News from Plantage and the World

Mobile telephony, access to information and African farmers

2011-06-17T13:34:00.000+02:00

Over the last decade, mobile telephony has made an overwhelming expansion in developing countries. In Africa, mobile telephony has become the primary mode of telecommunication (UNCTAT 2007). Mobile telephony has become, from a nice-to-have gadget for the upper-class in the late 1990s, the single most transformative technology of economic development of our time, according to development specialist Jeffrey Sachs. Presently, over 300 million Africans own a mobile phone, including a great number of poor people, both in urban and in rural areas. The success of mobile telephony is due to an urgent need for communication, especially for those who were previously deprived from any means of remote communication. Fixed-line telephony and Internet access have up to present remained unaffordable for the great majority. For many poor people in Africa, the mobile phone is their first step into the information society.

Subsistence farming in the Sahel
One of the target countries in this project is Burkina Faso, a landlocked country in West-Africa, with a population of about 15 million. Burkina Faso is part of the Sahel, an east-west oriented eco-climatic zone of transition between the Sahara desert in the North and the tropical savannas in the South. The Sahel forms a belt, 400 to 1000 km wide, spanning Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

Burkina Faso has one of the lowest Gross National Income per capita in the world: US$440 (World Bank 2008). More than 80 percent of the population relies on subsistence agriculture, i.e. self-sufficiency farming in which farmers grow only enough food to feed their families. Planting decisions are made based on survival strategies. Subsistence farmers use simple manual tools, without advanced techniques.

In 1960s and 1980s the Sahel region was struck by several periods of drought, which caused wide-spread famines. Currently, the rural conditions seem to be improved. Recently, studies using satellite data have revealed a considerable improve in vegetation and in number of trees, since the last twenty years, in an extensive part of the Sahel (Hermann et al. 2005). Amongst the causes for this extensive re-greening, human intervention is believed to be one of the contributing factors. Adoption of sustainable land management techniques, by innovative farmers, in Burkina Faso, but also in Niger and Mali, have resulted in soil fertility, rising groundwater tables, an increase in the number of trees and in crops. These activities together have had a considerable positive impact on living conditions of rural communities, largely improving their food security. The increased number of trees in the Sahel might have an additional positive side-effect in term of CO2 mitigation.

Re-greening activities
Re-greening of the Sahel has recently been attributed to improved land management by subsistence farmers, including natural regeneration of trees. Natural regeneration employs techniques to promote natural growth of trees sprouts by preserving the scare water resources, applying natural fertilizers (like animal manure), stone banding, pruning appropriately, — all simple manual techniques that use available resources. These Re-greening activities are grass-root initiatives of farmers in small-scale areas, occurring without large external (international development) interventions. The success of re-greening activities depends on the scale in which it is adopted. Farmer-to-farmer communication, exchange of (indigenous) knowledge and spread of information are therefore essential.

Recently, re-greening activities have been supported by local NGOs. The importance of communication amongst farmers is becoming evident. With help of the NGOs new channels of communication are being deployed, amongst others, agriculture extension workers, community radios, farmer-to-farmer visits, mobile telephony. As in the whole of Africa, mobile telephones are available in these farmer communities. Almost every household in rural communities in Burkina Faso owns a phone or has access to one. The situation in Niger and Mali is similar to Burkina Faso’s.

Still, channels of communication and access to information should be improved. Currently, there is growing awareness of the value of indigenous knowledge, owned by farmers. This knowledge should be stored and made accessible for more people. The knowledge of e.g. re-greening could be expanded with the use of innovative ICTs, which are adapted to the local situation.

Opportunities and constraints

The existence of mobile telephony, including the wide coverage of the mobile networks over the country, the wide-spread availability of community radios, the emergence of cybercafés with computers and access to the Internet in many villages all over the country, all represent opportunities for access to information and to better communication in rural areas in the Sahel. There is a growing awareness amongst the local communities on the importance of ICTs. In Burkina Faso a number of small and medium enterprises exist, which already provide web services and other ICT services in the country. Especially amongst the Burkinabe youth interest in ICTs, the Internet and the World Wide Web exists. Community radios have many listeners. This channel of communication is already successfully used by the supporting NGOs for awareness creation and information sharing amongst farmer communities.

Still, many constrains exist, preventing successful deployment of communication services in the benefit small scale farmers. Many farmers speak local languages only, and are not able to read and write, and rely on voice communication only. Several local languages are spoken in Burkina Faso, which complicates communication.

From the technical point of view, the mobile phones used by farmers are very simple handsets, without any functionality to access Web services. Infrastructure for Internet connectivity at local community cyber cafés is poor. Bandwidth is very limited, and the costs of Internet access are high for the people in the region. There is much to gain in the provisioning of innovative technologies, if adapted to the local needs of theses rural communities in the Sahel.

Innovation

Information and communication needs and constraints of farmers in the Sahel, are very similar to those of other poor communities in developing countries. Generally speaking, it is their necessity to create, store, process and share knowledge. Up to present, ICTs have been created for the context of rich industrialized countries. Adaptations are needed to make ICTs usable in the context of the developing world. This will help bridge the digital divide.

Innovations which remove barriers to information and communication technologies will therefore serve, not only the farmer communities in the Sahel, but also a much broader context of people in the developing world.

Opening of the Exhibition of Emiel van Moerkerken at the Museum of Photography in The Hague

2011-04-24T17:06:00.013+02:00

Emiel van Moerkerken (1916-1995) is known in literature as filmmaker, photographer, writer and psychologist, but he was also a humorist, traveler and vampire, and above all an innovator.

Last December a complete film retrospective of Van Moerkerken's work was shown at the EYE Cinema Institute, in Amsterdam. Currently there is an exhibition dedicated to his photography in the Museum of Photography in The Hague, the Netherlands. A dvd with seven of his short films appeared last week, and a great photo book about the surrealist art of Emiel van Moerkerken, composed by Bruno van Moerkerken and Minke Vos.

Bruno van Moerkerken opened the exhibition in the Museum of Photography in The Hague.
The full text of his speech is accessible at www.blochness.nl

Emiel van Moerkerken at Museum of Photography, The Hague

VU Amsterdam Professor Hans Akkermans awarded a goat in Northern Ghana

2011-01-30T22:15:00.009+01:00

Researchers from VU University Amsterdam, together with partners from World Wide Web Foundation and Sahel Eco - Mali travelled sixteen days through the Sahel, exploring local information needs in remote rural areas. The outcomes will be used for development of innovative web services based on voice technologies.

The tour starts in Dakar, capital of Senegal, next to Bamako, capital of Mali, descending the Niger river towards Segou, then via Tominian, Bandiagara, in the direction of Bankass downhill the Dogon valley. Next, crossing the border to Burkina Faso, heading for Ouahigouya, and Gourcy and subsequently Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso. A final trip is made to the Upper-East region of Ghana for a visit to the countryside near Tamale and Bolgatanga.

Throughout the journey we meet farmers and herders in the field, visit small local radio stations and talk with farmer organisations. Community radio and mobile telephone, apart from word of mouth, are the only sources of information in these remote villages, devoid of electricity, TV or Internet. Radio programs are created in local studios, and continuously broadcasted in various African languages. Radio listeners often travel from a distant village, and bring a handwritten message, to have it broadcasted for their friends and family. They are ready to pay the radio a fee of 500 francs CFA (less then one euro), a considerable amount in this region. Is the desire to Twitter a universal human trait?

We ask farmers, herders and radio people to give us their thoughts on innovative voice-based information services. The answer is a vivid discussion and many original ideas for voice-based services. One farmer envisions some sort of directory service, which can provide contact details of an expert who will give him tips on how to grow shea trees.

In Ghana we visit two small villages, Yameriga and Tongo-Beo. In Yameriga we are generously welcomed by singing and dancing women, and by the village chief and all villagers in a circle. We exchange ideas about their regreening initiatives, about mobile telephony and the goals of our project. In Tongo-Beo, as a sign of friendship and appreciation, the chief of this village kindly offers a goat to prof. Hans Akkermans, leader of our W4RA team, who gratefully accepts this valuable and remarkable gift.

Voice-based services may bring new opportunities for people to exchange information about regreening activities, or about prices on the local market, about health or legal issues, about relegion, about music and entertainment, about local news or anything you can imagine…just think!

Researchers of the world, this time in Suriname

2010-12-03T00:12:00.005+01:00

It is alway fun to talk to interesting people. This week in Suriname I enjoyed the company of an intelligent young woman named Ine Apapoe. Ine is researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Anton de Kom University of Suriname and she will soon travel to Amsterdam to start her PhD at VU. Ine is currently one of my workshop participants and so she got enthusiastic to start her own blog about the traditional Maroon Society. Marrons are, according to Ine’s blog, descendants of people who, during the 17th and 18th century, escaped from slavery at the plantations of former Dutch Guiana and settled as free men and women in the interior lands. Born from Marron parents, Ine, who grew up in Paramaribo, decided to study the influence of modern public administration on traditional hierarchic structures, like those of the present rural Marron communities.
Ine is an expert in Surinam history. She knows the intriguing facts of this country’s history both from the official literature, and from her own experience, and from personal stories told by her relatives. She knows facts about the interior wars and other important historic events, many of which have hardly been documented. Proficient in several traditional languages, Ine has an advantage above other researchers. She is able to make people feel comfortable, whenever she visits the Marron villages. This will help her collect the information needed for her study.
Apart from being a passionate researcher, Ine is also a caring mother of three children, the youngest one being only 15 months old. Early in the morning she cooks traditional dishes for her family before going off to work at the university campus. After work she hurries back to drive her children to piano lessons and to the tennis court; today she had to buy some gifts for the Sinterklaas party this weekend.
It is nice to meet people like Ine. She is a great story-teller. She made me curious to learn more about the history of Suriname.

African farmers and the Web

2010-02-09T15:38:00.006+01:00

Sibiri Sawadogo is a farmer in the Sahel. He works on his field and grows his crops to feed his family. Conditions in this part of Africa are not easy. Soils are poor and water is scarce. There is no electricity in the villages. He does not use sophisticated tools to cultivate his land. All the work is done by hand. In one hand Sibiri Sawadogo holds a hoe; in his other hand he holds his mobile phone…

Sibiri Sawadogo is an example of an innovative farmer in Burkina Faso. By using very simple but effective techniques, protecting trees, using manure to improve soil fertility and making stone bands to let the rainfall percolate the soil, a number of farmers-innovators have managed to re-green their barren and degraded lands. If more farmers in the region could take advantage of this way of farming, living conditions of more people could be improved, and a re-greening movement could evolve, which could have a real impact on the region…

Until recently, information technologies were not affordable for people like Sibiri Sawadogo, but the world is changing. Mobile telephony has become less expensive, and even affordable for the very poor. The World Wide Web and Mobile Telephony are converging, forming new technologies and opening new opportunities. The Mobile Web could become a new way for farmers to connect to each other and share information…

Last week in Burkina Faso I met many people involved in farming or in supporting small-scale farmers in their re-greening activities. This re-greening has started as a grassroots initiative. It is not a centrally-managed or externally financed project. It is becoming a movement of people and their social networks.

Re-greening in Africa is about knowledge sharing and communication. It is about farmers connecting to farmers. ICTs are carriers of information, and they will hopefully be helpful to accelerate and extend the scale of the re-greening success.

Suriname’s presence in Cyberspace, the Internet, the Web, the Information Society and developing countries…

2009-11-05T14:08:00.007+01:00

Many new blogs entered the blogosphere last week, during my workshop e-learning and web 2.0 at the Anton de Kom University of Suriname. My pupils were academic staff members of this university in Paramaribo. I could see my social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook expanding every day.

It was just another tiny effort to help bridging the digital divide and increase Suriname’s presence in Cyberspace. Like in many developing countries, in Suriname the Internet connections are very expensive and generally of poor quality. The Anton de Kom University's internet connection is 2 Mb for a total 400 desktop computers on campus, not counting many private laptops. The overbooking ratio is 1:7 and the price paid for this connection is 1500 US$ per month. This situation is caused by lack of proper telecom infrastructures and by monopolies held by telecom companies in a producer dominated market, but there is also another important reason. The prices of Internet connectivity in developing countries remain high due to lack of local “internet content”. As long as developing countries continue to download data i.e. content from data centres hosted in America, Europe or Asia only, prices for connectivity will not really go down. Developing countries should not only build their local telecommunication infrastructures, they should start to develop local content, do e-business, share local music online, etc. and host all these local digital data in local data centres. I know the Internet problem in developing countries is complex and very difficult to solve overnight. There is still a lot of chicken ‘n egg problem involved, but we should not give up. I am sure the Internet will take off in the developing world, the next five or ten years. That is why I am so involved in this subject.

This week an important step was taken, in globalizing the Internet. ICANN, the organization responsible for assigning domain names (domain names are names such as www.vu.nl, annabon.nl, youtube.com or regreeningthesahel.org etc.) accepted an adaptation in the technical system which will allow non-Latin characters in the domain name system (DNS). This opens opportunities for Chinese, Japanese, Arab, Russian and many other internet users to register domain names in their own languages, thus creating a more global and less western dominated Internet.

Our world is changing so fast and many global trends are moving and things always happened overnight while I was sleeping, as Thomas Friedman wrote in his international bestseller "The World is Flat".
Last week, the Internet’s 40th birthday was commemorated, as the first small amount of data was packet-switched from one university computer to another over the ARPAnet (the network which later evolved into the Internet) in California, on 29th October, 1969. This small step in Cyberspace marked a giant leap for mankind, but without all that fuss. It was probably a more important step than Neil Armstrong’s one on the moon, that same year.
This year is also the 40th birthday of UNIX, the “operating system of enlightenment” as BBC reporter Bill Thompson wrote this week, the first Open source software experiment, and undoubtedly one of the most important ones up to present.

Also the World Wide Web is commemorating, this year was its 20th anniversary. Would World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee have overseen the impact of his proposal in 1989 at CERN which marked the beginning of a new global information era?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee at the VU Symposium for Social Development on October 20th

I would have liked to ask Sir Tim this question, when I met him a few weeks ago in Amsterdam, during the Symposium for Social Development at VU University. But as Sir Tim was always surrounded by many people, I did not dare to disturb him with my silly little question.

It is now 20 years since my first job in information technology at SARA, the Amsterdam academic computing centre, where I started working on July 17th 1989. Those days I could not possibly foresee the future of ICTs, but it was thrilling for me to have a login account on a Cray Y-MP supercomputer, being amongst the first few people in the Netherlands with an email address, spending my evenings writing my own small command-line navigation system for the Amsterdam’s public transport, in the Prolog programming language, just for fun, (There was no Tomtom in those old days) or entering text in UNIX' vi editor, the world's most user-unfriendly text editor ever built.
UNIX, the web, and even the principles of the internet itself, are achievements of people who helped to build the “people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented” Information Society, in stead of pursuing financial profits only. It is through the effort of these people that the digital divide will hopefully be bridged one day and knowledge will be available for people in all corners of the world.

Web for Regreening in Africa

2009-10-10T16:54:00.020+02:00

Fact finding mission, Burkina Faso, september 2009

The Network Institute from VU and the VU Centre for International Cooperation embarked on a mission to initiate a link between farming in Africa and information and communication technologies. This has resulted in a project of higher education in Informatics, focussed on Web Technology with a component of outreach and social responsibility. The proposed name of the project is "Web Alliance for Regreening in Africa".

VU’s rural development expert Chris Reij has worked in the Sahel since the late 1970s. Chris Reij’s work is aimed at improving conditions of subsistence farmers who live and work in rural areas with harsh climate conditions and poor soils.
In the 1980s several periods of drought severely deteriorated living conditions in many of the rural communities in the Sahel. However, through perseverance a number of innovative farmers in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali, using simple but effective techniques, succeeded in rehabilitating a large area of degraded land. Now, 25 years later, an area of 5 million hectares has been restored and converted in fertile fields with crops and trees through the arduous work of these farmers. Sahel in these areas has literally been regreened. There are more trees now, more crops, and living conditions have been spectacularly improved for the local communities. Not only from a socio-economic but also from an environmental point of view this is an important achievement.

The Sahel Regreening Initiative (SRI) is a grassroots initiative to enhance communication and dissemination of information amongst farmers. Some agro-forestry experts from Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso are also involved in the initiative. SRI’s objective is to disseminate knowledge about regreening techniques from one farmer community to another, from one region to another, and even from one African country to another. This communication and spread of knowledge helps farmers to better fight land degradation to improve crops and preserve trees. Chris Reij coordinates and animates the initiatives.

Another project is now being linked to the existing Sahel Regreening Initiative, a similar project named SCI-SLM (Stimulating Community Initiatives - Sustainable Land Manage) involving farmers from four African countries: South-Africa, Ghana, Uganda and Morocco, with a similar objective to disseminate knowledge amongst farmers. This project is also coordinated by VU/CIS, (co-funded by the Global Environment Facility) and has just started this month. Since the objectives and the conditions are similar, it is good to link both projects to each other.

Apart from regreening initiatives, another great development is taking place in Africa since the last decade: the almost overwhelming growth of mobile telephony into all levels of society. Almost 40 % of the population in the whole of Africa owned a mobile phone in March 2009, and the figure is rising, as we are talking. Millions of new subscribers are joining the mobile telephony network every month, in Africa. The lowering of prices and the prepaid paying systems have made mobile phones affordable, even for the very poor.

The farmers of the SRI initiative are amongst the groups that benefit from the availability of mobile telephones. These recent developments are boosting dissemination of indigenous and rural knowledge. Opportunities now exist for SRI, to be supported in the near future by new, innovative information and communication technologies.

Activities during the mission
A four day excursion was organized as a fact finding mission, to meet each other and to synchronize ideas and make future plans.

Saturday September 26, 2009 – Arrival of Hans Akkermans and Anna Bon in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso. Meeting with Chris Reij, Wendelien Tuyp and Saah Dittoh, professor from the University of Development Studies in Tamale, Ghana, and Ghanaian coordinator for the SCI-SLM project.

Sunday September 27, 2009 – Meeting with Mathieu Ouedraogo and Adama Belemviré, both Burkinabés, agro-forest specialists, and both involved in SRI since many years. Mr. Ouedrago is invited to be one of the key-note speakers at the VU Dies Natalis Symposium on October 20th.

Departure to a village named Gourcy and a larger city named Ouahigouya at 7.30. It is a 140 km drive north, on a very good asphalt road.

The first excursion stop is a visit to a rural community named Ranawa. It has about 2300 inhabitants, and is located a few kilometres east of Gourcy. This village is an example of a rural community that has actively been regreened the past two decades and that widely benefited from its own proper and innovative land management. We visit the fields and watch the growing crops of sorghum, millet, maize, sesame, okra, egg plant, tomato etc. and the large number of trees that have grown, and now offer shade and benefit to the crops, livestock and to the farmers.

After the walk on the field we all gather in the shade of a large tree, and discuss the actual situation with the farmers, a group of about twelve inhabitants of Ranawa. The village chief, is an elderly person of probably over 80 years is; a younger person acts as his spokes person. Translations are made almost simultaneously, from, the local language Moré into French, and English and vice-versa. Ten women join our group, but separately in an adjacent circle, next to ours. The younger people here speak French, the elderly ones only communicate in their local language. Despite the language gap, communication goes very well; the farmers are open and share their experiences with us, and are willing to answer all of our questions.

In this village up to 98 % of the households use mobile phones. Phones are not only used for social communication but also for business, to check market prices in town, to negotiate with potential customers about prices of commodities and crops, etc. People seem to spend about 1000 up to 5000 francs CFA (2 -10 euros) per month on mobile telephony. Some people in the village earn money selling airtime (telephone units) in very small units. Even charging the phones through mobilette batteries represents a business opportunity here, since the electricity net has not yet reached this village. Useful options such as remote charging of airtime and possibilities for airtime transfer are services offered by the telecom providers, and offered as a service named SAP-SAP. These activities generate income for local people reselling these mobile services.

The community as a whole is aware of the importance of mobile telephony for improvement of their livelihoods. The farmers and their families are open to innovation and new systems of communication.

After lunch in the Crocodile Bar in Ouahigouya by our group, a visit is made to the field of another innovative farmer: Ousseni Kindo, near a village named Bogaya. Ousseni Kindo is one of the farmers who restored degraded land and protected trees on his fields. We witness the successful outcomes of twenty years of hard labour and innovation.

Afterwards another farmer-innovator is visited: 70 year old, famous Yacouba Sawadogo. This man regained an area of more than 100 hectares of degraded land and turned it into a green forest. This is the vastest area of restored biodiversity in Burkina Faso, probably even in the Sahel. This is an example of good sustainable land management.

