<incom> NGOs in ICT4D need a serious paradigm shift

[Soenke Zehle]

 >The campaign had the potential to make a clean sweep across the continent.

On that note: what about NEPAD as a continentak framework within which 
to promote F/OSS? I tried toget a sense of whether or not F/OSS was an 
issue at the recent NEPAD's e-Africa Commission Youth Conference, but 
couldn't quite tell from online exchanges/documentation whether NEPAD 
was in fact a useful venue to promote F/OSS or wholly given to 
proprietary supporters, now I am wondering if anyone had taken up 
Diamoutene's injunction to 'go back to the source' and put a F/OSS spin 
on it...

Soenke

NEPAD e-Africa Youth urged to "go back to the source"
<http://hana.ru.ac.za/article.cfm?articleID=1089>
NEPAD e-Africa Commission Conference, Mpumalanga
By: Fortune Sibanda
13:50:41  03/07/2006

Article blurbThe President of Youth and ICTs (Mali) Mr. Oumar 
Diamoutene, made a passionate appeal to delegates attending the second 
NEPAD e-Africa Commission Youth Conference to go back to Africa's rich 
oral traditions in order to offset the misconceptions and lies that have 
been continually peddled by the international media on Africa and its 
way of life.

The President of Youth and ICTs (Mali) Mr. Oumar Diamoutene, made a 
passionate appeal to delegates attending the second NEPAD e-Africa 
Commission Youth Conference to go back to Africa's rich oral traditions 
in order to offset the misconceptions and lies that have been 
continually peddled by the international media on Africa and its way of 
life.

Speaking after a presentation by Mr. Tamel EL-Fouly from the Egyptian 
Ministry of Communications and Information Technology on how the youth 
can use of information communications technologies (ICTs) promote 
African philosophies, cultures and values, Mr. Diamoutene reminded 
delegates here that the international media and most books have been at 
the forefront of presenting Africa as a place where only savages live 
and thus warned people that in seeking to promote African philosophies 
and history, they must be careful as to where they get their information 
from.

He, thus, advocated that they must tap on Africa's rich oral history 
which has been passed from generation to generation and still resides in 
people's memories, especially the elders.

"Let us not depend too much on books and newspapers who have continued 
to misrepresent Africa throughout history" instead, let us tap 
information and knowledge from the elder people as it is only them who 
can help us correct these misconceptions [of the continent]. We want to 
hear our own voice and our own representations of ourselves and not the 
way CNN [Cable News Network] and the BBC [British Broadcasting 
Corporation] view us," he said to a rapturous applause from the delegates.

Earlier, Mr. EL-Fouly had presented to the plenary on the number of ways 
in which the NEPAD e-Africa Youth programme can help promote African 
values and philosophies through the provision of online information and 
other resources. He said that the major challenge facing this programme 
would be how to tap this information in the rural areas, where most of 
the remaining oral history on African history and values still resides.

"Lack of infrastructure, both physical and ICT-wise throughout the 
continent means that this project will face a lot of challenges, and 
this will be exacerbated by fact that most of our African history 
resides in people who we might not be able to communicate easily with 
due to language barriers," EL-Fouly said.

It was proposed that the information collected will be preserved in a 
user friendly online banks such as the proposed NEPAD e-Africa Youth Portal.

On the issue of access, EL-Fouly suggested that instead of just limiting 
the NEPAD e-Africa interventions to online media, information should 
also be made available in various media formats, including community 
radio and mobile telecentres and public internet terminals.

Ms Nonkqubela Jordan, the Director of the Africa Desk in the South 
African Department of Communications (DOC), also reminded delegates that 
ICTs should only be viewed as an enabler on how Africa can promote and 
protect her culture and values, and not an end in themselves.

She thus, urged delegates to make sure that whatever strategies they 
will agree on, they must make sure that these are inclusive of everyone, 
especially the rural youth, who constitute the majority of the African 
population:

"Young people in towns have different uses for ICTs from those of their 
counterparts in the rural areas. Just remember that when we talk of ICTs 
narrowly as computers and the internet, we are cutting off a large 
population of the African population from our development strategies."

The NEPAD e-Africa Commission Youth Programme is an initiative of the 
NEPAD e-Africa Commission on ICTs and the DOC. This is the second 
conference following the first meeting that was held at the same time 
last year in the Limpopo Province of South Africa.

This year's conference is being held in Badplaas, North-East of 
Johannesburg, also in South Africa. More than 14 African countries are 
represented, including Botswana, Cameroun, Congo (Brazzaville), the 
Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, 
Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tunisia. The delegates are drawn 
from government departments, civil society groups, and the private sector.