In Search for Quality Web Content Noel YAVO, MD Woyaa ADF '99 Exhibition Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia October 1999

Context Objective Evaluation Rules and criterias Working procedure Evaluation Survey Evaluation results Recommendations Conclusions

Context Exponential growth High user expectations Specific issues

Assess the African Web content Recommend an approach for improving the quality of the content. Areas of Education, Science, Culture, Public information and Community development Present in an integrated Web site open to all Objective

Defined and made available on the project Web site to evaluators Grouped into relevant and easily understood and measured categories Contents and Credibility, Design and Navigation, Interactivity and Multimedia techniques African Web sites Measured from 1 to 5 Evaluation Rules & Criterias

1. Sites Pre-selection by Internet users, Woyaa! and UNESCO will pre-select between 20 and 30 for each category 2. Evaluation based on short list by evaluators using Web- based interactive evaluation form 3. In each category, the votes for each site have been aggregated and sites have been ranked. 4. An electronic forum, mailing-list 5. Best 50 sites selected are awarded TOP50 mention listed on the TOP50 African Web site Working Procedure

Content & Credibility Design & Navigation Interactivity & Multimedia Evaluation Survey

CATEGORY Overall Sites AVG All categories 3,4 310 AVG Community Development 3,3 36 AVG Culture 3,1 50 AVG Education 3,2 38 AVG Public Information 3,6 159 AVG Sciences 3,1 30 Evaluation Results

Evaluation Results CRITERIA Overall Content 3,4 Credibility 3,5 Navigation 3,6 Design 3,4 Interactivity 3,4

High proportion of non-african sites on Africa High proportion of sites hosted abroad (US, CA, FR, UK) Acceptable credibility and navigability To-be-improved content, design, interactivity, Xmedia Insufficient Education, Community development sites Un-avalability rate 5% Long access transit routes Promotion techniques Non-South-african sites (70/30) Design skills (graphics, HTML, interactivity) Evaluation Results

Design skills (graphics, HTML, interactivity) Low-usage of security mechanism National orientation or multinational sites International, NGO funding, Personal Sites

Increase number of sites in of Education, Sciences and Community development Increase volume of information contents produced by Africans with emphasis to accuracy and currency Public sector institutions as well as International organizations to increase their example role and provide incentives and infrastructures supporting public content initiatives Initiatives that improves the skills (design, content production) Common Web hosting and management tools and infrastructures that guaranty the availability, quality and performance Recommendations

Recommendations Online training and education resources for digital content and Web sites designers Increase the use of Web techniques (meta tags) for insuring sites visibility Initiatives (policy and mechanism) to insure copyrights protection and provide incentive to put content online Information and awareness campaigns on the digital society requirements, opportunities and threats Definition of sites design and production standards and build-up of common / shared Web resources for communities (education, development, sciences) Regional and pan-African Web sites and content production or management initiatives

The number of Web sites built by Africans and hosted in Africa as well as the number of African netters has significantly increased despite the limited information society infrastructure. The higher costs for producing and managing Web contents combined with lack of copyrights protection and technical skills as well as the lack of adequate revenue generating items prevent a rapid and quality build-up. Public sectors have a key role to play to show the example, supporting training and education initiatives as well taking the measures