i-Witness

Reflections on WSIS: more than lip-service

By Segun Oruame

At long last, WSIS has ended. All the excitement, tension, suspense, and heated debates that preceded the ‘Summit of Solutions’ ended on Friday. While waiting in Tripoli to connect to my flight back to Lagos I had a chance to reflect on my week in Tunisia.

The country itself is full of surprises. At a superficial level Tunis City was something of a shock to many of the delegates who had, perhaps, expected to see mosques, mullahs and veiled women.

Certainly one Brazilian delegate I met was astounded by the fact that he could spend the evenings drinking beer and whisky, and even go on to a club to dance the Samba. This in a country where more than 97 per cent of the population are adherents of Islam.

But perhaps more surprising is the way in which Tunisia has grasped the ICT revolution. When the first phase of WSIS was held in Geneva two years ago, fewer than 10,000 Tunisians had affordable access to the internet. That figure is now one million.

The Tunisian government has put in place effective policies and backed these up with financial commitments. It now seems set to achieve its goal of internet for all by 2015.

The story is quite different in Nigeria. Despite endless talk about what the Nigerian government should do to prepare for WSIS, providing internet access to 10 per cent of the population – as has happened is Tunisia – remains a mirage.

The oil-giant of Africa hasn’t even been able to align its ICT policies with overall national goals. Nigeria’s stall at WSIS reflected this disorganisation and lack of chemistry between government agencies – it was virtually empty.

Although the Nigerian President attended Tunis, along with some other top officials, they only helped to fuel the impression that WSIS was just a political jamboree.

Those who really understood what WSIS was about stayed behind in Lagos. They recognise that to move these issues forward we need more than lip-service from our governments.

At last, Africa’s talking about the issues that count

By Segun Oruame

Just when we thought WSIS II was all about internet governance, Africa’s decided it wants to forge ahead with other equally, if not more, pertinent issues.

This morning, a day after the UN has been mandated to create a new Internet Governance Forum, the Africans gathered to discuss whether to ring the continent with fibre optics or to install VSAT technology so thousands of remote communities could hear a dial tone for the first time.

The debate was as interesting as it was enlightening. It was put on by NEPAD (The New Partnership for Africa’s Development) and aimed to address the continent’s problem of poor infrastructure. For many, it was more relevant than internet governance, which many African intellectuals and business enterprises consider a waste of time.

After all, why should the continent with the lowest teledensity in the world – just four phones for every 100 people – and even worse computer penetration, be worrying about who governs the internet?

Well, this morning Africa was talking about the ‘real’ issues with World Bank officials in attendance. Hopefully something positive will come of it. And, if you ask me, Africa needs more phones and internet access; not be preoccupied with control of the internet. It might as well be Saddam Hussein or Charles Taylor!

Going with the flow of internet governance

By Segun Oruame

A day into the Summit and, as predicted, internet governance has dominated proceedings. The debate has spread to the i-Witness team, with much argument over whether WSIS will actually result in the United States ceding some of its control of the internet.

The African journalists have been most passionate: we think it is time the US gave up absolute control of the internet and entered into a democratic structure where it shares the responsibility with other governments.

The interesting thing is that all of us agreed that no definite decision would be taken. The US would not come to Tunis to announce a formal declaration of its intention to share control of the Internet with “Cuba, Iran and China”, as a Ghanaian journalist joked. 

My own feeling was that if the US suddenly announced it was letting go of absolute control, the international community should become jittery. It would be tantamount to the chairman of a thriving enterprise giving his customers 90 per cent of his company’s shares at no cost.

Sure enough, the only agreement to be reached was that the international community will create a body to discuss internet governance in the future. I was in the hall yesterday when President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe spouted fire, demanding an immediate end to US control of the internet.

He didn’t get his way, but somehow I think that there will be consensus – just as there was when the United Nations was created in 1945.

> Day 1 report: Africa’s case for control of the internet: go with the flow

Investing in the media

By Segun Oruame

I've been in Tunis for three days now and have come to realise how crucial financial capacity is for the media. There are only four Nigerian journalists here out of some 16 that expressed interest in attending WSIS; the only reason they're not here is because they haven't had financial backing.

