GARMEG TECHNOLOGIES

Internet Creates a New Class of Users


Even critics of massive spending on computer and Internet technology in Africa, at what they fear is at the expense of poverty alleviation efforts, are conceding that so-called "New Media" are helping Africans economically.

Computers linked to the worldwide information web via the Internet are also helping efforts to promote democratisation and gender empowerment.

"I'm less worried about 'massive spending' on New Media technology - that is, on computers and Internet access - than in obtaining minimum investment in these things for Africans' benefit. Because New Media are proven tools to raise standards of living for the poor and everyone else, this is money that is well spent," Mkpe Abang, publisher of Telcom Digest in Lagos, Nigeria told IPS this week.

Abang and hundreds of other "New Media" specialists met to share views and experiences at Rhodes University campus in Grahamstown, South Africa this week. The conference, called Highway Africa, was the seventh annual conference to promote new information technology on a continent that lacks the financial resources and in many instances the political will to bring the majority of its people "on line."

"It's not a zero-sum proposition, where money spent on computers is taken away from money that is needed to build schools and clinics," said Alfonso Dagron, a development communications specialist.

"New technology has been used in literally hundreds of instances throughout Africa this year to create opportunities and wealth. It is used for fund-raising, and to bring people in need together with organisations that are mandated to assist them financially," he said.

Information technology's key function in Africa, as elsewhere, is to bring information to users. In Africa, smallholder farmers may not own computers, or even have electricity, but in some pilot programmes they can go to community centres and ask Internet operators for information from the web that assists them, such as weather data, seed and crop suggestions, and market conditions.

"Africa's smallholder farmers are entering the modern agribusiness world by leaving purely subsistence farming, and entering commercial farming. Usually aligned with others in co-operatives, where farmers pool their land resources and produce a quantity of a particular crop, they are selling to local markets and to buyers who export their products. By accessing world market prices on the Internet, these farmers can learn if they are getting a fair deal from their buyers," reported Lance Dube, a South African agronomist who specialises in information technology.

Non-government organisations (NGOs) who comprise what is called the civil society are increasingly managing developmental programmes that used to be the sole responsibility of national governments.

But while African governments struggle with national debts and limited revenues, NGOs are usually part of international networks of like-minded organisations. As a result, environmentalists in Mozambique can find technical support from conservation groups in the developed world. Women's empowerment groups seeking financial assistance for a project can call upon gender empowerment organisations worldwide.

Pro-democracy groups have easy access to worldwide platforms via Internet. News of government oppression, police brutality, and human rights abuses are instantly communicated to concerned parties everywhere.

Information promoters concede that not everything circulating on the Internet is true, and much is propaganda. But because so many groups are sending material, it is possible to cross-reference sources, and to recognise reliable and credible sources, to get a true picture of events.

Community groups learn of grants available to them from the other side of the world. Students wishing to study in foreign lands, who can then return to their native countries to apply their knowledge and skills to development, can access scholarship and fellowship opportunities that can make these ambitions possible.

"All this is done easily on the web," said Abang.

What is required to spread such information-gathering ability still overwhelms many supporters of new media. Telephone lines to carry Internet signals have to be strung at rates never seen before. Funds have to be obtained to purchase computer hardware. The price of Internet access has to be reduced by national telecommunications companies. Strides in education have to continue to reduce two kinds of illiteracy: general illiteracy and computer illiteracy, the latter of which plagues many educated Africans.

"A culture of free expression also has to be grounded in any society that wants to take full advantage of New Media. In African countries where government controls information, censors news, and stifles freedom of expression, the use of the Internet as a developmental tool is still a distant dream," said one delegate.

Most New Media practitioners were optimistic about the continent's ability to join the Information Society.

"It may take time, but we'll get there. The information society is like all other technological revolutions, from transportation changes like trains and automobiles to social changes like democracy. These are worldwide trends that embrace all places," one conference paper noted.

Specific organisations exist to promote New Media in Africa. All African nations are committed to convening in December in Geneva, Switzerland at the United Nation's World Summit on Information Society (WSIS). The landmark summit will create a resolution that will bind the signatory countries to provide the regulatory tools, guarantee free speech and create an enabling environment for Internet and computer usage to flower among their people.

Statistics show that only 3 out of 1,000 people have computers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Most Africans cannot afford computer on a continent where 350 million, or over 50 percent of the population, live on less than one U.S. dollar a day. (END)

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