From left to right: Mathieu Ouedraogo, Yacouba Sawadogo, Chris Reij, Hans Akkermans

Yacouba Sawadogo has already received international acknowledgement for his achievements. Mr. Sawadogo who only speaks Moré, will be VU’s special guest on October 20th, at the Dies Symposium World Wide Web for Social Development. A few days after the Dies Symposium, Mr. Sawadogo will proceed to a conference named “Greening the Sahel”, which is organized by Oxfam America and IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute) in Washington, US, together with Chris Reij and Mathieu Ouedraogo. Mr. Sawadogo will be a special guest at the White House during this visit.

Yacouba Sawadogo working on the field

Late in the afternoon a visit is made to a local radio station, La voix du paysan, the voice of the farmer. Radio is a highly effective medium of communication in rural areas in Africa. Almost all households own a radio and the coverage is high. This radio station reaches about one million people every day. Radio might play an important role for communication within the W4RA project. Radio broadcasting could possibly be used in combination with podcasting, and other web enabled systems. The owners of the radio station are open to innovation and willing to collaborate with us in this initiative.

Spontaneously, an interview is held with Chris, about the history of SRI and the W4RA. This clear, enthusiastic and lively account of the current initiative is broadcasted live, while we all listen to the car radio, standing outside the studio in the falling evening light.

Sunday September 27, 2009 - Visit to the mayor of Ouahigouya.

Issues are discussed regarding the ownership of lands and threats to Yacouba Sawadogo’s forest due to regional politics. The mayor expresses his personal support for our initiative.

Visits are made to a few telecentres in the neighbourhood of Ouahigouya and Gourcy. Some of the internet cafés have a 128 kbps connection to the internet and charge about 200 f CFA per hour usage(about 0,30 EUR). Other telecentres lack internet connection and offer only applications and printing as a service.

Return to Ouagadougou by all mission participants

In the capital a visit is made by our mission participants to the Burkina Faso headquarters of mobile provider Zain, former Celtel and now Kuwaiti owned pan-African mobile telephony company, with presence in 19 African countries. We meet sales manager Mr.Carlos Yanogo and Ms Alice Gisèle Coulidiati, sales adviser. We ask them whether Zain would be open for collaboration or even sponsorship in an initiative such as SRI and W4RA, when it comes to mobile-web integration etc. in the benefit of the farmers in the Sahel. Mr Yanogo expresses his interest and tells about the corporate responsibility of Zain, in which policy some activities might be positioned. Obviously the executive officers of this company will still have to approve our plans. However, Mr Yanogo gives us the impression that opportunities of collaboration with Zain may occur in the near future of our project.

Zain marketing campaigns in Ouagadougou

The last evening we have a brainstorming session at Hotel Ricardo’s, in Ouagadougou, where we are staying, all mission participants: Hans, Chris, Mathieu, Adama, Saah, Wendelien and myself (Anna). We discuss the possibilities of introducing the Web Science, Web-based technology, Web-mobile integration, training to local staff in information and communication technologies and many more possibilities, which will be in the benefit of the regreening initiative and farmers in Burkina Faso, the Sahel, and possibly the whole of Africa. The Network Institute will imbed these activities within the faculty’s research and education, to ensure sustainability of the project within the VU. Research and education in mobile-web technologies will become part of MSc. and a new minor in Web Science at the department of Informatics of VU. A PhD research by a Ghanaian candidate, funded by a Nuffic project will be part of the project.

From left to right: Hans Akkermans, Saah Dittoh, Mathieu Ouedraogo, Chris Reij, Adama Belemviré, Wendelien Tuyp. Only Anna Bon (the photographer) is missing on the picture.

A huge information revolution is taking place at an unimaginable pace in Africa. Now is the moment for action. We should therefore start small but not forget to think big.

Participants:

Hans Akkermans (VU Network Institute)

Chris Reij (CIS/VU)

Wendelien Tuyp (CIS/VU)

Anna Bon (CIS/VU)

Mathieu Ouedraogo (Réseau MARP)

Adama Belemviré (Réseau MARP)

Saah Dittoh (University of Developement Studies Ghana)

Report by Anna Bon, Burkina Faso, September 2009

Wat nou autovrije zondag...?

2009-09-21T20:26:00.008+02:00

Gisteren ben ik bijna van de sokken gereden toen ik vanuit de Plantage naar de Pijp fietste. Niet één keer, maar wel bijna drie keer. Nou fiets ik elke dag een uur door de stad, van en naar mijn werk. Ik ben wel wat gewend: afslaande vrachtauto's, brommende scooters, gehaaste suvs, allemaal in de ochtendspits van Amsterdam. Maar gisteren was het erger: het was namelijk autovrije zondag.
Dit milieusparende en voetgangervriendelijke evenement is anders dan je zou verwachten. Volgens plan is heel Amsterdam, (heel Amsterdam?), een hele zondag niet toegankelijk voor auto's. Welke auto's? Auto's die de stad in willen rijden. Politiewagens, brandweerauto's, ambulances mogen natuurlijk rijden, en ook uiteraard taxi's, bussen, trams, o ja, en binnenstadbewoners met auto mogen gewoon rondrijden. Je mag immers de stad wel uit, maar niet in. Je mag ook gewoon naar de brievenbus met de auto, of met de auto naar je tante of oma, als zij maar binnen de stad woont. Verder waren er gisteren in de stad veel evenementen, en alle mensen die ze organiseerden waren dus ook met de auto gekomen. Zij hadden ontheffing.

Kortom, de autovrije zondag was dus helemaal niet autovrij, integendeel. Er werd hard gejakkerd, gescheurd en geronkt.

Ik liep laatst in Brasília op een autovrije zondag. (Brasilia, dat is toch die autostad? Jazeker.) Brasília is elke zondag autovrij, en dan ook echt autovrij. Niet de hele stad, natuurlijk, dat kan niet. Maar wel de eixão, die enorme verkeersader die de stad doorsnijdt. Die is echt helemaal autovrij, vrij van taxi's, ambulances, politiewagens, taxi's, motors, brommers en ander gemotoriseerd verkeer. De eixão is elke zondag het domein van stepjes, joggers, honden met baas, kinderen op driewielertjes, racefietsers en kinderwagens, alles, als het maar niet ronkt....Heerlijk !

No news from Plantage

2009-08-27T17:25:00.008+02:00

School en werk zijn weer begonnen, de stad bruist, raast en toetert in de spits. Over het water zie ik de oneindige stroom fietsers zich door de Sarphatistraat naar werk, school of crèche haasten. In de verte hoor ik de twee seriema's (dat zijn grijsgevederde loopvogels), in Artis hun dagelijkse duetje gillen. De vakantietijd is echt voorbij.
Wat leek de drukte van het Amsterdamse bestaan ver weg, toen ik twee weken geleden zittend op een gammel ijzeren stoeltje aan het eind van een trouwfeest van twee van mijn familieleden de zon zag opkomen boven een buitenwijk van Fortaleza en de geur van deze ontwakende metropool opsnoof. Het liedje van Chico Buarque "Eu faço samba e amor até mais tarde, e tenho muito sono demanhã, escuto a correria da cidade que alarde e apressa o dia de amanhã..." neuride door mijn hoofd. Die ontsnapping aan de dagelijkse hectiek was maar heel kort. Ik ben weer thuis. Nieuwsberichten twitteren met seconden tussenpozen op mijn beeldscherm. De lijsten ongelezen emails, uitgeprinte papieren in stapels, mijn beker met lauwe automaatkoffie, het monotone maar ontwikkelingsbeleidrelevante geprevel van collega's aan de koffietafel, alles dwingt me de werkelijkheid onder ogen te zien. Het werkseizoen is weer begonnen...

