Document(s) 5 of 12

During the past decade, global communications have changed dramatically, as a result of the increased use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). It has been widely acknowledged that the new ICTs have the potential to democratize national and international systems to an extent that no political movement has achieved. For the first time, a clear opportunity is afforded for individuals and populations outside the centre to have a significant influence and to ensure that their ideas and perspectives are taken into account by decision-makers in their own countries and indeed that their views become part of world thinking. For the first time, Africans living in remote areas can bring their perspectives, viewpoints, and experience to the global marketplace of ideas and knowledge. The most prominent and revolutionary feature of ICTs is their ability to eliminate the barriers of time and space, which have effectively silenced millions of people. However, if Africans are to become fully integrated into the global communication revolution, they require a basic level of technical knowledge and, even more dauntingly, an initial financial investment in the new technologies. At the national level, there is the need to create and maintain an adequate telecommunications infrastructure, and at the community or personal level, there is the need to invest in the purchase and maintenance of personal computers.

ICTs depend on good telephone connections, and this continues to be an elusive goal in many African countries. The status of the telecommunications sector in Africa is examined in this chapter, which then focuses on the need to ensure that social issues in general and gender issues in particular are taken into account in the further development of this sector. It is argued that ICTs have the potential to improve or make an impact on the lives of African women but that it is not enough for women simply to be passive participants in the development and wide dissemination of these technologies in Africa. Women in Africa must also be decision-makers and actors in the process of using the new ICTs to accelerate development. This chapter suggests that men’s and women’s attitudes, needs, and perspectives on ICTs are likely to differ and that it is important to take account of the specific needs of women. A reconceptualization of the use of ICTs as tools for African development may therefore be necessary, along with a reorganization of existing knowledge and information, and this implies a potential new role for African universities and research institutions. Finally, this chapter discusses a number of relevant activities already under way in various parts of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The globalized economy

Even while the economies of many countries have grown Africa has become increasingly marginalized in the 1990s. For the most part, the continent has lagged behind in the process of economic globalization that has swept up other regions of the world, including the so-called emerging regions, such as Latin America and parts of Asia. To a significant extent, this has been due to Africa’s poor infrastructure, including its telecommunications infrastructure, and its lower availability of skilled labour. The continent’s comparative advantage in labour costs, which might have been a substantial attraction to international investors in earlier decades, has become less significant with the emergence of the new ICTs.

This is true for at least three reasons. First, the effective use of ICTs depends on the availability of skilled labour. Second, ICTs have eliminated the need for some types of labour-intensive work. Third, ICTs have directly contributed to job fragmentation, whereby large portions of work can be completed in different parts of the world. The newly industrialized countries of Asia were quick to recognize and take advantage of globalization, and they offered attractive opportunities to foreign investors, not the least of which were their excellent infrastructure and educated labour force. The World Bank identified East Asia’s capacity to produce ICTs as a significant factor in its economic growth. Indeed, by 1995, ICTs accounted for more than 25% of all exports from East Asian economies (Crede and Mansell 1998). Similarly, United Nations figures suggest that more than 50% of the gross domestic product of the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development now comes from the knowledge industry (ECA 1998).

During the 1990s, the research and development (R&D) of transnational corporations has become increasingly internationalized, being characterized by rapid exchange of information and innovations via satellite. Also, production processes have become fragmented because information can be quickly transferred from one location to another. For example, many American firms now contract out routine data-processing work to countries like India or Barbados, which have advanced telecommunications infrastructures and highly skilled labour but much lower operating costs. Some have denounced these processes of globalization as another stage of imperialism. However, if globalization is interpreted as another stage of imperialism, it is even more pernicious than its predecessors, as it co-opts large numbers of people living in developing countries and makes distinctions among individuals based on education, skills, and access to ICTs, rather than on the simple centre-periphery or other geographical paradigms of an earlier age. Globalization has created new outsiders in the metropole, just as it has created new insiders in the periphery.

Nonetheless, access to ICTs offers new economic and social opportunities. At the end of the 20th century, Africa faces the challenge of using these opportunities constructively, rather than remaining passive and allowing ICTs to become another instrument of foreign domination. This was aptly summarized by Henry Chasia, the Kenyan deputy secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). In a speech at Arlington, Virginia, in September 1998, he noted that “the information economy is not an economy of dependency. It is a democratizing economy in which each one of us is free to contribute his or her talents and be compensated for it in an open global bazaar” (Chasia 1998).

African responses

The European Union, Japan, and the United States still dominate global telecommunications. In 1995, they shared 74% of world revenues from telecommunications (Crede and Mansell 1998). Africa has tried to respond to the new opportunities. But not surprisingly, the level and type of response have been uneven. In 1996–97, twelve African countries established separate telecommunications regulatory bodies. African countries with more liberal telecommunications policies have become continental leaders in the ICT sector. South Africa dominates the scene, with about 95% of the continent’s Internet hosts and an information-technology infrastructure comparable to that of many European countries. In South Africa alone, the number of Internet users is estimated at more than 500 000, and the country has a teledensity of 10 lines per 100 people, about 20 times higher than that of the rest of SSA. However, major disparities remain along racial and urban–rural lines. Although almost 90% of white South Africans have telephones in their homes, the same is true of only 12% of blacks (Hall 1998). For Africa as a whole, the ITU estimated that it would cost 28 billion United States dollars (USD) to increase teledensity to 1 line per 100 people (Kobokoane 1998).

Such large-scale investment is beyond the capacity of most African governments, so a growing number of countries are opening up the telecommunications sector to private investors. By mid-1998, 17 African incumbent operators had full or partial private ownership, some of it foreign. Indeed, according to ITU, between 1994 and 1998, telecommunications privatization injected nearly 2 billion USD into African economies. Nonetheless, ITU research suggests that even after a country reaches a teledensity of 1 line per 100 people, it can take 20–50 years to reach a density of 50 lines per 100 people, which reflects high telecommunications development. Jensen (1998) estimated that Africans currently constitute about 1% of global e-mail users. Moreover, it is quite likely that a disproportionate number of African users are foreigners based in Africa or Africans working in donor agencies, embassies, or international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Table 1 illustrates the major disparities in Internet use in Africa.
 
 

Table 1. Internet hosts in Africa, 1998.
Country						Number  of hosts															Country		Number of hosts
South Africa						122 025															Tunisia		69
Egypt						2 013															Mozambique		69
Namibia						640															Nigeria		49
Zimbabwe						599															Burkina Faso		45
Botswana						550															Togo		37
Kenya						458															Uganda		30
Morocco						431															Tanzania		25
Swaziland						330															Algeria		16
Côte d’Ivoire						253															Benin		13
Ghana						252															Angola		4
Zambia						181															Congo		4
Senegal						117															Niger		2
Source: Hall (1998).

Despite these disparities, Internet use is without doubt growing rapidly. Current estimates of the number of users in Africa vary from 800 000 to more than 1 million (Jensen 1998). By mid-1998, it was estimated that in Kenya about 2 500 people had Internet access, and the cost of computers had fallen to about 1 000 USD, owing both to reductions in import duty and to increased competition among suppliers. However, poor telephone connections have continued to be a significant deterrent to new Internet subscribers, as has the high cost of local calls in some countries (Jensen 1998). Moreover, African business has in general been slow to recognize the potential of the Internet. Electronic commerce is only beginning on the continent, despite the obvious potential in industries such as tourism. Finally, although no gender-disaggregated statistics on Internet users in Africa are available, it seems likely that more men than women are users, simply because in Africa men generally have greater access to technology.

Policy

National information-technology policies focused on improving the telecommunications sector and involving industry, management, and local R&D institutes will be essential if African countries want to benefit from the use of the new ICTs. A long-term perspective is needed, focused on achieving clear economic and development goals. Currently, entirely uncoordinated donor efforts are responsible for much of the information technology introduced in African countries (James 1998).

With the notable exception of South Africa, most African countries have given little attention to formulating ICT policies to provide overall structure to the development and growth of the telecommunications sector. Such policies are desirable to establish a well-coordinated development pattern with specific goals, take advantage of opportunities, and optimize investments from governments, donors, and the private sector. However, if women are to participate fully in all aspects of ICT development, then ICT policies must include a gender dimension. Previous African experience in a wide range of sectors from agriculture, to microenterprise, to education, etc., has demonstrated the need to recognize the disparity in men’s and women’s access to resources and opportunities and make policies to redress it. Most commonly, when policymakers have considered gender issues, it has been only after initial policies have proven ineffective. This new area of policy research therefore provides an opportunity for policymakers to integrate gender concerns into policy-making from the very beginning and “get it right.”

