venancio Massingue, director of the Computer Centre at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, took a swipe at some donor agencies. These, he said, are only interested in wiring African capitals, where the country offices of international institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and expatriate communities are based. Even in capitals, huge costs rule out access to the Internet for the majority of people and, as a result, the Internet in Africa may remain a tool of the elite for a long time. ''Without competition, the average cost of a low-volume Internet account is about 65 dollars a month, nearly the per capita income of Mozambque,'' argues Jensen. Second-rate telephone lines are another drawback in many African nations. Africa has the least developed telephone infrastructure in the world and not much progress is being made in improving rural connectivity on a continent where 12 percent of the planet's population share two percent of its telephone lines. ''Access that is affordable. Access in remote rural areas and access to women,'' are priority areas, according to Karen Banks of GreenNet, a non-governmental Internet service provider based the United Kingdom and one of several organizations that have been linked to building a communications network in Africa. A number of large-scale projects to develop telecommunications on the continent remain on the drawing boards, such as AT&T's 'Africa One' initiative intended to necklace the continent with a cyber-optic cable. It is yet to be finalised. In the meantime, experts say, people as producers of information needs to be the major shift. When African intellectuals hook on to the Net, it is to consult information about the continent created largely by Western countries, notes Massingue. Lishan Adam, Connectivity Project Officer at the UN Economic Commission of Africa is also worried about the uni-directional flow of information. ''Whose content is it?'' Adam wondered. ''Is it really going to serve the poor rural communities?'' Adam added that once communities begin providing information relevant to themselves, ''translation will be required to make it accessible ...'' The Internet, serving some 50 million people worldwide, remains largely an English-language medium characterised by the traditional patterns of information flow -- countries of the North flooding those of the South and setting the agenda. Some projects have taken off to develop relevant content such as an initiative by the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural organization (UNESCO) to transfer printed material in African libraries onto the Net, an InfoDev programme in South Africa to produce secondary school material and Healthnet, which is trying to bring health information to doctors in Africa. However, African Internet watchers fear that the sector will soon be dominated by commercial interests and this will further marginalise the poor majority. What is emerging is that large Western service providers such as CompuServe, EUnet and Global One are moving onto the continent and are likely to grab a substantial share of the market there. |
Communication Team,
Economic Commission for Africa, P.O. Box 3001, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia |