Volume 11, No. 2, August 2001
On-line debate on the social management of new technologies in Africa
Ellen S. Kole
Research Associate, Amsterdam School of Communications Research,
University of Amsterdam
The aim of the AFTIDEV (AFrica, Technologies, Information and DEVelopment) is to bring up the issue of competence and the social impact of these technology transfers to the African continent. Since the angle of analysis of Internet and its digital networks technology transfers from the North to the South is often technical, it is worth noting that these tools, far from being neutral, influence and interact with the socio-cultural context in which they are developed and vice-versa.
The AFTIDEV project (http://www.aftidev.net) depends on the setting up of a platform of information exchange on the Internet - a forum through electronic mail and a web site to store the main documents and highlight these issues - allowing for fruitful discussions and supporting the formulation of recommendations concerning the diffusion of information and communication technologies in Third World countries.
Proposals from AFTIDEV debate
The proposals that emerge from the debate on the social management of new technologies in Africa on the AFTIDEV forum are featured.
Proposal No 1 : Organize the development of the necessary infrastructure in a surge of international solidarity
It would be advisable to set up a plan for
the development of telecommunications infrastructure in the South, starting with
the development of access to telephone networks.
This development plan, devised as an international-solidarity programme, could
draw from a special fund.
The North could build up this fund by using different mechanisms such as:
· rental charges collected for African utilization of the commutation infrastructure of the North during communications;
· setting up a tax on electronic communications ;
· setting up a tax on domain names ;
· tax on the profits derived from new-information-technology-related economic activities of branches in the South of companies from the North.
The mechanisms for managing the collected resources should be adopted in collaboration with the international, mainly African, civil society.
African states and the international civil society should attempt to redefine the various costs related to Internet connection, presently unfavorable to Africa.
The Information Society Summit of 2003 and the different bodies being set up within the Digital Opportunity Task Force can act as an action framework.
It is important to reinforce programmes for the development of collective-access infrastructure. Government, the private sector, and the civil society must play complementary roles in this process.
The civil society could increase pressure to defend universal access against monopoly situations and the free-market approach that characterize the telecommunications sector.
Proposal No 2: Multimedia Content and Applications
In order to exploit the potentialities of ICT, it is advisable to:
1. Support and foster the promotion of types of content meeting the needs of populations (information on health issues, agricultural development, democratic mechanisms, etc.) by exploiting all the multimedia techniques (sound, image). Appropriate applications must be developed to meet the specific needs of the populations expressing themselves in African languages.
2. The Internet should not be the only media for such types of content; CD-Roms, which are easier to produce, should be increasingly exploited. In order to do so, it is advisable to finance research-and-development programmes carried out in Africa
3. Develop links between the Internet and traditional forms of communication, such as the radio3. The idea is to use the Internet mainly to reinforce access to information by local organizations that need it for their everyday activities.
Proposal No 3: A Better Integration of Africa into the Governance of the Internet
The African countries and actors from the ICT sector should further strive for the integration of Africa into the governance of the Internet. Such integration can be accelerated by giving birth to AFRINIC, an African body in charge of the management of IP addresses and domain names for Africa, thus giving shape to an African "territory" on the Internet. Another strategy would be to increase the African participation in the ICANN management bodies.
The African countries must lobby and urge the Internet Society to opt for multilingualism. An authority such as the Agence de la Francophonie should at this level set up some devices for the translation and continuous updating of important texts in this field. African states, the civil society actors from the ICT environment, and the French-speaking countries thus have a major role to play.