Few African countries have articulated policies on the overall development of the ICT sector, although many have elaborated policies specifically to reform the telecommunications sector. Although the countries of Africa are liberalizing their economies, most of the continent’s telecommunications networks are still under the control of national governments, with the result that the cost of telephone calls, especially international calls, is kept high and access to telephones is severely restricted. Increased competition, which is starting to occur in countries such as Senegal and Uganda, is leading to a reduction in prices, greater availability of lines, and, in consequence, increased connectivity, not only in urban centres but also in rural districts.

Currently, only 4% of Uganda’s population lives in Kampala, but the capital city has 60% of the country’s telephone lines. However, in mid-1998, the Ugandan government awarded a second network-operator licence to a consortium of private investors, headed by South African-based Mobile Telecommunication Network (MTN), for a bid of 5.6 million USD. The MTN–Uganda consortium is expected to install 60 000 land lines, in addition to 200 000 cellular lines, thus providing some relief from the current inaccessibility of telephone services outside Kampala. The immediate effect of the entry of the second network operator was a steep reduction in the cost of cellular telephones.

Similarly, Tanzania is currently drafting a new policy to guide the development of the sector into the next century. The policy is expected to reaffirm Tanzania’s commitment to competition and private-sector participation and mandate the privatization of the state-owned national operator. The cellular subsector has already been open to competition for some time. In many African countries, the low-income subscriber base and difficult terrain often make land-line networks an unattractive option, and for this reason cellular services are seen as more feasible, often attracting private-sector investment. However, although most of the cellular networks can be used to access the Internet, this often involves a very high cost, which still makes it an unattractive option (Jensen 1998).

Although the telecommunications policies adopted by many African governments are typically intended to promote the spread of ICTs to less advantaged parts of a country, they make no distinctions between the attitudes and needs of male and female users. In fact, it is assumed that such policies will provide equal benefits to all. However, experience has shown that the so-called gender-neutral policies tend to favour men, as men are more likely to have the income needed to purchase telephones or telephone services, and they are more likely to have slightly higher levels of education, which predisposes them to trying new technologies. For this reason, highly targeted efforts are needed to involve women and thereby ensure that their needs are integrated into ICT policies. Women themselves must become involved in ICT policy formulation. The starting point for encouraging women to participate in ICT policy-making is to create awareness in them of the importance of the information revolution and to help them to see the opportunities it holds for women. Women must understand their own information needs and develop sufficient technical knowledge to be credible advocates of their views in policy debates (Hafkin 1998). The new ICTs can marginalize both men and women in Africa. However, women are likely to be slower in adopting the new technologies, unless strategies are developed to deliberately involve women. As will be argued below, these strategies should focus on how to integrate women into ongoing processes while exploring and analyzing the extent to which these processes meet the needs of African women and take account of their perspectives.

Gender and technology

Traditionally, the tendency has been to view new technologies introduced into the global marketplace as gender neutral, having equal potential to be used by either men or women. Engineers in technology development gave no consideration to the symbolic value of technology or, perhaps more important, the symbolic value of the use of technology. As is already well documented, fewer women than men in Africa, as elsewhere, specialize in the sciences or engineering (Rathgeber 1995). Moreover, if women seem to be “fearful” of technology or reluctant to experiment with new technologies, then this is usually interpreted as a “female problem,” rather than as a reflection of the inappropriate design of the technologies or the aura of male dominance surrounding their use, or both. Thus, if women have not been active participants in the development and use of new technologies, then it is assumed this has been a result of (1) their own choice or (2) the fact that they have been slow to recognize the importance of a particular new technology. Seldom does anyone consider that women may take less interest in new technologies out of a sense of pragmatism, that is, out of their need to deal with a multitude of tasks, meet a variety of demands, and play diverse roles with limited time. In other words, whether or not some women have a “fear” of technology, they have a pressing need to attend to many diverse duties and have little time to experiment with new technologies simply out of a sense of interest.

