| |
Contributions from
the Column
InWEnt News
Milestone in global
climate protection
New media and the fight against poverty
5/2004 |
|
[ Information and communication technologies ]
New media and the fight against poverty
[ By Siegfried Karwatzki ]
”We, the representatives of the peoples of the world, [...] declare our common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilise and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life.” These are the opening words of the declaration of principles adopted for the UN World Summit on the Information Society in December 2003. But what do they mean for the developing countries? Won’t the digital divide between North and South just deepen with every technological innovation? And won't the issue distract from the primary purpose of development policy: sustained poverty reduction?
InWEnt managing director Bernd Schleich says no. In his opening speech at this year's International LearnTec Forum in Baden-Baden, a major European congress for education and information technology, he sketched out development policy guidelines for information and communication technologies (ICTs) in development cooperation. Schleich sees reference points in the present “structural poverty reduction” concepts defined in the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations and in the German government's Action Programme 2015. At the same time, Schleich pointed to practical experience gathered by InWEnt on projects in this sector.
In his “millennium speech”, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stressed the importance of ICTs for the development process, pointing out that there are more computers in the United States than in all the rest of the world put together, and that there are more telephones in Tokyo than in the whole of Africa. Annan made an emphatic call for the South not to be excluded from digital developments in the future. Since then, national and international initiatives have sought to bridge the digital divide.
“It is imperative that ICTs should be harnessed for structural poverty reduction”, Schleich said at the LearnTec Forum. The InWEnt executive saw scope for this in health care projects, projects for improving the educational opportunities of poor sections of the population and e-trade projects aimed at giving the poor access to the economic system.
For the practical work of InWEnt,
Schleich referred to the fundamental need to focus on ICT projects
– which are legal and within the economic reach of poor sections of the population,
– which can be adapted to the conditions in which those groups live, and
– which can create jobs, generate income and help establish new businesses.
InWEnt initiates and promotes the use and spread of open source structures, works with partners in the South to develop open, i.e. licence-free content and trains experts with the relevant knowledge and technological skills (capacity building). Infrastructure and content are normally free and not only can but are supposed to be copied and distributed. This is a help for many under-capitalised small businesses and reduces criminalisation due to pirated copies. The open source code gives partners a chance to adapt their products to local needs, to develop them further and to use them as a basis for new business ventures. The result: new jobs and new sources of income – in small businesses and in telecenter operations in impoverished areas.
For German development cooperation, it is important to keep re-establishing the relationship between ICTs and poverty reduction. Germany was a co-initiator of the G8 Digital Opportunity Task Force and was one of the countries involved in crafting the Genoa action plan for bridging the digital divide (2001). The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has so far put up 180 million euros to support the introduction and use of ICT applications.
InWEnt itself is engaged primarily in education and training, an area in which the organisation has a great deal of experience. 40,000 people a year take part in InWEnt's traditional courses, seminars and workshops; another 10,000 participate via the Internet in online programmes such as the e-learning platform “Global Campus 21”. Studies show that access to and participation in Internet-based knowledge networks for multipliers in developing countries are tremendously important.
Knowledge networks for local businesses
With financial support from the BMZ, InWEnt in recent years has built up an international ICT knowledge network geared to address the interests and problems of local business community representatives: in Southern Africa alone – where it operates under the tradename it@ab (“Information Technology in African Business”) – the network includes more than 30 institutions and private companies as well as over 100 IT experts. it@ab provides a platform for cooperation between multipliers at universities, DP suppliers and developers, educational institutions and DP consultancies as well as economic development and trade promotion organisations.
The it@ab network is designed to promote exchange and cooperation across national frontiers. Its primary aim is to advise small businesses, help with the introduction of DP systems and get local e-business projects up and running. And it produces tangible results: at the United Nations' “Third Infopoverty World Conference”, it@ab activities last year were hailed as the “best practical example of the application of ICT in the rural sector”. Within the framework of World Bank projects, too, the network is set to be a success: it@ab has a very good chance of becoming the World Bank “IT Incubator” for Namibia. The World Bank has funds available for its coaches to provide advice and support for IT companies.
Access to knowledge and dissemination of information play a prominent role in promoting the development of businesses in the South. So ICT services are right at the top of the agenda. ICTs are deemed a powerful platform for producing and presenting a constant stream of new knowledge and developing and distributing it in all directions. The most important thing, however, is that ICTs enable enterprises in the South to forge new business contacts and become service providers for cutting-edge companies in the North.
One of the results of it@ab is the provision of a consultancy package put together by members of the network. This contains software solutions, e-learning programmes as well as valuable advice by professional IT consultants trained in Germany. After the positive experience in Southern Africa, InWEnt is now engaged in developing structures comparable with it@ab in South East Asia and the Middle East.
Bolstered by this experience, InWEnt will focus in the years ahead on the creation, professionalisation and regional networking of open-source centres of excellence in developing countries. It will also, in this context, promote developer communities and Linux specialists integrated in international networks and communities and train “product managers” for developing the ICT structures provided and adapting them to the requirements of local businesses.
What is important for the success of such networks is not just the content but also the network’s internal constitution. In Namibia, a constitution setting out principles and procedures for it@ab has been crafted with partners from seven states in the region.
In early April, the 30-plus members plan to hold a virtual AGM and elect a board of management. Detailed information on the project proposals can be found in the InWEnt IT portal at http:/www.it-inwent.net.
Other sources of information:
http://www.itu.int/wsis on the Information Society Summit
http://www.gc21.de on “Global Campus 21”
Siegfried Karwatzki
is senior project manager and responsible for ICT projects in InWEnt’s “Urban Development, Infrastructure and Communications” division.
siegfried.karwatzki@inwent.org
|
