INTRODUCTION

This volume, ninth in the Voices From Africa series, focuses on information and communication technologies (ICTs) in Africa. The issue of the information technology divide between the rich and poor countries has been taken up at the international level, including the 1999 high-level session of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the 2000 meeting of the Group of Seven (G-7) in Okinawa (Japan). This edition of Voices From Africa looks at how ICTs affect communicating within organizations or networking with other groups; ICT initiatives and how these efforts affect processes at the local or institutional level; and the priorities and challenges faced by ICT users as they debate the merits and possible disadvantages of the new technologies.

The overview chapter on Opportunities and Challenges of the Internet in Africa, written by Théophile Vittin, explores development of the Internet on the continent, how the technology is used, and its impact. Mr. Vittin observes that “although it can be argued that the Internet will help integrate Africa into the information revolution and the globalizing economy, it can also be said that it will reinforce African countries’ dependence on Western technology and knowledge,” among other things. He also discusses the dependence that is shaping Africa’s insertion into world communication networks with the “outright failure of [most] African nations to develop and carry out proactive policies in the field of new information technologies.”

Women in Francophone Africa have only a modest presence in the area of information and communication technology, according to Marie-Hélène Mottin-Sylla. The obstacles facing them in using ICTs are enormous: “The common language of Francophone Africa is a ‘minority language’ in cyberspace,” she observes. “The cost of access is relatively high for women, who make up the majority of the poor in poor countries.” High illiteracy rates and lack of technical support and training are additional challenges faced by the Communication for Women Programme in Francophone Africa, based in Senegal.

Enhancing the capacity of human rights and advocacy organizations in Southern Africa, especially through their use of ICTs, is the focus of a study by Firoze Manji, Murtaza Jaffer and Emmanuel Njenga Njuguna. Their chapter summarizes an assessment of the possibility to further develop ICT training materials aimed at human rights groups in eight Southern African countries: Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The spread of the Internet enlarges the potential for information to be accessed economically and with relative ease by these groups, conclude the authors. However they also highlight the importance of building ICT skills within human rights organizations on the basis of an “internal culture of democracy.”

ICTs have the potential to help ensure that information from and about African women is visible, according to Ruth Ochieng and Jenny Radloff in their article on relevant and accessible electronic information networking in Africa. “To ignore and exclude our voices from these technologies,” they warn, “will effectively silence us.” They also point out that “low-tech” information tools, such as radio and databases, can be effectively used. With this in mind, the article explores the experiences of African information providers, such as in use of ICTs at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW), and recent ICT initiatives relative to the FWCW resolutions. Examples highlight inititiatives in, among others, South Africa and Senegal.

Development of the Internet in Benin, a chapter also contributed by Mr. Vittin, examines how and where Internet use is expanding in the country. The chapter discusses the growth of cybercentres and shared e-mail boxes, which allow users access at lower cost, and it identifies outside forces, such as development projects, that have promoted ICTs in the country. Constraints that discourage Internet use are also explored, including unreliable telephone lines and electric supplies, lack of a national policy to promote the technology, and a high illiteracy rate in the country.

The use of video in promoting development poses great potential for human centred, bottom-up approaches to programmes, according to Angela Zamaere. Her article, which focuses on using video as a tool for participatory rural appraisal (PRA) and fundraising, discusses relevant experiences of communities in Malawi and explores the advantages and disadvantages of video as a tool for PRA.

The experience of the Telematics for African Development Consortium, based in South Africa, is described by Neil Butcher, Bob Day and Nebo Legoabe. After discussing its strategy and origins, the authors offer conclusions about the consortium’s effectiveness, lessons learned during the process of its development, and its evolution from a small group of members to an open information network that includes government organizations, foundations, NGOs, the private sector and educational institutions.

According to Lydia Levin in her article on how information technology can empower women in South Africa, the average Internet user in the country is a 35-year old white male, who earns a good wage and has at least one year of higher education. Ms. Levin explores ways the Women’sNet project aims to use ICTs to begin a process of developing and sharing gender information as a tool to empower and gain equality for South African women.

Wilstar Makondo Choongo’s article discusses obstacles faced by the Non-Governmental Organizations’ Coordinating Committee (NGOCC), based in Zambia, when using information and communication technologies. The article discusses the advantages and drawbacks for NGOCC member organizations when communicating by telephone and e-mail, as well as potential benefits of the Internet. These benefits include speed of communication, promoting resource sharing, reaching rural areas that are inaccessible by road, and promoting health and education campaigns.

The Bamako 2000 Declaration, reproduced in this volume's annex, is a result of a conference in Mali in February of this year on the uses of ICTs for local development. Participants included public and local authorities, and representatives of academia, development organizations, women and youth groups, and the private sector. The declaration calls for the adoption of ten benchmark principles and concrete measures to accompany them. These include “promotion of linguistic and cultural diversity as impetus for the development of contents for local and international uses....[and] redefinition of the role of stakeholders in such manner as to leave more space for citizen initiatives,” among other things.

Representatives of civil society participating in the first African Development Forum, held in October 1999 in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), addressed ways to engage marginalized groups on ICT policy matters in a declaration entitled 1999 African Development Forum Statement on NGOs in the Information Age: Recommendations for Effective Participation of Civil Society in the Information Age. The declaration affirms that issues regarding access to ICTs are “actually issues of equity, social justice and the right to communicate.” In many cases important policy decisions regarding the access and use of ICTs are being made without the input of civil society, according to the declaration, which gives recommendations for NGOs and community based organizations, governments and “supportive agencies.”

The Dakar Declaration on the Internet and the African Media calls for promoting online communications across the continent, joint projects to ensure African presence online, and support from donors for using ICTs to promote democracy, and social and economic development. The declaration was adopted in 1997 at a seminar entitled The Internet: An Opportunity for the African Media? by representatives of the media, NGOs and academics from 19 countries around the world. It also stresses that African governments should “instill an environment conducive to the rapid development of the Internet and other information and communication technologies,” and that emergence and development of the Internet in Africa should be “a media free of government interference and control in the context of a pluralistic and independent press.”

A short selection of civil society websites in Africa is also included as an annex. The list, mainly of continent-wide networks or consortiums, is provided to give the reader a sampling of NGO and other civil society websites including those mentioned by authors in their chapters. 

The aim of Voices From Africa is to enable African development practitioners and writers from NGOs, the research community and elsewhere to share their work, concerns and ideas on the development issues, problems and challenges facing their continent. By giving Africans themselves this opportunity to express their views to an international readership, we hope the series will help shape a more positive and realistic image of Africa, and at the same time provide a useful input to Northern development education and information activities.

We would like to express our appreciation to the contributors to this edition and renew our thanks to the institutions that support this series, which are listed on the back page.

NGLS

October 2000

Voices from Africa no. 9