"We believe in Africa 's role in the information society of today and tomorrow, and we see Creative Commons and open content initiatives as one way to give voice to the vast creativity and knowledge that exists in Africa.” Statement read in over 20 languages at the Commons Sense conference, May 2005 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’

Creative Commons in Africa: a glocal approach Heather Ford Creative Commons South Africa iCommons Summit – June, 2005

The spread of cc “The (grey) are countries where the project has launched. The yellow are close. The red is yet to be liberated.” Lessig blog – June 8

Failure? + Nigeria + Ghana + Egypt

Nobody came…

1.Community building 2.Initiating debate 3.Launching a local licence 4.Building partnerships 5.Supporting licence networks 6.Building applications 7.Affecting policy A phased approach

1. Community building

South Africa 43 million population 4 million online 18.7 million mobile users Educational challenges –11 official languages –Apartheid legacy –ICTs in schools

2. Legal porting Andrew Rens

“Do you want to port the cc licences to your local jurisdiction? Sign up to volunteer here” Process

Mechanism: (Free) online discussion forum

Vehicle: (Free) public interest lawyers who are already aware

Incentives: An interested public and media with a stake in the outcomes of the debate

Online discussion forum Exactly 3 replies: from Andrew and myself to each other Face-to-face discussions were critical to ensure legitimacy

Public interest IP lawyers Virtually no public interest IP lawyers Turn to academics and policy practitioners instead

An interested public with a stake in the outcomes of the debate The public’s awareness of IP is limited to issues of “piracy” and the image of the “pirate” has not yet moved from the criminal to the ordinary person

legitimacy

Commons-sense: Towards an African Digital Information Commons 1.Map the commons 2.Build community 3.Enable implementation 2005 A glocal event

Highway Africa News Agency

Rhodes New Media Lab

June, /4 licensors

And now… Almost every major website involved in educational technology for development A growing number of ngos and non-profits University departments, major research A cartoonist, local artists, musicians and multimedia students Donors and interest from government

cc is critical piece of a puzzle 1. Enlivening and empowering African voices on the internet 2. Improving access to quality materials for effective education

The possibilities we want to enable Students learning about apartheid propaganda by remixing scenes from the SABC in the 1980s Access to the forgotten black writers of the last century

Application development models

1.‘Developing a southern perspective of IP, media and culture in the 21 st century’ cc Brazil, Ford – case studies – models 2.Science Commons: End-to-end publishing platforms with partners in the South 3.Regional legal and community-building support 4.Music sharing and the ‘freedom toaster’ Partnerships global, regional and local

Coordinating sector campaigns Development information – the APC Academic publishing – UKZN Patrick Bond Education online – Thutong, Donors – TSF, Osisa, Digital repositories – SASLI, UCT Multimedia archives – SABC, National Film Archives, SAHA Indigenous knowledge databases

Local policy work Local public domain Indigenous Knowledge Bill Access to Information Act

The spread of cc “The (grey) are countries where the project has launched. The yellow are close. The red is yet to be liberated.” Lessig blog – June 8

? Interoperability 1.Licence development 2.Application development 2. Corporate partnerships ?