To a large extent, this traditional pattern of male and female attitudes toward technologies is replicating itself in the development of the new ICTs. Few if any statistics are available on the involvement of women in this sector, but preliminary observations indicate that women are greatly underrepresented. For Europe and North America, some anecdotal evidence indicates that women who do involve themselves in information technologies tend to bring with them interests and expectations different from those of their male colleagues. For example, early research has shown that women and girls in information technology and engineering tend to be more interested in the social applications of technologies (Keller 1992). Similarly, research in the United States suggested that girls are less likely to be interested in violent computer games, which are often very popular with boys. However, developing software for children has become a substantial industry in North America, with the result that a wide range of computer games are now available, including some designed specifically for girls. Consequently, even preschoolers are achieving a certain degree of computer literacy.

In Africa, too, interest is growing in the potential that ICTs offer women. In the weeks before the 40th anniversary conference of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in April 1998, ECA joined the World Bank and the Women’s Programme of the Association for Progressive Communications in organizing the Afr-fem Internet working group. The group’s mandate was to gather field information on the conference themes, which led to numerous lively and lengthy discussions of the potential of ICTs to advance African women’s interests. More than half of the group came from South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda. Only one-fifth came from francophone Africa, and half of the francophone group came from Senegal (AWG 1998b). Perhaps not surprisingly, more of the members were Africans living outside Africa, especially in the United States.

The working group focused on the problem of persuading more African women to establish Internet connections. It also noted that the Internet serves as an effective means for Africans living outside the continent to be immediately in touch with those still in Africa. As such, it points the way to the formation of similar working groups to connect African women living in different parts of the continent to discuss issues of common concern, ranging from microenterprise to peace and conflict resolution. However, most of the women with access to e-mail and the World Wide Web still tend to be members of the urban elite.

ICTs as tools of development

Although ICTs evidently can play an important role in African development, it must be emphasized that they are simply tools, means to an end. Provision of telephone services to rural areas is a starting point in making use of these tools and one that has been widely recognized as being of central importance. The benefits of wider telephone service include employment generation and improvements in social services and farming practices. Most importantly, ICTs such as telephones can help to break down the isolation of individuals living in remote rural areas. Perhaps rather optimistically, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) identified the following outcomes (USAID 1996):

• Reduced migration to urban areas, owing to improved possibilities for small-business and microenterprise development in rural communities;

• Rapid access to assistance during civil emergencies or natural disasters;

• Improved access to health extension services (telemedicine, with remote diagnosis and treatment advice);

• Increased access to market and price information, reducing the opportunity costs for local farmers and traders; and

• Improved educational services, including distance learning.

In the final analysis, however, ICTs will not have a major impact in rural areas unless they meet people’s information needs. This will involve developing appropriate software to provide gender-sensitive, relevant information, sometimes in forms the nonliterate can access. Information for audiences with limited or no educational backgrounds has to be packaged in a meaningful format. But even for literate consumers, especially women, time constraints are important factors. Thus, producers of information would have to ensure that their knowledge packages meet the needs of their consumers, with clear and direct content. The task of producing such packages would provide significant opportunities for both the public and the private sectors.

Finally, it should be pointed out that there is far from universal agreement that ICTs have an immediate role to play in African development. For example, one African communication expert (Obijiofor 1998) argued that more advanced ICTs are inappropriate in Africa at this stage, that they can have little impact in rural communities, and that the telephone itself is the most useful instrument for African communications because it builds on the oral traditions of all indigenous societies. Similarly, many African politicians, senior civil servants, and intellectuals have argued that the continent’s primary concern should be to resolve the lingering traditional problems of development, including poverty, illiteracy, and inadequate health services, before diverting scarce resources to the ICT sector. Although such views have merit, they are based on a linear approach of human development, in which advancement is seen as a progressive, step-by-step process. From another perspective, it seems timely to build on the emerging opportunities offered by the new ICTs because once the infrastructure is in place, they would provide the considerable advantage of enabling people to move information and knowledge quickly and cheaply to very remote parts of the continent.

Preparing the ground

If African women are to participate fully in the ICT revolution, then greater efforts must be made to ensure that girls become involved in science and technology (S&T) at an early age. This entails not only improving the science education that girls receive in primary and secondary schools but also including a sensitization process to emphasize that S&T is of lifelong relevance to both girls and boys. To some extent this is already being done. For example, Kenyan newspapers regularly feature articles about girls’ participation in science. Moreover, although male scientists still dominate, a few women are starting to be visible in S&T in Africa. However, they are more common in the biological and biophysical sciences, such as medicine and food technology, than in engineering, electronics, or information science.

