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30 April 2000

The presentation proposes two strategic considerations for the debate:

1. How to guarantee universal access to knowledge and provide education for all?

2. The cultural challenges of producing endogenous content in the context of globalization.

The problem:
Under what conditions can NTIC represent an opportunity for development in Africa? Firstly, when used as a tool to improve the level of training in all fields, particularly in the area of literacy for the majority of the population; secondly, when value is placed on African know-how and skills that express a culture or vision of the world, a way of being and doing, and a system of social relations between the individual and others.

1. In order to link these two questions, we need to look at the consequences of the principal challenge posed by the new context of globalization, namely, the production of endogenous content.

Africa suffers from a serious deficit of production in all sectors: goods and services, but also the vision and policies that define the United Nations model of development. The social impact of structural adjustment policies has worsened the living conditions of the most vulnerable classes and more importantly weakened an education system that has proved incapable of providing education for all both in terms of coverage and the suitability of its content.

The question then becomes: how do we use for development the possibilities that are offered by the new tools for the dissemination of the knowledge and skills generated in the world so that Africa could benefit without paying the price of social and cultural breakdown, as has happened in the past? This is the principal challenge.

2. One of the responses to the first question posed is yes, it is possible that the NTIC might represent an opportunity for Africa: that technology and its uses are easily transferred (in comparison with other technologies); however, if the response is yes (if Africa is to avoid turning inward on itself, which, moreover, is impossible), this will only be true, subject to a number of conditions:

- Use of the NTIC must also be viewed as an opportunity to revisit content and the sectors of development: the initiatives and attitudes of development actors (donors, NGOs, etc); building of a critical mass of points of divergence from methods and policies that have proven to be failures in the past.

- Begin with existing resources: build upon existing skills and know-how and disseminate social and technical innovations through the experiences of popular actors in response/resistance to the macro-economic policies that have disaggregated knowledge and, more seriously, reduced self-esteem. (In West Africa, since the devaluation of the CFA franc, the popular term used to describe a person in difficulty is "devalued" or "adjusted").

This general outline of the conditions required for the use of the NTICs has two implications:

- at the practical level: ways must be found of organizing access to the NTICs and putting in place democratization processes, such as basic education, that ensure and guarantee universal access to knowledge.

- Follow up this process of democratization with the tools needed to integrate it into the social fabric, through support for the production of endogenous content that add value to the skills and know-how of Africa.

- Creating the conditions for implementation.

COLLECTIVE ACCESS AND THE CULTURE OF SOLIDARITY

A preliminary observation: it is the balance of forces that is unfavourable to Africa; whether this is at the level of infrastructure (electricity, telecommunications) or at the level of the capacity to impose the visions of another model of development and a new paradigm of the economy that integrates instead of excludes.

However, it is possible to advance the hypothesis that the use and in particular the appropriation of NTICs by the widest possible group of actors would have some influence by modifying the balance of forces and adjusting the model of individual uses.

The major obstacle of the lack of infrastructure can be overcome precisely by relying on social practices that are rooted in the culture of solidarity at the grassroots level. Take the telephone, for example. Each home is far from being equipped with telephone service and rates of coverage are very low compared with the developed societies (USA, Germany, France, etc.). However, access is much greater than the number of subscribers: firstly, because of the practice of everyday solidarity: for every telephone in a subscriber's home, dozens of users belonging to several families in the neighborhood have access to the different services it provides. Secondly, telephone centers themselves serve users not only to make paid calls but also to receive messages.

And more recently, based on the model of the water supply point, which has helped to resolve the problem of supplying water to hundreds of low-income families, we have the experiences of community resource centers equipped with multi-media infrastructure which organize collective access for the use of the NTICs. It is therefore possible to organize universal access to knowledge by strengthening the experiments being pursued in Africa. And of course through policies that contribute to the cost of connection and the different taxes on equipment for community use. (This point will be developed later in the description of an experiment that is underway in Senegal).

Even though the main problem of education in its broader sense may be "solved" by multiplying collective access based on a living culture of solidarity, the problems of the production of content remain unresolved.

CULTURAL CHALLENGES AND THE PRODUCTION OF CONTENT

Cultural challenges in the fields of:
- National languages
- Oral culture
- Illiteracy

The problem of illiteracy is linked to that of access and this in quantitative terms. We know that the most immediate applications of the NTICs for development may be in the area of education, since training and self-instruction are easier to achieve through trial and error with a computer than in overcrowded classes. At this level, it is an organizational problem that is not very difficult to resolve.

However, the question of content is posed once again as well as the question of determining to what types of universal knowledge is access possible. Is there a "legitimate" universal knowledge if it does not include the knowledge of a large part of the world? The aim is not to call into question the exact sciences and arithmetic, but to question all categories that demarcate the fields of "socially" and "globally" legitimate knowledge from the rest which is characterized as beliefs. And this process of demarcation together with the categories constructed for that purpose are one of the main cultural challenges: to validate as a universal reference its own vision and way of viewing the world.

We may speak of the infinite possibilities of developing the riches and cultural diversity of Africa and of the economic impact if the tools and supports were produced within Africa, including in the field of the music industry (CDs, CD-Rom, etc, records).

But once again another question is raised: is it enough to put into circulation on the world market African cultural products in order to resolve the root problem?

For my part, even though I am convinced of the new opportunities for Africa through the use and appropriation of the NTICs, the real debate is concerned less with the existing content that must be developed using the new tools than with the visions themselves through social relations between the individual and others in the society. The main deficit lies in this area of the production of immaterial wealth: the tissue of relations needed to rethink the economy and the world. And Africa could contribute to the advancement of the universal content if the cultural modes of constructing, producing and maintaining social relations were to become legitimate references for "global" knowledge.

This then is the major challenge and the main stakes in conceiving of culture not only in its various forms and domains (song, dance, painting, etc.) but as the anthropology of the multiple identities that challenge the one-dimensional notion of the "citizen" linked to the administrative territory of the nation State.

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