Document(s) 13 of 16

The results of this study show that there is a potential for growth by integrating ICTs at the local government level, although building capacity is a key aspect of that potential. It is also the case that there are still several unresolved issues in discussing the role of ICTs for local governance, such as empowerment at the local level; the needs and priorities of citizens; the roles and responsibilities of the different stakeholders for sustainability; and the nature and level of people participation.

The recognition of the potential of ICTs for Local Governance comes from a few successful pilot applications in a number of countries around the world. Attempts are underway to critically evaluate some of these projects so that the real extent of their impact can be understood and the factors inhibiting impact can be identified. But there still isn't a common framework for evaluation which can specifically address the overall objective to create an environment of lessons to be learned from each other and to inform about the factors of success in relation to poverty alleviation and reinforcing democracy using ICTs.

Some of these pilot applications demonstrate the great potential of ICTs to connect communities and provide a two-way communication channel between the communities and government bodies at both local and national levels. Such communication helps governments in improving service delivery through user-centred development and, in particular, ICTs have been, in some cases, a critical tool in ensuring accountability and transparency of government at the local level. In a few cases, ICTs are also powerful tools in connecting communities and local government officials, thereby enabling citizens' full participation in the decision making process, for example allowing the local authori­ties to formulate development plans with the full participation of the community. Other pilot applications indicate that access to useful information can benefit the poor in improving the quality of their products or services, obtaining a better price and enabling them to market their products/services beyond the confines of their immediate neighbourhood. This is particularly true in the rural communities and marginalised areas, where long distances and difficulties in transportation can be avoided by effectively using ICTs to have and provide timely and reliable information.

The lessons learned from case studies and empirical analysis of specific projects in using ICTs for local governance in Africa, show the following considerations.

First of all, there is no single way of introducing ICTs in government. The process is dynamic and consists of several stages, especially in Africa: raising awareness about the potential of ICTs for community development; encouraging basic use of ICTs; providing specific products and content to meet local demands (e.g., materials in national languages and products tailored to the needs of specific sectors of the population, such as youth, women or disabled people). This is a challenging situation because it involves the need to be able to adjust to the pace of increasing community needs. Political decision makers are affected by these challenges because they must set up legal and regulatory frameworks that create the optimum conditions for equal access and appropriation of ICTs within and by communities.

Participation is a crucial problem in the process of introducing and promoting the use of ICTs for community development. Appropriation mechanisms should have been initiated within the communities, but finding ways to involve large segments of the population still constitutes a real problem, even when people are aware of the potential usefulness of ICTs. In-depth studies must be carried out to understand the decision making mechanisms of the different community actors with regard to ICTs. It is equally important to try to better understand the attitude of communities toward changes, so as to identify the factors that underlie the adoption of ICTs by poor rural communities.

A specific aspect concerns the fact that women barely use ICTs, and when they do they use these tools less than men, even when they are relatively literate. Knowing that women's involvement, despite some resistance and constraints, is a prerequisite for their participation in the Information Economy and steps should be taken to promote some kind of positive discrimination toward women. Projects specifically designed for women seem to offer efficient ways to obtain this involvement. Women's involvement in project management and the promotion of leadership by women are also important conditions for enhancing their participation and appropriation of ICTs. Research should also be conducted to find information media tools and applications adapted to women's conditions, needs, and roles in the community, and to their mode of thinking. This could help minimise the socio-cultural constraints that limit their access to ICTs ¹.

Due to installation costs and the recurrent expenses involved in the use of ICTs, alternative technologies (e.g., satellites, wireless and mobile technology, multimedia tools, etc.) should be considered in the introduction of ICTs, in order to better adapt to the limited infrastructure available, to improve community access. The number of community access points could also be increased to combine the more familiar traditional technologies with the new ICTs. Adaptable and affordable alternative technologies are needed to ensure universal access to ICTs and they can actually contribute to improving the living conditions of the population. It is necessary to assess the amount of real change and to identify and evaluate the effects that the use of ICTs has on income levels (both for individuals and the community).

Finally, due to country specificity and the importance of the institutional context to ICTs project implementation, national approaches should be encouraged to study the use of ICTs for development purposes. A national institutional environment seems to be a relevant framework for conducting studies on ICTs and development.

Taking all this into account, it seems evident that the challenge remains as to how the use of ICTs in local government can be beneficial to all the stakeholders. What have to be taken into consideration are the very real factors such as the digital divide (both international and domestic) and the prohibitive cost of traditional technology. These remain a challenge to full citizens' participation which is necessary for the creation of an "e-inclusive" society. What is difficult is not introducing technologies, but how people can best use the technologies!

The other main challenge ICTs pose is how to balance control and freedom. New "networked" technologies (of measurement, identity, location and efficiency) may enable a transformation of the economic system faced by the poor. But the same ICTs may also enable ubiquitous control and give or enhance the power of few people. Instead of reinforcing participation and democracy, ICTs could reduce them. ICTs can produce unexpected effects!²

In this connection, political will, community leadership and ownership are key enabling factors, and accurate strategic planning, effective monitoring and critical evaluation are indispensable to identify factors inhibiting impact and to ensure sustainability.

When we talk about local governance, especially in Africa, it is pivotal to consider the development of local content. Provision of ICTs infrastructure and services is mutually reinforcing when ICTs applications are accompanied by local content development.

