why AFRILINE

"The struggle [to control Africa's development agenda] has been construed too narrowly as one over economic and political power .... [Rather] it is also a struggle of ideas and knowledge .... Without articulating how to proceed and why, our march to development cannot really begin."
—Claude Ake, Knowledge, Public Policy and Development: The Case of Social Science

“[W]e have to make it our own too - if only to protect our cultures and language.”
—Omar Bwana, Swahili scholar and consultant, Nairobi; “Surfing in Swahili”, BBC Online/Africa, 10 August 2000

“Frequently the debates are framed in either/or language, slotting advocates into uncomfortable positions of sounding either too elitist or not "enlightened" enough.”
—Akpan, Patience. 2000. Africa in the Age of a Global Network Society. 4(2): 1. [online], http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v4/v4i2a1.htm

Digital Divide: commentary

The G-8 committed to addressing the international ‘digital divide’ at its recent summit in Okinawa, Japan. They agreed to pool their resources to improve Internet access in developing countries and to lower the cost of access in those countries.

There is skepticism, not only of the G-8’s commitments and words, but also of the very need for improved information access. Critics hold that the resources committed would go to fatten the wallets of the IT companies of the developed world, that resources could be better used to serve the poorest of people and that it is absurd to think of improving Internet access when many communities in the developing world not only cannot afford a computer, much less a telephone, but do not have electricity either.

Supporters of improved Internet use in the developing world counter that lack of access to timely and accurate information is one of the factors keeping regions, such as Africa, in second-class citizen status. They further argue that improved digital access assists and improves democracy and that more and open information fights corruption.

IT companies—who will be paid handsomely for their services in closing the information gap—say they are acting out of ‘enlightened self-interest’.

It is true that a huge amount of resources will go to software and tech companies in the technology centers of the world. (It is already true that some 40% of foreign aid is spent within donor countries, paying consultants, contractors and western-based non-profits.) This is true of all aid. Aid is as much integrated with trade and the global economic system as foreign exchange auctions are. The developed world gains from every development effort, for good or ill.

It is true that poor infrastructure (electricity, telecommunications) is a huge obstacle to realizing the potential of information and computer technology to ‘level the playing field’.

It is true that the poorest of the poor will not have full stomachs or healthy children if they learn to use a mouse.

It is all true. Technology companies act in admitted—though possibly ‘enlightened’—self-interest. But to say that Africa, as a continent must wait before all bellies are full is rather simplistic, and frankly, patronizing and shortsighted. The G8 have not come through on debt relief and they have their own interests to pursue and protect. It is all true.

But more is true. It is also true that (1) IT exists in Africa, in spite of the infrastructural challenges (where do you think we got all our information about the G8 from here in Addis Ababa?), and (2) development and poverty alleviation are not linear efforts. Information is a tool in those efforts. It is both a means and an end.

There is an emerging and dynamic body of information technology users in Africa. They are using what is available, and working with and around challenges of high access costs and unreliable infrastructure (telephone lines that go dead when it rains, rationed electricity, and so forth). Among these users are African businesses, non-governmental organizations, activists, artists, HIV/AIDS awareness campaigners, and others. Among these African information society builders are people accessing information on policies of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the United States government, the European Union, and sometimes even their own governments, to use in fighting poverty in their communities.

African cannot wait to achieve certain development objectives—critical though the needs be—before taking advantage of the opportunities provided by information technology that already exist. These critical, life and death challenges—hunger, conflict, HIV/AIDS and on and on—are problems Africans stare in the face every day. As they own the problems, they should own the tools to face them. The tools to stare them down with are limited enough as it is.

It is misguided—at best—to advocate withholding tools from Africans because they must overcome certain problems first, or because access to the tools might not be fair or because the motivations of those providing the cash may not be pure. Aid is not fair. Human—much less government or commercial—motivations are not pure.

Africa—and those in the developed world who aim to speak on the continent’s behalf—should fight to put Africans in the driver’s seat of such initiatives and push for African influence in how they are shaped.

Africans with access can benefit from lowered costs, can take advantage of improved infrastructure, and can use training and skills. They can use them—in fact, they are using them—to alleviate poverty, to improve health care, and to influence international agreements that impact the poor. They are using information technology to speak for themselves in debt relief campaigns and using information technology to access timely information on protests in Seattle and Washington DC, by people they have never met.