This is particularly frustrating when WSIS is proving to be such a valuable arena for exposing journalists to the ICT issues of the day first-hand. I have already picked up several free publications that will undoubtedly enrich my knowledge of an industry that is so diverse, so complex and so dynamic. And I have interacted with journalists from other countries and backgrounds, learning from their knowledge and expertise.

So far WSIS has been stimulating, inspiring and enlightening. To me, the fact that fellow journalists are unable to share in this experience is in itself some kind of digital divide. It's so sad that there appears to be little interest in those hordes of impoverished media houses in the southern hemisphere.

The internet, 'soul' of the information society

By Segun Oruame

There's so much confusing talk about the information society and the role nations should play in the emerging 'knowledge economy'.

One thing seems clear though: most developing countries want mutilateral control of the internet, to reflect common ownership of what must surely be considered the 'soul' of the information society.

Some in the US appear determined to model the internet on the industrial revolution - where the factories that were the 'soul' of industrial society were championed and dominated by the West.

For example, last month an editorial in the New York Times said that EU proposals for an international 'model of cooperation' of internet governance was akin to asking the US "to depend on the kindness of strangers in maintaining the basic infrastructure that underpins our national security and economy"

Meanwhile, in the Washington Post, Kofi Annan defends the need for change, pointing out that "developing countries feel left out of internet governance structures".

I agree with Kofi. While the internet has indeed been pioneered by the West, there are now active players all over the world. Isn't it right that we should all be heirs to this common information wealth?

Taking a ride on the blog train

By Segun Oruame

The idea of blogging appears to be catching on fast in this part of the world. And I mean in Africa, particularly West Africa.

I first discovered what a blog could mean from one of the columnists for IT Edge magazine. Eric Osiakwan, secretary of Ghana's Internet Service Providers Association, asked me to visit his blog and download a story he wanted used in his column.

I went to Eric's blog and, behold, I got tons of articles Eric had written about ICTs over the last few years, as well as loads of personal information about him - far more than I knew from our physical interactions!

Ever since then I no longer call Eric to submit articles for his column... I simply go to his blog. It's fair to say that Eric's blog has helped to address my recurrent headache of getting columnists to meet production schedules!

Lessons from a car mechanic

By Segun Oruame

As I prepare to travel to Tunis, I'm reminded of a pertinent conversation I had in Lagos in February with my (uneducated) car mechanic. I had arranged for him to collect my car for a service before I left for the WSIS PrepCom in Accra, Ghana.

He asked me what this 'WSIS' was about. It took several minutes for me to explain: a Summit to give everyone an equal chance of becoming someone in the 'global village'. So, as a car mechanic, he might choose to head off to earn a better wage in far away Johannesburg.

He asked me if African heads of state and ministers would be attending. I said yes. His wry response took just seconds: "oga [boss] na money dem wan go share", meaning "it is money they are going to share".

His comments reflect a wider feeling among ordinary Africans; a concern that national leaders have lost integrity, and are no longer able to make a case on their behalf. And they pose a worrying question that hangs over all of us as we prepare for Tunis: how can Africans find our place in the information society before we have put our own house in order?

Corruption and Africa’s information society

By Segun Oruame

I’m Segun, founding editor of IT Edge magazine and www.itedgenews.com, a tech-biz news portal on West Africa's ICT sector, which – I’m thrilled to say - was honoured during the ECA/AISI 2005 award in the local content category. Some people know me by the name Segun Aregbeyen particularly as IT Editor for The Comet, a national news daily published in Nigeria.

I am working on this post from a hotel room in Accra (Ghana), pondering over a conversation I had yesterday with a Ghanaian colleague on the information society and what’s in store for Africa at the second phase of WSIS, less than two weeks away.

Of all the issues thrown up by the WSIS process since the first phase in Geneva, I find myself drawn more to ICT and development in Africa. The theme of the digital divide has become a recurring one for politicians and the new breed of ‘techno socio-economists’ all over the continent. Indeed, there is hardly any forum that the digital divide is not mentioned – the expression is becoming a cliché. 

At the same time, I am increasingly convinced that Africa has no serious business in Tunis except to ask that advanced democracies and emerging giants such as China and India join it in the war against corruption on the continent. If these fundamental problems aren’t addressed the efforts of those in civil society attempting to spread ICT diffusion in Africa may come to naught.