Women of the World, this time in Liberia

2009-04-20T16:07:00.001+02:00

Historic moment

2009-01-21T00:00:00.001+01:00

ICTs, Africa and the paradox of sustainable development

2009-01-05T14:18:00.006+01:00

Are ICTs really contributing to sustainable development and supporting poverty alleviation or are they just another technocratic hype which is being imposed on development countries? Working in Ghana in several ICT projects, I experienced the complexity of the above question.
At a first sight, I was fully convinced of the need to connect Africa to the global information society, to provide access to valuable information, to enhance online collaboration. It was easy to find arguments for an information revolution for Africa, and for bridging the digital divide.
All the global development agencies support ICTs in their development agendas. World Bank, UN, DFID, Nuffic, SIDA, IDRC, UNDP, WTO, NGOs, African governments and pan-African organisations as the African Union, NEPAD and Association of African Universities and many others embraced ICTs as part of their development policies.
Despite the apparent consensus on this subject, there is also criticism.
In November 2008 I attended the International Conference on Rethinking Development Studies at Cape Coast in Ghana. I presented a paper on ICTs and development myself, and discussed with conference participants, development researchers from universities in Africa and the US, who were very sceptical on development policies. One important issue came up.
It seems that the focus on ICTs within development started in the mid 90s, as a new approach to development, in a period of public “compassion fatigue” and falling levels of foreign assistance. The introduction of ICTs in development fitted well in the neoliberal discourse of trade-not-aid, promoting the Information Revolution as the new ‘development paradigm’. The idea was adopted by the Clinton Administration and rapidly disseminated worldwide to global governance institutions. In this newly created actuality, the main obstacles to the information were identified as technological and thus solvable. The “advantage of technological backwardness” of Africa not having a fixed telecommunication infrastructure, was mentioned as an asset for the introduction of wireless internet technology and mobile telephony. The opening of the markets, by cutting tariffs on imported computer equipments, the transition of state-run to privatised, deregulated telecom markets, and the creation of an open competitive trade environment, were all strong arguments which fitted very well in the existing neoliberal discourse of the day. These ideas were enthusiastically integrated into the donor’s structural reform strategies and the IMF and World Bank’s structural adjustment programs for developing countries. In this way, the information revolution was discursively marketed by linking “poverty” to “lack of information”.
As a result to the proposed reforms, the telecom state companies of several African countries, was privatised and successfully acquired by international companies. Vodafone is currently the number one telecom company in Africa. It acquired Ghana Telecom lately.
Basically, the information revolution might be necessary for African development, it is an excellent opportunity for global markets.
Africa does not participate in global ICT productivity. Nor does it participate in the production of hardware, nor in software, not in services. The global supply chains for the delivery of computer hardware are in Asia, Europe and North America. Service delivery and software design shifted from the US to India and China. Not to Africa until date.
In the meantime, Africa is paying a high price for its participation in the global information age. We can see the information revolution taking place in Africa. Mobile telephony has infiltrated African society, even used by the rural societies and the very poor.
Private telecom companies, aimed at short term profits, benefit from the deregulated market by charging high prices, and deliberately holding back available internet bandwidth capacity, in order not to spoil their market shares.
ICTs and the internet, however indispensable for collaboration, knowledge and education, are not very sustainable. ICT equipments have very short lives. According to Moore’s law, processor capacity and data storage capacity double every 18 months. Software is adapted to this pace of technological and commercial developments. We are still in the middle of a technological evolutionary phase, in which concepts change very fast, and in which much is being invested. You could say the the concept of ICT is not fully mature. Developing countries are confronted with gigantic costs to catch up and keep up to this global technological playground, which makes it fundamentally not sustainable.
There are now about 4 billion mobile telephones in the World in 2008, and approximately 1 billion computers (Source ITU and the Gartner). In 2008 180 million computers have been replaced by new machines, and 35 million computers were dumped, despite the toxic substances they contain. Of the world’s energy consumption, about
1 % is estimated to be consumed by data centres, and 0,25 % is consumed by the data flows of the Internet. The internet flows in the Netherlands have doubled again over the passed 15 months. Since the number of users has stabilised, this increase is especially attributed to the data traffic of music, images and motion pictures (I-tunes!).
When returning to the scale and level of our projects in higher education in Africa, we can see the demand of internet connectivity by our partners in e.g. Ghanaian universities and polytechnics. Despite our own reluctance to impose ICT policies and to create a so called situation of ‘eiland automatisering’, we have unsustainably contributed to the increase of the number of VSAT dishes in Africa, and introduced our own ICT isle e.g. at the university of Cape Coast, bringing our own backup energy supply, equipment, subscription to the internet, connectivity via the Netherlands, software and maintenance activity, going against all existing or non-existing university ICT policies. The subscriptions to the internet are paid from the budget and will expire one year from the end of the project.
How can we justify these activities?
First of all, it was the urgent need from our project partners, the time frame and the result focus of the project, and the lack of human capacity at ICT management and technical level of the university, compelled us to take these actions.
This is probably the way ICTs are implemented anywhere in Africa, by lack of existing management structures or due to the volatile nature of ICTs themselves.
There is no conclusion in this continuing story of ICTs for development. But, when talking about ICTs and sustainable development, there is, first of all a "critical need to be critical... and to look beyond that which is given to you" [Büscher 2009].