This situation is not unique to Africa. United Kingdom statistics show that the number of women entering university computer-science courses fell from 24% in 1979 to less than 10% in 1989 (Kirkup 1992). However, with the recognition of the growing importance of information technology during the 1980s, secondary and even primary schools in the industrialized countries have increasingly exposed students to computers, and information technology has become part of the curriculum. In Africa, students’ access to computers is confined to only a few elite private schools, usually in or near urban centres. Girls and boys tend to be equally disadvantaged, although awareness of the importance of information-technology and computer skills is growing in many schools and these schools are making efforts to provide some basic equipment for their students. The World Bank has been an active partner in such efforts in Uganda, establishing linkages between a number of Ugandan and US schools through its World Links for Development project. Similarly, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has established SchoolNet projects in Uganda and South Africa, creating linkages among schools in each country. These initiatives allow less well-endowed schools to benefit from some of the knowledge resources of the more prosperous schools in the same country.

African educational systems will have to change at all levels to ensure the needed skills base for a broader use of computers and information technologies in all aspects of life. Both men and women will need to acquire various new skills in participatory networking, information-sharing, and facilitating the design, implementation, and maintenance of new communication networks to successfully integrate ICTs into African societies. African users of ICTs will require people with technical skills in computer installation, user training and maintenance, and management of sophisticated communication networks and information services and applications (Crede and Mansell 1998). Acquisition of any of these skills rests on an openness to new ideas and new ways of working. Lifelong learning will be a demand of the ICT age.

The reconceptualization of knowledge

Beyond simple questions of curriculum reform, another more complex set of issues should also be addressed. These issues relate to the conceptualization of knowledge. Feminist philosophers of science have observed that female cognitive structures differ from those of men. This has implications for women’s attitudes and approaches to the use of ICTs. For example, Sherry Turkle observed that “the present social construction of programming styles and computer culture encourages one particular style of thinking which is not only repressive for many women, but restricts the potential of computers” (Turkle, quoted in Kirkup 1992, p. 277). As well, Kirkup (1992, p. 279) remarked that

Turkle demonstrates … that many women (and some men) are alienated from the computer … because the computer culture imposes a particular … “correct” style of interaction, based on a formal, top-down method of working, in which the problem is dissected into separate parts and solved by designing sets of modular solutions.

In Africa, this may mean combining information transferred through ICTs with more traditional ways of imparting knowledge. For example, an IDRC-supported project undertaken with the International Center for Agroforestry Research, in Nairobi, is developing a system to electronically send information on soil conservation and good farming practices to a community centre equipped with a computer and e-mail facilities in Kabale, Uganda. When the project is fully functional, this technical information will be downloaded and shared with local women’s groups, which have already started to “humanize” such scientific information by creating stories and performing dramas to convey not only this information but also commentary on social issues of importance to the community, such as male drunkenness, violence against women, and the importance of keeping children in school. In this way, ICTs are used to disseminate scientific knowledge, but, on arrival at the site, that knowledge is made more interesting and relevant to rural women (and men).

Restructuring of universities and research institutions in Africa

An in-depth discussion of the nature of knowledge and knowledge production is beyond the scope of this chapter, but at least two important factors are relevant to ICTs. The first is that traditional modes of library-based research are fast becoming obsolete and that African institutions must change their approaches to research and knowledge production or risk being completely bypassed in the global marketplace of knowledge and ideas. The second is that the explosion of knowledge generation and the new capacity to immediately move information and ideas around the world have brought on a new world information order. Emerging scientific knowledge and ideas no longer have to go through the traditional channels: being introduced, first, to a small select society of insiders (specialists in the field), being ratified by that group, and then eventually making their way into the mainstream of society. The hegemony of knowledge — tight control by specialists — is being severely challenged. This has both positive and negative connotations. On the one hand, it may lead to a democratization of knowledge and make it possible for ideas and contributions from outsiders to be heard and taken seriously. On the other hand, it has already led to an explosion and surfeit of information, with the resulting “information fatigue.”

Perhaps the most difficult task facing knowledge users today is to meaningfully sort out and systematize knowledge and information. ICTs can help individuals and groups gain information on how to improve some aspects of their lives. However, that information should satisfy the following criteria: it must be (1) relevant to the needs of the users; (2) comprehensible; and (3) easily available. These may appear to be self-evident criteria, but in fact they probably pose the most important obstacles to the wider adoption of ICTs in Africa. The opportunity costs of the investment in a computer for an individual or even a group are often too high to make it a worthwhile endeavour if it offers no obvious and immediate payoff in terms of beneficial information.

