huridocs-tech Internet Brings Africa Closer to Information

Title: TECHNOLOGY: Internet Brings Africa Closer to
Information Age//REPEATING BY REQUEST//

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sites offering incomplete, inaccurate, outdated, or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)





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