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Joko
TCP, Timbuktu
Metissacana

UNPLUGGED Symposium: Plug-In III: Wiring Africa

Africa between emancipation and cyber-colonialism on the path leading to Information Society: Exemplary projects from Senegal, Mali and Zimbabwe illustrate different approaches to how sustainability and independence can be achieved in the area of information and communication technology (ICT) as well. Presented at Ars Electronica, Monday Sept. 9, 10.30 – 13.30, Brucknerhaus.

The so-called Digital Divide is at its most extreme in Africa, where the use of ICTs is still at a very early stage of development compared to other regions of the world. At the beginning of 2002, of the approximately 770 million people in Africa, only one in 150 on average used the Internet (5.5 million).

However these rather discouraging statistics do not paint the entire picture. The ICT landscape has begun to change dramatically over the last few years and the huge diversity of the continent means the average cited above obscures many pockets of significant development.

As part of Plug-In III: Wiring Africa, Mike Jensen will provide the hard facts that can then be assessed in light of a few exemplary projects that are pioneering in a context that goes far beyond the African continent.

In Senegal’s Joko project, the approach is to emphasize education and training. The project launched on the initiative of Youssou N’Dour, the celebrated Senegalese musician, tries to find ways to channel the interest generated by his international stardom to make the opportunities of the Internet accessible and relevant to Africans. Joko developed a plan to foster the capability of African populations to participate in a self-generated online community where they can create their own content and applications rather than only consuming media and applications produced elsewhere—in the belief that the best way to achieve a significant Internet development capacity is with independently sustainable enterprises that spread on a grassroots basis. In other words, the communities themselves must engage on an entrepreneurial level. The project will be presented at Ars Electronica by Liza Goldman-Carney (USA), former director of the Interactive Media Festival and a member of the 1999 and 2000 Prix Ars Electronica juries for computer animation / visual effects.

The Timbuktu multipurpose community telecentre (MCT)—officially entitled “Planning and implementation of an MCT at Timbuktu: integration in rural areas of public services in the following fields: education, libraries, culture, health, agriculture, fisheries, SMEs, crafts and the role of women in society”—is one of a series of projects jointly implemented by UNESCO, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in the context of the Buenos Aires initiative. The aim of the MCT is to stimulate rural development by facilitating access to new information and communication technologies.

In addition to conventional applications, TCP develops completely new approaches—for example, radio browsing by means of a radio kit. This suitcase radio comprises a complete broadcasting unit and can also be used as a production studio and enables radio staff to produce “radio browsing” programs: the presenter browses the Internet in response to listeners’ questions, describes in local languages the websites selected and discusses their contents with a local expert. In this way, the entire community has access to online information in their own language, explained and contextualized.

The pioneering Metissacana project (Senegal) will also be presented. Metissacana was launched just two months after the Internet first came to Senegal, at a time when South Africa was the only African nation with full connectivity. Metissacana is in many ways a pioneer: it opened the first cybercafé in Africa (outside South Africa), it was the first operator in Africa to broadcast live radio programs on the Internet and developed a free email address service which can be consulted and created from the Metissacana home page (1999). During the 2000 presidential elections, Metissacana conducted the first experiment in African online democracy. Metissacana jointly produced the very first concert to link up Africa with another continent via satellite by broadcasting from its terrace venue to the Montluçon Festival in France. And in 2000 the first e-commerce venture in Senegal was launched in the form of Oumou Sy’s online boutique.

In early May 2002, the founders - Oumou Sy, Michel Mavros and Alex Sikorsky - decided to terminate their activities in Senegal and to expand onto a pan-African level. The situation in Senegal has become too insecure following the privatization of Sonatel, the Senegalese telecommunications company that was purchased by France Télécom. Metissacana will now adopt a pan-African orientation and will select those African countries as partners for its innovative projects—first and foremost in the area of rural connectivity—that are actually prepared to carry them out. Projects like the Pesynet health program serve as a model.

Tonga.Online was initiated by the Linz-based Austria Zimbabwe Friendship Association. It is a project on media, ICT and art, and focuses on the Tonga people in the remote Zambezi Valley bordering Zimbabwe and Zambia.

The project’s goal is to promote a Tonga voice on the Internet. In turn, it provides people in the Tonga area with the most advanced tool to communicate and to represent themselves to the outside world.






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