Internet: curse or blessing? This was the question highlighted in a debate on the role of the Internet in southern Africa, held in Felix Meritis, Amsterdam, on 26 September 2003 as part of NiZA’s Living Yearbook Southern Africa. For lack of disagreement among the speakers a sparkling debate failed to arise. Most speakers considered the Internet a potential blessing which, however, required infrastructural improvements as well as the removal of social and cultural obstacles.

The forthcoming UN-organised World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva occasioned the discussion. Four participants were from southern Africa; three of them – Margret Mpolokoso of Zambia’s Radio Icengelo, Clara Masinga, who lives in a Limpopo Province rural community in South Africa, and the Johannesburg-based media expert, Tracey Naughton – had just arrived from Geneva, where they had participated in a WSIS preparatory meeting. The other two participants were Chris Armstrong (South Africa’s National Community Radio Forum) and Leo Van Audenhoven, who teaches International Communication at the Free University of Brussels.

Prior to the Living Yearbook seven delegates from southern Africa had spent a fortnight in Switzerland to attend the final WSIS preparatory meetings. Their aim was to promote the interests of rural communities in southern Africa. According to Clara Masinga, it is of crucial importance to these communities to have access to the information and communication opportunities the Internet offers.

The WSIS will be divided into two sessions, one in Geneva from 10 to 12 December 2003, and one in Tunis in November 2005. They will bring together all United Nations Member States in a discussion on how to proceed towards the nascent information society.

Under a tree

Agreement existed between participants in the Felix Meritis debate that the Internet might lead to considerable change in southern Africa. It soon appeared, however, that we will have a long way to go yet. Tracey Naughton said that during the preparations to the WSIS she had met with too many people who paid attention to the technical part of the story only. In her introduction to the debate she said, "If we want to build an information society, we will need more than technicians only. I feel it to be my duty to develop a vision of the future in this regard, since the development towards the digital age is primarily a socio-cultural matter."

Yet the infrastructural element is also essential to the digital revolution, as was clearly illustrated by Margret Mpolokoso’s slide presentation on a teacher in Namibia giving classes under a tree. His bush hamlet had neither electricity nor water supply nor any means of communication with the outside world, the nearest telephone being 100 kilometres away.

The Internet has not yet stretched out its tentacles into these parts of the world, simply because governments and businesses are hardly interested in installing pricey cable networks in poor, sparsely populated areas. Clara Masinga from South Africa said it was primarily the duty of the government to invest in ICT, in order to allow not just the cities but also the rural areas to get connected to current developments.

Cable networks

Asked whether the Internet made any sense in countries where most people have no command of the English language and struggle to survive on less than US$ 1 per day, Leo Van Audenhoven replied that opportunities abound, although at present the Web has little to offer in terms of relevant content. "We tend to regard the Internet as an inexhaustible source of knowledge, but the information on the Web mainly emanates from Western sources and is often of little use to people in rural communities in Africa."

What then would one expect people in southern Africa to actually use the Internet for? The speakers weren’t able to think of any possible uses beyond e-trading, or comparing the prices of their own and other products such as cotton.

Poignantly, the two women participating in the panel as grassroots representatives of their communities in Zambia and South Africa were allowed to give short presentations of examples based on their own practical experience but were effectively ignored during the discussion which followed.

This contributed to the feeling of disappointment ensuing from a debate, which could have yielded so much more. The chairman of the panel, Awil Abdullah Mohamoud from Ethiopia, may be to blame for this. He strictly held the speakers to their allotted speaking time, preventing them from proceeding beyond a rather dull presentation of views that were so close to each other as to block the arising of a real debate.

More information: www.wsis-cs.org/africa/

The Dutch free-lance journalist, Bertil van Vugt, bertilvanvugt@hotmail.com has spent, via NiZA’s Media Programme, the first six months of 2003 in Cape Town. He has written for the Cape Argus and Cape Times and has been working for a news site on positive developments in South Africa: www.come2capetown.com