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Into or Out of the Digital Divide?
An African Perspective
Part II: Digital Opportunities
Dieter Neuvians MD
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische
Zusammenarbeit
Harare - Zimbabwe
3 ’C’ to bridge the digital divide:
Connectivity Contents Capacity
Universal Access South Africa: (2001: 90%)
every citizen living within 5 km or a 30-minutes walk of a telephone
Universal Service
Botswana:every village of 500 people or more has a telephone
Every citizen to have a telephone in their own home
Rural Telecentersin Zimbabwe
Initiatives to improve connectivity in Africa
infoDev (World Bank) Acacia (IDRC) Leland (USAID)
Africa One
Africa Online
3 ’C’ to bridge the digital divide:
Connectivity Contents Capacity
Knowledge is Power My knowledge is my advantage “Knowledge sharing is an unnatural act”
but… Knowledge is key to development Knowledge sharing should be encouraged
/ rewarded SHARED knowledge is double knowledge
Country “Intranets”Fido-based technology
Local contentse.g. HealthNet andMANGOin Zimbabwe:
Databases and
Multimedia contents on CD-ROM
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No. of Messages on AFRO-NETS
880692
1296
1628
875
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
1800
1997 1998 1999 2000 1. Half 2001
Data overload -Information underload
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ALIN East Africa
The result: A woman in Eldoret in Kenya’s Rift Valley region waters her mini garden
Digital Opportunities e.g. e-commerce
Digital Opportunities:Distance Learning
Traditional Public Health Distant Education
Supercourse – Globalisation of Training without Distant Education
Costs US$ 10 – 20,000 per year US$ 0.0
Approach Direct to Student Train the Trainer
Faculty 1 school (usually developed country)
1,540 faculty, 102 countries, 20% developing countries
Format Talking Head Provide content to local Teacher
Sites 1 site Mirroring in all Medical Schools
Students/year 100 30 – 50,000
Quality control No systematic 5 peer evaluations per lecture
Equipment High band width Low band width
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3 ’C’ to bridge the digital divide:
Connectivity Contents Capacity
What is needed?
Literacy
Computer Literacy• Education• Knowledge• Empowerment
Human capacity
(people and skills): Promote ITC skills among children Enhance teacher’s training in ICT Give special attention to illiterate people Twin universities in industrialised and
DC Companies train workforce in ICT Cyber-mentor entrepreneurs Support local / indigenous / traditional
knowledge
The issue is: not whether to respond… but how to respond to the challenges
brought by ICT
Developing Countries should be able to extract value from globalisation…
rather than globalisation extract value from Developing Countries
There has been much talk - but little action
Let’s act now!
“We have had enough documents put on the table to destroy a few forests”
Former South African Communication Minister Jay Naidoo
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