Conference on Rethinking Development

2008-11-18T00:22:00.001+01:00

Rethinking Development in Africa

2008-11-17T23:40:00.009+01:00

From 3 to 5 November I participated at the Conference on Rethinking Development Studies in Africa, Sasakawa Conference Centre, University of Cape Coast.
The conference was organized by the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), as a final event concluding a four-year project on education, research and sustainable development. Researchers from IDS and many important international guests were invited to present their papers on various aspects of development. The name of the Conference " Rethinking Development Studies" was well reflected in most of the presentations. New and critical opinions were expressed, and there was much opportunity for dialogue and discussions.
Two famous professors in the area of African Studies and Development were invited from the United States: Prof Pade Badru from the University of Maryland, and Prof Dennis Canterbury from the Eastern Connecticut State University.
Amongst the noteworthy lectures, there was an interesting presentation by Dr John Victor Mensah, director of IDS, about the effects of industrialization in Ghana. He proposed to strengthen linkages with the other economic sectors: i.e. agriculture and services.
Prof S.B. Kendie presented a fascinating paper pointing at the negative effects of western positivism in the development debate. This positivism is aimed at the construction of economic models, in which social and cultural factors are held constant, suggesting a universal scientific approach. This approach, which has been imposed on developing countries, may lead to gender inequalities, environmental destruction and social marginalisation. Prof Kendie suggested that an African perspective should be advocated in the development discourse based on linking traditional epistemologies.
Another interesting lecture was from Prof Pade Badru, on the problematic of economic development in Africa, in which western economic models failed woefully to bring the economic transformation to this continent. He proposed a bottom-up alternative model including participation of women, peasant farmers, and youths, to create a new reality.
Prof Dennis Canterbury advocated an alternative vision to the neo-liberal mercantile/classical political economy development vision. Depicting the current global financial crises as an example for the failure of the unregulated free-market approach and the focus of western countries on nation-states in stead of regions, he proposed an alternative, more focused on developing people. He also predicted the re-introduction of the Keynesian model into the current economic debate.
Dr Agbesinyale from IDS gave an overview on the impacts of the mining sector in Ghana. He demonstrated the relatively insignificant contribution by the mining sector for the Ghanaian economy (about 5 % of GNP only), with respect to its negative social impact. Mining in Ghana causes serious ecological en environmental hazards. Due to unsatisfactory and old-fashioned legislation and regulation, compliant to the open-market economic models, the financial revenues of this sector are just a very small percentage of the private revenues of the foreign corporate interests, which, according to free market and neo-liberal frameworks control the natural resources of Ghana. He proposed alternative policies for Ghana in order to regain control over its national mining resources. He mentioned Botwana and Tanzania as examples of African countries who managed to benefit from the mining sector, through improved legislation and governmental policy.
Bram Büscher from the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands presented a study which he performed in Southern Africa. He described what he argues are contemporary neoliberal ‘modes of politics’ around the concepts of consensus, anti-politics and marketing. Büscher came to these trends by closely observing policy making and management in a setting of transfrontier biodiversity conservation and development in Southern Africa. His research illustrates that these political trends are accompanied by the promotion of competition and commercialisation in every aspect of contemporary life.

The conference was concluded on Wednesday evening, November 5, with a traditional Ghanaian dinner with all the conference participants, and with music and dance at ‘crocodile place’ Hans Cottage Botel. The election of Barack Obama that very day, made the party even more special.

Ownership and sustainable development

2008-10-31T18:38:00.003+01:00

Ownership is een begrip dat tegenwoordig vaak gebruikt wordt in de context van ontwikkelingssamenwerking. Volgens de literatuur is het begrip medio jaren negentig in het development discourse geïntroduceerd door donoren als de Wereldbank en de VN. Het begrip ownership kent geen exacte definitie, maar heeft betrekking op een gevoel van betrokkenheid en verantwoordelijkheid. Het begrip ownership werd geïntroduceerd in de tijd waarin de top-down benadering van ontwikkelingssamenwerking, waarbij ontwikkeling als het ware wordt opgelegd aan ontwikkelingslanden, werd verlaten. Het begrip ownership gaat vaak samen met het begrip vraaggestuurdheid. Projecten moeten vraaggestuurd zijn, demand driven en vooral niet supply driven.Vraaggestuurdheid wordt tegenwoordig in de ontwikkelingssamenwerking als voorwaarde gesteld. Zowel vraaggestuurdheid als ownership zijn begrippen afkomstig uit het neo-liberale gedachtengoed, en de eigentijdse tendens om marktmechanisme en alle ermee samenhangende fenomenen in het publieke domein te willen toepassen, dus ook binnen de ontwikkelingssamenwerking.
Ownership wordt in de ontwikkelingssamenwerking kennelijk gebruikt om aan te geven dat de ontvangende partij, de beneficiary, zich betrokken moet voelen met een project. Het probleem dat door een ontwikkelingsproject opgelost wordt moet zijn “eigen” probleem zijn, en hij, de “beneficiary” of dit nu een land, een regering, of een organisatie is, moet zich betrokken voelen met de weg die gevolgd wordt om het probleem op te lossen. Niemand kan ontkennen dat betrokkenheid een noodzakelijke voorwaarde is voor het welslagen van elk project. Dit lijkt dus een waarheid als een koe.
Hoe zit het nu met ownership in onze eigen projecten? Het Centrum voor Internationale Samenwerking (CIS) is een buitenstaander in het proces van identificatie van ontwikkelingsprojecten en ook tijdens de opzet ervan. Pas bij de uitvoeringsfase van projecten mag het CIS meedoen. In samenwerking met de partner wordt het CIS dan geacht te faciliteren en het project in goede banen te leiden. Betrokkenheid en verantwoordelijkheidsgevoel, i.e. ownership bij alle partijen is een vereiste voor het welslagen van een project. Klopt als een bus.
Maar kan en moet het CIS iets doen om ownership bij de partners te bevorderen als dit blijkt te ontbreken? Wanneer het CIS een professionele rol als consultancyclub vervult, zal de samenwerking meestal goed verlopen.
Er kan zich desondanks een situatie voordoen waarbij de betrokkenheid van de beneficiary blijkt tegen te vallen. Als de oorzaak van dit probleem, nl. “gebrek aan ownership” buiten de invloedsfeer van het CIS ontstaan is, kan het CIS er dan iets aan veranderen? Kan een volstrekt verkeerd of slecht gedefinieerd project tijdens de implementatie nog te redden zijn?
Bij een overduidelijk slecht gedefinieerd project zal het CIS zijn verantwoordeljkheid moeten nemen en dit aan de donor rapporteren, en hiermee een project mogelijk voortijdig afblazen.
Maar wat doen we als we in het grijze gebied komen waarin een project “baat noch schaadt”? Zijn er niet projecten waarbij je vraagtekens kunt zetten bij de effectiviteit en de gestelde doelen? Projecten waarbij de partners zich vrolijk maar matig gemotiveerd door de lijst met projectactiviteiten heenslepen, waar workshops plaatsvinden, activiteiten worden uitgevoerd, mensen in- en uitgevlogen worden, terwijl iedereen het gevoel heeft: " hier gebeurt van alles, maar wat is het feitelijke nut ervan?" Wat is in dit geval de taak van een partij als het CIS? Zal een instelling die bestaat bij de gratie van dergelijke projecten eerlijk durven zeggen dat het feitelijke nut van een dergelijk project ter discussie wordt gesteld? En geldt hetzelfde dan ook voor de beneficiary? Hoe dapper zijn we dan om, in de recente woorden van Bert Koenders, elkaar aan te kijken en te zeggen, “Jongens, het was erg gezellig, maar, de wereld wordt hier niet beter van.” Hoe ver gaan we met ons eigen ownership, met onze verantwoordelijkheid, met onze visie? Is dat te veel gevraagd voor een kleine club die zich in de uitvoerende sfeer bezighoudt, en die wordt afgerekend op, geheel conform de tijdgeest, het zorgen voor externe financiering?

