THE KNOTTY PROBLEM OF USING AFRICAN LANGUAGES FOR E-MAIL AND INTERNET News round-up & Snippets On the money Digital toolbox/In search of the business model Africa's digerati Useful websites and discussion lists Jobs, people, events...   Classified advertisements

ISSUE NO 69 AFRICA'S DIGERATI

CORDELIA SALTER-NOUR ON THE NEED FOR SKILLS TRANSFER

Cordelia Salter-Nour is English and came to Africa in 1979 as an economic migrant from strike-bound, jobless Britain. She worked in Egypt as an English teacher and freelance journalist before getting her first IT job in Cairo University in 1982. Since then, apart from two years in a UK software house, she has worked in Sudan, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia specialising in appropriate IT solutions for aid and development projects. She is now based in Accra, Ghana where she has a web studio www.cordelia.net promoting African themed sites and African affairs on the web. Her first start-up, www.eShopAfrica.com, is a business-to-business ecommerce site selling traditional African crafts in bulk online.

IT in Africa has recently attracted attention as if it were a new subject area. This is a fallacy - IT has been in use in the large cities since the first PCs came on the scene. In Cairo in the early 1980s IBM, Apple and Wang were quick to move in and start selling their machines to those who could afford them. Since then I’ve worked in Sudan, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia, three of the poorest countries in the world - and never failed to find IT in use wherever there was access to international money whether in business or in the aid and development sector. I’m now in Accra, Ghana, which is overloaded with IT considering the small percentage of population that actually has access.

The missing link over these years has been skills transfer. The IT merchants have had a limited view of their own profitability and never seriously invested either in training for maintenance of their own products or at a general level to raise IT literacy. No ‘free Apples for schools’ philosophies for Africa yet.

The crushing poverty and illiteracy of rural Africa is at the heart of the continent’s problems. Everyone who travels in Africa knows how hungry the children are for education and information about the outside world. With connectivity in rural areas and distance education, rural children could receive basic education and become IT literate without having to leave home. As they grow they will empower their own communities with information and choice.

IT has only recently been considered a developmental tool in its own right. For it to be a success it must be used in a way that is sustainable in an African setting making the new subject area not ‘IT in Africa’ but ‘Appropriate IT in Africa’.

Contact Cordelia Salter-Nour on cordelia@cordelia.net

If our correspondent is "off the mark" or you have factual amendments, mail them to us and we will include them in subsequent News Updates. If you'd like to contribute, write and let us know.
If you need information about a particular place or issue, just send your questions in. We are always happy to follow up on readers concerns.
News Update is a free e-letter produced by Balancing Act that covers African internet content and infrastructure developments, It goes out to government, the private sector, education and NGOs. To subscribe, send a message saying "I want to subscribe" to info@balancingact-africa.com