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Bangladesh NGOs Network for<br>
Radio and Communication<br>
</b></font><font face="Arial Narrow, Helvetica" size=1>Promoting
Communication Technology for a Fairer World<br><br>
<br><br>
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<font size=4 color="#0000FF"><b>Global ICTs—The Silent Development
Revolution<br>
</font><font size=3>By E.K.Bensah II</b><br>
<br><br>
When the American poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron wrote the poem
"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", he perhaps got it right
with regard to the development of ICTs in the context of the World Summit
on Information Society (WSIS). <br><br>
Before 2005, WSIS had assumed an unclear UN process that had little
practical connection to development. Now, it is virtually impossible to
talk about the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) without talking
about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). <br><br>
When world leaders met at the UN in 2000 to draw up the MDGs, one of the
goals was to achieve universal primary education. Given that education
is, in essence, a passport to one's future and opening up of
possibilities for any child, UNESCO has led the way of hosting seminars
on Knowledge Societies in the Context of WSIS. For UNESCO, its vision of
knowledge societies is based on four principles: freedom of expression;
quality education for all; universal access to information and knowledge;
and respect for cultural and linguistic diversity. UNESCO is far from the
only UN agency involved in the WSIS process, but its role as one of the
pre-cursors of the WSIS is moot. <br><br>
Despite the critical involvement of UN agencies, such as FAO and UNDP at
WSIS, it is clear for many observers that the Second Phase of the World
Summit on Information Society (WSIS) that took place from 16-18 November
in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, was disappointing. It certainly was for
civil society organizations (CSOs) who, after an alleged stabbing of a
French journalist, were denied by the Tunisian authorities to hold a
Citizens Summit on WSIS. For others, however, one of the more concrete
things, to have emerged from the whole summit was the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT)-sponsored One Laptop Per Child (OLPC),
going for one hundred dollars. <br><br>
The brainchild of the Professor Nicholas Negroponte of MIT, the
lime-green laptop is made of rubber, so that when it closes, it will be
sealed to protect it from environments, such as harsh environment in
northern Kenya. It can be powered by a retractable crank that can be used
to generate 10 minutes of power for every one minute of cranking up the
machine. <br><br>
Negroponte's team turned down Apple's offer to use its operating system,
opting instead for a slimmer version that uses a 500MHZ processor and
open source software under Linux. It is equipped with a 1GB flash RAM
instead of a hard drive, a word processor, email application, and
programming system. <br><br>
<br>
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called it "an impressive
technical achievement", adding that "it holds the promise of
major advances in economic and social development." <br><br>
Pressed on why laptops in place of "proper" development, MIT
argued that laptops are tools to think with. More specifically, their
relatively affordable price of hundred dollars is coupled with how they
can be used for work and play, drawing, writing, and mathematics.
<br><br>
In October this year, Uruguay bought 100,000 of the machines for
schoolchildren aged six to 12, with a view to procuring a further 300,000
for every school-going child in the country by 2009. <br>
Here in Ghana, Finance and Economic Minister Baah-Wiredu announced in the
annual reading of the budget that the laptops in question will be
introduced to Ghana from next year. <br><br>
For many observers of the WSIS process, the laptops have constituted not
only something concrete coming out of WSIS, but something that can be
used to facilitate development. In the long run, WSIS has highlighted the
importance of using ICTS to facilitate development, and so rural areas
being able to afford to use such ICT tools is moot in getting closer to
the Millenium Development Goals of halving poverty by 2015. <br><br>
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has piloted studies, for
example, where the use of ICT tools, such as mobile phones, has helped
farmers in Senegal to obtain prices of goods. <br><br>
<b>Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary General of ITU and of the WSIS Summit, said
that "the WSIS was not an end but a beginning." What the Tunis
phase did was remind one about the much-talked-about Digital Divide; how
to govern the internet, and how to use ICTS for development. Whilst the
Digital divide—as evidenced by the chasm between those who have ready and
steady access to computers and, by extension, the Internet – very much
exists even within countries (such as the rate of using the internet
cafes in Accra as compared to the rate in the Northern region, which is