The continuing story of the internet in Africa and the myth of deregulation of global markets

2008-10-07T10:23:00.005+02:00

Last week at Cape Coast, Ghana, I could once again experience the troubles of Internet in Africa. Internet in Ghana can simply be expressed in one statement too slow and too expensive. It is an illustration for the digital divide.
How will researchers in Ghana ever be able to catch up with their peers in the industrialized countries if they cannot easily access the digital information available in this world?
For an institute of the University of Cape Coast I ordered a satellite connection to the internet. At first sight this is not the most advantageous type of connection because of bandwidth limitations. Besides, the satellite connects you directly to Europe, so you will consume international bandwidth for local data exchange. This is like you’re taking an airplane from e.g. Accra to Kumasi (two cities in Ghana), making a stopover in London.
On the short term we really don’t have much choice. The universities in Ghana need better internet, so we just went for the “quick and dirty” solution of buying a satellite dish and connecting it. The promised internet download speed (of 128 kbps), which we bought from a Dutch provider, (without Service Level Agreement, because no telecom company dares to commit itself to deliver a proper service of internet in Africa) appeared to be unreliable. Despite all well known tricks that internet providing companies use to excuse themselves for poor service (blaming it on the position of the sun and other technical details which we can’t verify), the bottom line is, the market in Ghana is producer dominated, and the telecom companies, with their short term targets make a great profit out of this.
During my stay in Ghana, I followed the internet news sites, (on my guesthouse’s computer with a very slow internet connection) revealing the most severe financial crises of our lifetime. The tumbling banks and collapsing businesses showed clearly what happens in free markets, when no proper regulation mechanisms exist.

Will the greediness of a free and deregulated world market ever bring sustainable global economic development?

Two professors from VU University Amsterdam, lecturing in Kumasi, Ghana

2008-04-10T11:40:00.001+02:00

Guest lecturers prof Jan Top and prof Hans Akkermans from the VU University Amsterdam, lecturing Knowledge Management at the Osei Tutu II Institute for Advanced ICT Studies in Kumasi, Ghana. The lecture is attended by sixteen students in their first year of the MSc in Computer Science, April 2008.

New Institute for Advanced ICT in Ghana

2007-11-19T09:44:00.000+01:00

By Anna Bon

Just a few steps from the place where the famous Ghanaian Star beer is brewed and bottled, a new institute for higher education in ICT just opened in Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana.

The institute bears the name of the celebrated Asantehene, king of this region, and is officially named The Osei Tutu II Institute for Advanced ICT Studies, but it is usually referred to as The Institute. The letters ICT in the school’s name are said to be an acronym, not only for Information and Communication Technology, but also for Innovation, Cooperation, Thinking. The Institute was officially inaugurated by the Ghanaian Minister of Trade, Mr. Joe Baidoo-Ansah, in behalf of the President of Ghana, John Kufuor. Tom de Man, president of Heineken for Africa and the Middle East, an official from the Dutch Embassy, and the Managing Director of Ghana Guinness Breweries Limited were among the special guests who attended the opening ceremony of The Institute.

This is the first school in Ghana to teach ICT at MSc level. The very first batch of seventeen students started here last August. If these students succeed in all the tough examinations, they will obtain their Master’s degree in 2009. They will be taught according to the newest insights in information and communication technologies, computer science, entrepreneurship and management.

The institute was designed and created by one man, the Dutch professor Maarten Looijen, who is now rector. The initiative for this school came from Heineken International. The sponsors now are Ghana Guinness Breweries, Diageo, Coca Cola, Unilever and Barclays. The Dutch government gives a substantial financial support.

Ghana is taking off economically. The World Bank reported an economic growth in Ghana of 6 % for the last year. Ghana is now one of the best-performing economies in western Africa. When you visit e.g. Accra and Kumasi, you can see numerous new hotels, businesses, shopping malls, conference centers. Many, many new residences are being built, all over the country. ICT is in everybody’s minds. Mobile telephony expands every year. One out of four Ghanaians owns a mobile telephone nowadays. There are internet cafes all over the country. The road infrastructure is in good shape. You can drive on asphalt from Accra to the far north, and even cross the border to neighboring Burkina Faso.

E-business, semantic web, internet technology, are just a few of the subjects taught at the Institute by professors from Holland, South-Africa, Italy, Bulgaria. Although internet in Ghana is still of very low-bandwidth capacity, due to monopolies and an unregulated telecom market, new technologies are desperately needed to support economic growth. Ghana will need many, many more graduates in ICT than this institute can deliver each year. Most computer businesses are now run by foreigners, entrepreneurs from India, China or Europe. Skilled Ghanaian network specialists and system administrators can be found, but Ghanaians as Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are still hard to find.

This institute is a good first step to enhance Ghanaian education in ICT. I hope many ICT professionals will be delivered to African society by this institute. And let these professionals reinvest their capacities into African economy. I wish there were ten institutes like this in Ghana!

Four students at The Institute

Click here to visit The Institute's website.

Visit Ewoud Bon's blog

2007-11-09T16:14:00.000+01:00

If you want to read about science, poetry, music, archeology, climate change, geology, and many other subjects, please visit Ewoud Bon's blog

http://denken-over-van-alles.blogspot.com/

Internet in Higher Education in Africa

2007-10-31T12:01:00.000+01:00

Read my new article, published in the International Journal for Education and Development using ICT

Click here to view the abstract

Slides: The Internet Bandwidth Issue in Africa

2007-10-28T12:46:00.000+01:00

Poor internet connectivity is one of the serious underlying causes of the digital divide between developing and industrialized countries, and is hampering the transition to the global information society.
Web2.0 social software offers a great opportunity to communicate with peers, exchange exciting new ideas, form new communities on the web and access all sorts of information.
But what if you don't have the internet? Is there a solution to this problem, or will developing countries get more and more isolated, by missing the opportunity to join the global social network?

View a presentation about this subject, held at the Web2fordev Conference,
24-27 September in Rome, during one of the Open Spaces workshops.

The Internet Bandwidth Issue in Africa; Special Case Ghana

View this slideshow

2007-10-27T23:27:00.000+02:00

Slides from Plantage and the World

Supercomputers of the World: this one in Ghana

2007-10-12T23:55:00.000+02:00

By Anna Bon

I never expected to find a supercomputer in Ghana, until I accidentally ran into one. My interest in globalization and information technology in relation to development made me visit the Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence in ICT, in Accra, a training centre for ICT personnel. My contact person was a gentleman named Mohammed who showed me around in the premises. Here, at the Kofi Annan Centre, is where the Ghana Internet Exchange is hosted. The exchange consists of a network switch where the glass fibre networks of local telecom companies are interconnected, enabling them to exchange their internet data traffic flows.

I was already surprised by this high-tech centre, when I suddenly became aware of a sign pointing to the HPC Department. As a former employee of the Dutch Supercomputer Centre, SARA, I am familiar with the concept of High Performance Computing (HPC) also called supercomputing. One does not come across supercomputers every day.

Supercomputers are not for common users. Supercomputing is only used for highly calculation intensive tasks, such as weather forecasting, molecular modeling, and nuclear physics. Besides, supercomputers are tremendously expensive and they require special operational skills for maintenance. Supercomputer owners are mainly universities, military centers and multinationals such as Shell. Why on earth, I asked myself, this centre here, was hosting a supercomputer.

The server room and rack were opened for me and I had the privilege of seeing the system. It was a Param Padma, designed and built in India by a centre called CDAC. The government of India donated this system to the Kofi Annan Centre.

