<incom> African community media and telecentres step forward together

[Geert Lovink]

Community Media & ICT News (December 2006, Issue 2)

December 8 2006, Benin

“African community media and telecentres step forward together”

The first Africa Telecentre Leaders’ Forum concluded last week in Porto 
Novo, Benin. The forum brought together community media, telecentre and 
network leaders from across the continent to share their successes and 
challenges, skills and ideas. Over 90 participants attended from over 
20 countries. The forum was organised by telecentre.org, UNESCO and the 
Open Knowledge Network.

The forum used an innovative and dynamic facilitation approach to 
maximise interaction and networking among participants. Atypical of 
events of this type there were no keynote speeches, no formal panels 
and a marked absence of digital slide presentations. Participants 
designed and self-selected sessions based on their own interests and a 
majority of the forum’s work was done in small groups. A post-forum 
wiki is being established to facilitate follow-through on specific 
projects and to synthesise key points for both practitioners and policy 
makers.

A number of alternative formats had participants rotating through ten 
five-minute presentations in the course of an hour, pitching their 
ideas in a project marketplace and running short skill-sharing and 
peer-assist sessions. While organisers recognise the need to refine and 
adapt the methodology, the approach resonated strongly among 
participants, particularly from younger generations.

“I found here in two days the kind of information and ideas I have not 
found in my own country in two years” said Nouhou Soumana, manager of a 
community multimedia centre in Goudel, Niger, a pilot that aims to 
inspire more than 100 community radios across the country to make more 
strategic use of ICTs. Asked why the forum was so useful, he responded 
“No question, it has been the approach. The methodology demands a 
certain passion and engagement from everyone involved and so people are 
able to discover things they actually need. It was exceptional.”

Key involvement and support for the forum and for larger community 
multimedia and telecentre objectives also came from the Swiss Agency 
for Development and Cooperation and Microsoft.

UNESCO used the opportunity to bring together programme specialists 
working with community multimedia centres from across Africa as well as 
from Asia and the Caribbean to review the recent independent evaluation 
of the organisation’s community multimedia projects and new strategies 
to promote the integration of traditional media and new ICTs. The 
meeting reaffirmed the UNESCO commitment to community multimedia, 
especially in respect of strategic projects at the local and national 
level and for building the capacity of media, civil society and 
government to foster community access to the widest possible range of 
ICTs.

Among other recommendations were a clearer elaboration of the CMC 
approach, a more central place for development content in promotion of 
the model and stronger focuses on policy advocacy, open curriculum 
development and supporting national networks. A global monitoring 
system for individual country’s success in providing community-level 
access to ICTs was also discussed as a longer-term objective.

Contact: Jocelyne Josiah ACI/NDL j.josiah at unesco.org, Seema Nair, CMC 
Asia Coordinator, s.nair at unesco.org

Links:

UNESCO New Delhi http://unesconewdelhi.nic.in

UNESCO Communication and Information Sector www.unesco.org/webworld

UNESCO Community Multimedia Centre Initiative 
www.unesco.org/webworld/cmc