The organization and the systematization of useful development-related information for rural Africa are tasks for African universities and research institutions familiar with local conditions and languages. However, African universities have not readily accepted this challenge. They still tend to operate on the models of research established in the late colonial and early postcolonial eras, when most of the universities were founded. Most African universities are not fully computerized. Efforts have been made to introduce computers into university classrooms and libraries, but the high capital and maintenance costs have made it difficult for struggling institutions to systematically computerize. Many have depended on donors to provide computers and connectivity.

Unfortunately, most African universities and research institutions still tend to use computers as sophisticated typewriters and have failed to establish linkages with colleagues internationally or access wider information bases. The reason for this may be, in many cases, that users do not have extensive contacts outside their country or institution to motivate them to use the Internet or e-mail. Nonetheless, a few institutions were quick to recognize the potential of ICTs. For example, the medical library at the University of Zimbabwe has been computerized since the 1980s. Consequently, its students have had access to global bibliographic resources.

Despite the slow move toward computerization and connectivity in African universities, ICTs probably offer them their best opportunity to minimize and even overcome the disadvantages they have suffered over the past 20 years as a result of declining budgets and the consequent inability to develop library collections. CD-ROMS can provide extensive databases, and they are relatively cheap.

Also, information technologies can enable African universities to develop outreach services in rural areas, through distance-learning programs. This is done in Europe and North America. For example, the Open University in the United Kingdom now offers 14 online courses, and East Tennessee State University is pioneering an innovative program with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States whereby students have remote access to electron microscopes. Students post samples to the laboratory and then operate the microscopes directly from a keyboard (Guardian Weekly 1998). Because the cost of computers is still far beyond the means of the average African citizen, various modes of social organization will have to be developed to provide people in rural areas with access to such innovative modes of instruction. Potentially, this might involve a more extensive development of community-based learning centres or telecentres, or both, in rural areas, which is already occurring at a rapid rate in countries like Senegal.

Some specific examples of African activities

Many international organizations actively promote the use of computers and ICTs in Africa. To a considerable extent, their initiatives have tended to focus on the needs of urban users and to view rural women and men as secondary users. This is likely to change in the near future, because of the current expansion of telecommunications infrastructure occurring over most of Africa. As a result of this expansion, women and men in even remote areas will have access to ICTs, and as the market expands more private operators are likely to become active.

Notwithstanding the urban bias, a number of important activities are under way (the following provides a selected overview, rather than an exhaustive listing). Perhaps most significantly, in the late 1990s, ECA began to focus on ICTs. The 1996 ECA Conference of African Ministers responsible for economic and social development and planning adopted a continent-wide ICT strategy, the African Information Society Initiative (AISI). The basic objective of AISI is to end Africa’s information and technology gap by bringing the continent into the information age.

The main areas for implementing AISI are policy awareness, national ICT-infrastructure planning, connectivity, training and capacity-building, democratized access to the information society, sector applications, and development-information infrastructure. Of these, the greatest progress has been made in policy awareness: most African countries are aware of the importance of planning a national ICT infrastructure and developing connectivity — some 47 countries now have direct access to the Internet. Ten countries have started to develop national policies. Momentum is also great in the area of democratizing access to the information society, and to respond to this issue the telecentre movement has taken on great momentum. ECA’s efforts in democratization of access to ICTs have concentrated on encouraging the full participation of women in the use of these technologies.

IDRC has been promoting information systems in Africa since the early 1970s. Until the mid-1990s, its support was aimed primarily at the establishment of computerized information bases and resources intended primarily for research at African higher-education institutions or government ministries. Since the mid-1990s IDRC’s efforts have intensified. The Unganisha project, started in 1997, has focused on providing connectivity for African institutions conducting IDRC-funded research, and now about 35–40% of IDRC’s interaction with African researchers is carried out by e-mail.

In 1996, IDRC launched its Acacia Initiative, which has the objective of using ICTs to accelerate economic and social development at the community level. In its first phase, Acacia has targeted four African countries: Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, and Uganda. Acacia has made efforts to introduce a comprehensive strategy in each country to develop policy, infrastructure, human resources, and content. The initiative takes a special interest in working with women and marginalized members of communities.