Until that moment I had never thought other companies but the American giants IBM, Cray, SGI, Dell, or the Japanese NEC, or even the French Bull were into this HPC business. I could hardly believe my eyes. Supercomputing in Sub-Saharan Africa, using a system made in India.

Supercomputers have in common with pumpkins that they compete in size. A supercomputer competition is held every year for “benchmarking” the fastest system in the World. The 2007 TOP500 list shows IBM’s Blue Gene as the fastest supercomputer with a peak performance of 280 TeraFLOPs, which means it can make 280 trillion Floating Point OPerations per second. (A floating point is a number with a dot, such as 2.1; an operation can be e.g. 2.1 x 344.78). Because of their price and purpose most supercomputers of the World are located in the US and Europe.

As we all know, the US government, and especially the President Bush administration, is concerned about world security matters. They are worried some countries might use supercomputers for evil causes. Strict supercomputer export regulations have been set up to countries of “proliferation concern” which are countries with a nuclear program. Many countries, including India are not allowed to buy any supercomputers. India took this import restriction as a challenge and entered the era of supercomputer development. The Param Padma was launched in 2005, a machine originally consisting of 248 nodes, having a peak performance of 4 TeraFLOPs, i.e. four trillions floating point operations per second.

Now China is even more ambitious. China started a huge project to develop the world’s largest supercomputer, called Lenovo in 2005. This system will have a peak performance of about 1000 TeraFLOPs, which is more than 30 times as fast as the current world champion, the IBM Blue Gene. China’s economic growth is enormous. If they cannot buy a supercomputer, they will simply build their own system.
In our globalizing World technological bases are shifting from west to east, and probably some day from north to south, creating this Flat World, which was described by Thomas Friedman.

And I believe we should not underestimate the developing countries’ emerging innovative talent.

2007-10-04T16:57:00.001+02:00

Technorati Profile

Web2fordev, a hype, a dream or an opportunity?

2007-09-28T22:54:00.000+02:00

By Anna Bon

Web2fordev
I attended the Conference about Web2.0 for development in Rome, 24-27 September 2007, at the FAO.

Is Web 2.0 an internet hype? Just a tool, a new technology? And what can it do for development, for rural development, for natural resource management, for poverty reduction? What can internet do for the poor ? These were the questions I had when I went to this conference in Rome. There were many people there, American, Italian, French and Dutch people, people from India, Australia and several countries in Latin America, people from Kenia, Zambia, Ghana, Niger, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Tanzania, Senegal and many other countries. We were talking, listening to each other and brainstorming. The topic was not as evident as it seemed. After the first day of the conference I asked myself what this conference was all about. Does Web2.0 really exist? Is it of use? Is there anybody using it for anything valuable? And what about the internet connectivity? Do poor countries have enough bandwidth to use these tools? Is Web2.0 for development just a dream?

Consider the digital divide, the inequity in access to the global information society between the rich and the poor. Internet does exist in Africa. I know, because I have read my email in very remote places. But I do have my email account, my laptop, and the skills to use them. And what if you do not? What if you are a farmer, if you cannot read and write, if you live from what you grow on your own land. If you are a woman who is working on the field carrying your child on your back? Is the internet also there for you? What can information mean for you? What difference can a mobile phone mean for your life?

During the conference lots of time were spent on the assets of Web2.0. How you can create blogs. How you can publish your digital photos and videos to the World. How you can create news feeds. How you can become a smart bookmarker. How to create a podcast. Everybody was interested, because many of these tools were new to us. I like to be an innovator. I adore hypes. And I am always fond of gadgets.

Web 2.0 is social software, it is about fighting the information overload, about internet communities, about multimedia. Web 2.0 is new in development. Not many people I have met know it, or use it. Does it have a potential for developing countries? I met people who believe it does. People who record the local languages from Aboriginals in Australia, and make podcasts. People who make software to provide farmers in Uganda with the updated market information, so they can sell their coffee for better price. Journalists from Zambia who publish on there blogs, who empower communities with their interesting opinions. People who don’t need hardcopy to reach there audiences. People form Congo-Brazzaville who create blogs to inform people with HIV/Aids about their disease. All these activities are embryonic, but I really think these smart people will find there way within the global web.

We came here to learn how Web2.0 is used in rural development. The answer is that it has not yet been implemented. Is that disappointing? I think it is not! If we had organized a conference twelve years ago, a conference about Mobile Telephony and Rural Development, would anybody have taken it seriously? Could we have foreseen what mobile telephony would do for developing countries?

Web 2.0 may be new, but communication is of all ages. Where do we go from here? How can we shrink this digital divide? Does Web2.0 change people, their behaviors, can it remove prejudices? Is it about collaboration, trust, identity? Or is it just another internet hype we will forget within a short while?

The future will show us.

Crossing the border from Burkina Faso to Ghana

2007-05-20T19:08:00.000+02:00

Tree in Bolgatanga, Ghana

2007-04-20T21:50:00.000+02:00

This baobab always reminds me of the threat of these trees for extremely small planets, as described by Antoine de Saint Exupéry.

Roads of the World

2007-04-20T21:43:00.000+02:00

Une conversation à Ouagadougou

2007-04-03T15:04:00.000+02:00

When travelling to Accra...

2007-04-03T14:48:00.000+02:00

Amsterdam, February 2007

2007-03-02T15:23:00.000+01:00

New visit to Ghana

2007-02-22T11:55:00.000+01:00

School children in the Netherlands

2007-02-07T13:24:00.000+01:00

School children in Amsterdam, the Netherlands

School children in Sunyani, Ghana

2007-02-07T12:37:00.000+01:00

School children in Sunyani, Ghana.

More roads of the world

2007-02-02T21:05:00.000+01:00

Roads in the world

2007-02-02T20:57:00.000+01:00

A road in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and a road in Koforidua, Ghana.

Beaches of the World

2007-01-25T11:38:00.000+01:00

I always like beaches without tourists.

You can see the Fort St. Jago on top of a distant hill on this picture. This fort was built by the dutch in the 17th century and was then called Coenraadsburg.

2007-01-23T16:55:00.000+01:00

I visited Sunyani in 2006. There was this strange brownish - red color all over the place, probably caused by dust from the red soil.

It had been raining, as you can see from the green landscape on this picture, I made from my window at sunset...

Road in Zambia

2007-01-23T16:33:00.000+01:00

2007-01-23T13:37:00.000+01:00

Melon boat

2007-01-22T22:00:00.000+01:00

This "objet" was made by our young, 7 year old artist Leeuw.

Em homenagem ao grande poeta...

2007-01-22T20:29:00.000+01:00

2007-01-20T00:57:00.000+01:00

Campus at Wa

2007-01-19T14:32:00.000+01:00

Visiting the polytechnic school at Wa, NW Ghana.

2007-01-19T14:10:00.000+01:00

My last visit to Ghana was in November. The beach between Elmina and Cape Coast is fortunately not yet discovered by mass tourism.

Besides walking on the beach before sunset, I worked at the University of Cape Coast, where we are setting up a Resource centre and a computer lab.

New weblog

2007-01-19T14:04:00.000+01:00

I hope to hear from your voyages.