A first aspect to consider, concerns the fact that having many local languages and widespread illiteracy constitute a barrier to access of information. In this respect, it is rightly believed that, unless ICTs are made available in local languages, the ongoing ICTs revolution will remain incomplete and its benefits are likely to reach only a small section of society who have access to the main languages and, in particular, the "linguafranca" of Internet, the English language. The scenario is, however, undergoing rapid change. For instance, efforts are continuing in India, some with remarkable success, in making ICTs available in local languages, often called regional languages, thus taking the benefits of ICTs to the ordinary people. In Africa this is an even more complicated issue, considering the number of local languages and dialects which exist and the high rate of illiteracy. Moreover, the gap between connectivity and technology capacity on the one hand, and content on the other, keeps growing ever larger. More so, in African countries, where the mastery of technology seems to be an end in itself, almost wholly divorced from the need to solve the many problems of deprived millions.

ICTs have enabled various items of information or content to be placed on the internet in order to share it all over the world, thus opening the doors for content globalisation. Today, huge amounts of information are available over the internet in text or document form like market prices, poverty alleviation government schemes, hospitals, weather, educational institutes' directories, telephone directories and much more. While urban net-citizens increasingly upload the content available to them due to greater awareness on the part of urban centric organisations, what is still ignored or not available is local content available to and for rural communities.

Local content is invariably available in the form of indigenous knowledge that has been inherited by the community over centuries. One important aspect of this indigenous knowledge is the content about the various products that the rural communities produce. These products are part of the "global village economy" and include various types of work and an important element of these is the work of the rural artisans, their creative space and the economics associated with them.

It is therefore important that Africa consciously and successfully develops and exchanges local content. To achieve this, the use of local languages, the exchange of local cultures and the development of local programmes have to be aggressively pursued and supported by governments, businesses and civil society. Africa has a rich legacy of cultural products that could be developed and packaged for new media dissemination both on the continent itself and in the wider world. Furthermore, ICTs should be used extensively to increase general and digital literacy and expertise, especially among the youth and children, while using them, at the same time, to enhance the development of local content. When ordinary people can relate to ICTs in their own languages and when these reflect and are reflective of their cultures and traditions, ICTs are more likely to be embraced and become an integral part of their lives, thus enabling them to benefit more fully from ICTs applications³.

However before content development can be made viable, Africa must take a serious approach to developing business models for transforming content to viable e-business/e-commerce solutions, especially in rural areas. Incubating and stimulating content industry spin-offs should be promoted and training programmes developed to improve the entrepreneurial skills of local content developers.

The availability of the appropriate skills base is an important determinant of the growth of ICTs supply activities, and these contribute to the more general human resource development. At the same time, the skills base must be understood as an important risk factor in appraising communications network infrastructure expansion and ICTs applications projects. Without available skills to operate and maintain the physical infrastructure, as well as develop and maintain software, users or potential users will naturally be unable to take advantage of the infra­structure, which itself will therefore not be used to its full potential. Another potential risk factor related to building the capacities of the human resources is the "brain-drain" risk, especially when training is not related to the real context. In this case, high-expectations can produce frustration as well as difficulties for trained people, especially if young people are placed at a high hierarchical level. In this regard, it is crucial that capacity building will not only focus on the training of individuals, but on reinforcing the capacity of an organisation (private and public) and especially the institutions at the local government level.

Currently, in Africa, the availability of specialists in ICTs and even training institutions in this area is extremely limited. It is therefore necessary that the sector reforms address this issue of basic training and developmental training so as to ensure the existence of sustainable, quality facilities, accessible to all in the sector, to ensure continued and improved availability of the requisite professional and operational human resources. Forging alliances between private and public sector, including international and multilateral organisations is pivotal. Africa should learn from the Indian experience, where rather than trying to legislate against staff poaching and brain drain, instead introduced policies and incentives for over-training, re-training, re-allocation and motivation schemes. In this way India not only reduced the impact of a brain drain, but changed it to "brain-export". Africa could do the same, and even develop research and manufacturing industries in ICTs, taking advantage of the many assets in the continent that give Africa an advantage over the more expensive economies and congested environments of Northern and Eastern countries. An additional approach to capacity building and institutional development in this area is through the frequent exchange of information, experiences and lessons learned between African policy makers and regulators, including the cross-border use of local experts and professionals⁴.

In this connection, an important aspect to take into consideration is the need to overcome the resistance of decision makers as a key factor in the effective involvement of all stakeholders. This can be done only through the promotion of general ICTs diffusion and creating awareness and appreciation as well as e-literacy among populations, especially children and young people, which is also likely to improve the level of basic literacy in Africa, giving it the required pool of people to develop higher skills to use ICTs efficiently and productively.

In conclusion, some questions still remain open, such as: What kind of actions should governments take in order to develop local e-governance systems that produce real public value (e.g. respond to the needs and priorities of citizens)? Which are the processes and competences associated with ICTs that should be developed/enhanced in the local government/public service in order to have a positive impact on "customer satisfaction" (internal customer=civil servant, external customer=citizen)? How to protect, nurture and develop people-participation and information-exchange (two of the basic assets of the knowledge-society)?

Notes

¹ Molo Thioune Ramata, (Edited by) Information and Communication Technologies for Development in Africa: Opportunities and Challenges for Community Development, CODESRIA/IDRC, 2003.

² On this see also John Gage, Information Technology and Economic Development, in Economic Development, 1999, Oxford University Press, and other articles and publications.

³ On this see also, Sy, J. Habib, "Critical and Prospective Views on ICTs and Governance in Africa", in "Africa Networking: Development Information ICTs and Governance, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, UNECA, Addis Ababa, 2004

⁴ On this see also, Olekambainei Emmanuel and Sintim-Misa Mavis Ampah, "Info-communication for Development in Africa", UN ICT Task Force Series 2, ICTs for African Development, UN, NY 2003.

Document(s) 13 of 16