three or four times the cost), the use of ICTs for development, for
example, is being facilitated by non-governmental agencies like the
Accra-based GINKS, which aim to " </b>provide information and
Knowledge sharing that will facilitate capacity building for ICTs
Products and services" <br><br>
<b>Other developments are also taking place. One notable one is that of a
story in the Ghanaian Times of 1 April 2006, in which it was reported
that Accra Girl's Secondary School has become the "first school in
Africa to have an electronic learning (e-learning) center to facilitate
the adoption of [ICTS] into its academic programmes." The issue of
internet governance, however, is a murkier—and more technical affair that
merits as much consideration and study as those issues that pre-dominate
international development. <br>
</b><br>
<b>Internet Governance, concrete outcomes <br>
</b><br>
<b>The issue of internet governance has assumed similar dimensions
characteristic of the North-South divide in, say, the international
trading system. If at the WTO, it is the so-called QUAD (comprising
Canada, the US, UK, and Japan) that have a major say surrounding the
decisions made on the multilateral trading system, so it is that when it
comes to the internet, the US is right at the heart of controlling how
domain names, for example, are assigned. <br>
</b><br>
<b>A communiqué produced by the European Commission in late April 2006
has argued that this system of control by the US is slowly changing—and
that is also thanks to the Tunis Agenda on the Information Society that
came out of the WSIS Summit last November. <br>
</b><br>
<b>In the <i>Agenda</i>, paragraph 63, for the first time, recognises
that " </b><i>Countries should not be involved in decisions
regarding another country's country-code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD). Their
legitimate interests, as expressed and defined by each country, in
diverse ways, regarding decisions affecting their ccTLDs, need to be
respected, upheld and addressed via a flexible and improved framework and
mechanisms </i>". <br><br>
Put simply, this means that unlike before when countries needed the
approval of the US Commerce Department before changing, say,
<a href="http://ghanasundayworld.com/">ghanasundayworld.com</a> to
<a href="http://ghanasundayworld.gh/">ghanasundayworld.gh</a>, countries,
exercising their sovereign right, can now go ahead and change it—ensuring
that the existing non-profit ICANN (Internet Corporation of Assigned
Names and Numbers) oversees the change through regional registries, such
as AfriNic, which helps, as its website maintains, to " <i>provide
professional and efficient distribution of Internet number resources to
the African Internet community, to support Internet technology usage and
development across the continent and strengthen self Internet governance
in Africa by encouraging a participative policy development" </i>.
<br><br>
Even the decision to create "<a href="http://ghanasundayworld.gh/">
ghanasundayworld.gh</a>", before Tunis, would have meant seeking
assent from the US! What this old way of doing things would have meant is
that if Ghana were considered not strategic enough a country, the US
Department of Commerce cold turn down that domain name. <br><br>
Some of these technical issues were discussed at the first-ever forum on
Internet governance, which the Greek government played host to in October
2006. This year, the second Internet Governance Forum was held in Brazil,
where the issues of content regulation; the duty of states to protect
freedom of expression online, including the protection of children
online; a set of global public policy principles—including, <i>inter
alia</i>, an Internet Bill of Rights were discussed.<br><br>
<b>The future of WSIS</b> <br><br>
At the UN level, monitoring what WSIS will do to the access to
information is a key concern. Malaysia's Minister of Science,
Technology and Innovation, Jamaludin Jarjis, said last year that
"access to information should now be regarded as a utility and basic
human right." He adds that conventional development means were no
longer adequate in today's economic climate, where knowledge capital was
the new currency and the new, raw material." <br><br>
The UN, at a Geneva meeting, in July 2006, maintained the world body
should continue to play a leading role in expanding information and
communication technologies to promote development. The World Summit
requested that a UN group on the Information Society ought to coordinate
the work of the UN system. <br><br>
It bears reminding that although the WSIS process seems rather nebulous
to many in the sense that linking ICTs to development seems rather
tenuous, in the long run, what remains clear is that as long as the
Internet and ICTS are with us, so, too, will WSIS. It is a process that
remains critical to the MDGs, and like most revolutions, its legacy for
posterity can only be for the betterment of society. <br><br>
<br><br>
<b><i>Emmanuel.K.Bensah is Ag. President of Ghanaian Association of
Journalists in ICT (GHAJICT) (
<a href="http://ghajict.blogspot.com/">http://ghajict.blogspot.com</a>)
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