Pan-African Symposium Digital Opportunities for Africa – Community Multimedia Centres Dakar, Senegal 12 –17 June 2003

Attendum to the Kothmale Declaration « In view of the Dakar symposium workshop and keeping in mind the Kothmale recommendations and NEPAD as context of reference, the participants would like to emphasize the following issues: »

Dakar workshop results Community mobilisation, integration and sensitisation Technical challenges Contents and applications Sustainability

 The disabled should be considered as a priority group  CMCs should contribute to placing greater value on local cultures  There should be recognition of the public usefulness of the CMCs  The CMCs must not serve as an instrument of propaganda Community mobilisation, integration and sensitization

 preventive maintenance a key factor for development,  finding or developing technology suited to the tropical environment and local infrastructures  using alternative energy,  further developing technical training for staff  developing and strengthening telecommunications infrastructures to better serve rural communities Technical Challenges

 Putting on-line administrative information such as forms, official texts and public tenders in order to enchance access to public information  Favoring the collection, broadcasting and other distribution of local contents  African scripts must be digitized to enable development of contents and software in local languages Contents and applications

 appropriate price scales to be fixed by CMCs to take into account the socioeconomic circumstances and the needs of the community,  CMCs should maintain a complementary relationship with similar initiatives,  CMCs should benefit from fiscal advantages and/or exemptions  African governments and telecommunications companies should implement preferential tariffs for CMCs Sustainability

Jinay jisi Kaddasu (Stock sheet)

Subanafa in training

Training the women via electronic voice mail

Training and preventive maintenance sessions

Introduction suitcase radio editing session

Radio APAC records children’s music 6km from the town

Country doctors at the CMC

Banikoara training Users in Timbuktu

Kids training kids sessions

Teachers doing research at the CMC

In the past people emigrated to seek knowledge and today the knowledge is here “Marabout” sending

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!