Beginning in January 2000, in partnership with the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), and with the assistance of Bellanet, the Africa Policy Information Centre (APIC) is launching its first on-line discussion forum: International Policies and African Realities: an Electronic Roundtable. This pilot project will provide an electronic space in which Africans, North Americans and others can discuss what policy perspectives and understandings of African reality should shape international engagement with Africa.With access to e-mail growing in Africa, among non-governmental organizations, international agencies and governments, a unique opportunity exists to establish more effective mechanisms to inject African perspectives into international debates. Such a process can contribute to the emergence of new policy frameworks, which better correspond to African realities and priorities.
The Roundtable will try to use the opportunities opened up by new electronic communication technologies to come up with new ways of putting together and conveying African knowledge. It will experiment with means by which African-initiated content and perspectives can be projected into policy debates on African issues taking place outside the continent. It will build on the innovative ECA electronic conferences preceding the ECA's 40th anniversary (AFR-FEM, March-May 1998) and the African Development Forum (June-October 1999), as well as on APIC's capacity to relay information on Africa to diverse constituencies within the U.S., Africa, and elsewhere.
The Roundtable will run from January 8-May 8, 2000, and will be divided into four month-long sessions. One month will be allocated to each of the four broad discussion topics in order:
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- Economy and Development,
- Democracy and Human Rights,
- Peace and Security, and
- Education and Culture
Each session is to be introduced by several panellists responsible for opening remarks and interchange before being opened up to 20 days of comment from Roundtable respondents and general participants.
Participation is open to all, with special attention to ensuring broad-based African participation. A wide audience is anticipated building upon both ECA's and APIC's substantial mailing lists and networks. The discussions will be moderated and summarized on a regular basis. Summaries, and selected other interventions, will be translated from English into French, or from French to English. A book-length publication will be prepared following the conclusion of the Roundtable.
Dr. K. Y. Amoako, ECA, Adwoa Dunn-Mouton, APIC, and Dr. Julius Ihonvbere, Ford Foundation, will serve as co-chairs of the Roundtable. The principal moderator will be Dr. AbdouMaliq Simone with Ms Karin Santi (APIC) and Ms Mercy Wambui (ECA) as co-moderators.
How will it work?
The electronic roundtable format is a pilot effort to find a middle ground between wide-open discussion lists that are hard to keep on topic and a one-way distribution list or e-magazine such as APIC's Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List. It will try to build an e-mail equivalent of a roundtable panel at a conference. Just as with such a panel at an in-person conference, the selection of high-quality panellists and giving them an opportunity to speak first will set the tone of the discussion. During the three-week discussion period for each topic, the audience will have its chance to contribute, with the moderators taking the responsibility to ensure that contributions from the floor are pertinent to the discussion.
The lyris listserv software utilized by Bellanet will allow participants to join the discussion by e-mail or from the web, and the archive of discussions will be available for access by an even wider audience. Both APIC and ECA will publicize the Roundtable widely through their networks, in order to ensure both maximum participation from Africa and a wide international audience among public constituencies and policymakers. The Roundtable will take advantage of the overlapping National Summit on Africa process in the United States as well as other events to publicize the contributions to the debate and ensure their maximum impact on policy debates.
Africa Policy Information Center
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