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 Telecenters in 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 contents e.g. HealthNet and MANGO in Zimbabwe:

Databases and Multimedia contents on CD-ROM

Click for next screen

No. of Messages on AFRO-NETS

Click for next screen

Question: Who is doing What and Where? Look at:

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 CostsUS$ 10 – 20,000 per yearUS$ 0.0 ApproachDirect to StudentTrain the Trainer Faculty1 school (usually developed country) 1,540 faculty, 102 countries, 20% developing countries FormatTalking HeadProvide content to local Teacher Sites1 siteMirroring in all Medical Schools Students/year10030 – 50,000 Quality controlNo systematic5 peer evaluations per lecture EquipmentHigh band widthLow 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