Acacia is implemented in Uganda through the National Council of Science and Technology, which has established an overall coordinating secretariat and a number of working groups that focus on the various components of the strategy. The National Acacia Strategy was developed and ratified at a meeting in Kampala in December 1997. This meeting brought together representatives from different strata of society and regions of the country. The strategy was later introduced and discussed in communities in five regions of Uganda. In each case, community members indicated their information needs and priorities. Not surprisingly, these varied somewhat, in accordance with the main income-generating activities of the region. By the end of 1998, two telecentres had been established. Interestingly enough, early evidence, not only in Uganda, but also in other Acacia focus countries, shows that the communities often believe that the telecentres should have female managers.

Many other donors have been active in development-information projects. The United States has undertaken a number of important activities, including the 15 million USD, USAID-funded Leland Initiative, which is designed to strengthen Internet connectivity in 20 African countries, in return for agreements to liberalize the market to third-party Internet service providers (Jensen 1998). The Leland Initiative also aims to enable USAID projects to communicate electronically with one another and share development-related information. USAID is also supporting AfricaLink, which provides connectivity for the agriculture, research, and natural-resources management community in Africa. Moreover, in 1997 the United States government (through Hillary Clinton) pledged 1 million USD to be spent exclusively on women’s networking in Africa. This objective of this initiative, known as POWERNET (the “emPOWERment NETwork”), is to form a network of elected female officials in Africa and the United States. POWERNET will enable them to share information and lessons learned in their efforts to increase the participation of women in political processes and economic development. However, to date, USAID has done little to enhance the use of the Internet in rural communities or among the poor in Africa, and these remain areas for further development.

In 1998, in South Africa, SANGONeT, in collaboration with the Commission on Gender Equality, launched a project called Women’sNet, aiming to strengthen South African women’s capacity to use the Internet. Women’sNet provides training and capacity-building and has also developed a website (Women’sNet 1999), with content that is useful and relevant to South African women. Its first topics of concentration were the prevention of violence against women in South Africa and the region of the Southern African Development Community and women in small, medium-sized, and microenterprises.

In Uganda, the Forum for Women in Democracy is helping female parliamentarians gain access to the Internet to gather information relevant to performing their roles in the legislative process, with a special focus on legislation affecting women at the community level. Similarly, in Benin and Cameroon, three pilot centres have been set up to provide legal and extension information and education services aimed at improving women’s legal and social equality (ECA 1998).

Despite all these activities, much remains to be done to put African women on the information superhighway. In the period just before the 40th anniversary ECA conference, a Ugandan NGO, the Ugandan Women’s Organization Network (UWONET), contacted 16 organizations with an interest in the advancement of women in Uganda to solicit their comments and feedback for input into the Afr-fem Working Group. UWONET’s initiative received a very limited response, and Afr-fem suggested the following possible reasons for this:

• Organizations may need to be sensitized to the role of the Internet and e-mail discussion groups, especially in quick sharing of ideas, experiences, and solutions to common problems;

• Even those groups connected to the Internet may not be sufficiently trained in the use of the facility;

• Organizations still have limited access to computers with e-mail — most organizations have at most one computer with e-mail–Internet access; and

• None of the participating organizations had e-mail connections at their branches outside Kampala (AWG 1998a).

References

AWG (Afr-fem Working Group). 1998a. Report on outreach efforts by an African NGO. Global Knowledge Partnership Secretariat, World Bank Institute, Washington, DC, USA. Internet: www.globalknowldge.org/english/archives/mailarchives/afr-fem/afrfem-jun98/0054.html

——— 1998b. Afr-fem Working Group: summary twelve (6/07–6/13). Global Knowledge Partnership Secretariat, World Bank Institute, Washington, DC, USA. Internet: www.globalknowldge.org/english/archives/mailarchives/afr-fem/afrfem-jun98/0030.html

Chasia, H. 1998. Developing an African information infrastructure: the need for commitment and vision. Address presented at AFCOM 1998, 9–11 Sep, Arlington, VA, USA. International Telecommunication Union, Geneva, Switzerland. Internet: www.itu. int/officials/chasia/speeches/1998/afcom982.html

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1.  NB: The views expressed in this chapter are my own and not necessarily those of the International Development Research Centre. I am grateful to Nancy Hafkin, Maureen O’Neil, and Eglal Rached for comments on an earlier version. Return

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