Greetings Gambia-l,
I thought this might be of interest to some of you.
regards,
Momodou Camara (Copenhagen, Denmark)
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*** 21-Dec-99 ***
Title: TECHNOLOGY: Internet Brings Africa Closer to Information
HARARE Dec 20 (IPS) - The internet has provided a lifeline for
thousands of Africans seeking to join the "information age" by
providing distance learing facilities, remote health centres and
an international market for craftsmen.
Africa, however, remains the region with the least number of
Internet hosts and users and a radical new approach is needed if
the continent is to attain its goal of attaining a sustainable
information society by the year 2010, technology experts agree.
Still there is cause for hope.
Programmes such as the African Virtual University, begun in 1997,
are in full swing; Women'sNet in South Africa is giving a voice to
the continent's marginalized women while Zimbabwe's Learning
Networks for Teachers links teacher training colleges and other
educational institutions.
All these programmes demonstrate the power of new technology to
support development in Africa.
But experts, monitoring the development of the World Wide Web
(WWW), say what is missing on the majority of African-based web
sites is relevant, easily accessible, interactive and home-grown
content.
"Web content should be seen to be meeting the information needs
of local people where traditional information sources are failing
to do so," notes Mike Chivhanga head of an internet studies
research group at Britain's City University.
"The value of information is seen in its use. If people can't
have access to essential information for decision-making then we
have serious problems," says Chivhanga, speaking in a discussion
forum to promote the development of Africa's Web resources.
As information consumers become more selective and demand
quality and reliability they do not want to loose time on sites
offering incomplete, inaccurate, outdated, or difficult to access
content. Therefore, Africa's slowly growing Internet sector needs
to become fiercely competitive, say the experts.
However, a study by Internet group Wo Yaa (www.woyaa.com) and
the UN Educational and Cultural Scientific Organisation (UNESCO)
titled 'Top50 Survey' says that content on African sites is
relatively poor, with the exception of public information sites.
Education, sciences and community development sites have the
lowest content notes the report released this month.
"Despite a very strong growth in the number of Web sites and
with the exception of South Africa, the number of Web sites is
still low," according to the UNESCO report.
"This primarily is due to the lack of appropriate
Internet/computers/telecom infrastructures, the lack of national
regulations, the lack of expertise in the area of Web design,
content production and management and the low awareness of the
benefits that the Internet can bring,"
The report notes that the content of African Web sites is
focussed largelt on the presentation of an organization and its
activities.
"Maintenance of web sites is often poorly managed due to the lack
of resources, expertise and adequate processes. The interactivity
between visitors and owners of the sites is often limited to e-
mail with limited use of Web interactivity," it says.
Limited content is partly explained by the lack of copyright
ownership of African material a big chunk of which belongs to
Western publishers and universities.
Most African Web sites do not use digital content, relying
mainly on paper-based information production processes such as
scanning.
"Africans must participate in the production of information
because their contribution is critical to maintaining the quality
and relevance of information from the region," declares the UN
Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in a document titled
Globalization and the Information Economy: Challenges and
Opportunities for Africa.
"For example, Ghanaians world-wide have established marketable
websites selling a variety of products and promoting their culture
in the process and indirectly contributing to their tourist
industry.
"Another area in which Africa can excel is the commercial
exploitation of its rich traditional or tacit knowledge...The fact
that in most cases this knowledge has not been codified, and is
largely informal and regional in its application has undermined
its perceived value and legitimacy."
Africa's 780 million people share 152,000 Internet hosts or 0.3
percent of the world's total according to the Internet Software
Consortium. The next least served region is Latin America with 1.3
percent of the world's 56 million hosts.
Another factor harming Africa's quest for an information
society is a severe brain drain that begins with inadequate
national universities. According to ECA estimates, more than
30,000 Africans with doctorate degrees now live outside the
continent.
While the continent has perennially complained of biased,
negative and uneven portrayal in the international media, analysts
say these same complaints will persist in cyberspace if Africa
fails to develop a powerful Web presence.
At Women'sNet, "one of the first steps identified to build
women's capacity to use information communication technologies was
to develop a practical framework for sourcing, organising and
making information available centrally from a website in a
friendly and accessible way," notes Sonja Boezak in a contribution
to the Africa web page design discussion forum.
"As a result a four-day interactive WWW-skills development
workshop was held with gender information resource people from a
range of organisations inside as well as outside South Africa,"
says Boezak, Women'sNet Information Co-ordinator.
"The outcome was an online resource (http://womensnet.org.za)
that addresses an information need around advocating and lobbying
for women's equality."
Under the African Information Society Initiative adopted at an
ECA Conference of Ministers of Development and Planning in 1996,
Africa seeks to have built its information and communication
network by 2010.
Several - mainly donor-funded - programmes have brought full
Internet connectivity to all 54 countries in Africa, with the
exception of Eritrea. In 1994 there only four African nations
boasted Internet access.
But, according to the Top50 Survey, access to Web sites remains
slow with a relatively high rate of unavailability. African sites
also lack Web-based revenue such as advertising and they are
forced to rely on subsidies, which are not sustainable.
(END/IPS/gm/mk/99)
Origin: ROMAWAS/TECHNOLOGY/
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[c] 1999, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
All rights reserved
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