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

Click for next screen

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

Click for next screen

Question: Who is doing What and Where?

Look at: http://www.shared.de

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

Click for next screen

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