View Warigia Bowman and Scott S. Robinson
Rapporteur: Margarida Carvalho
Scott S. Robinson, “Slouching toward digital apartheid in Latin America”
Scott S. Robinson received his Ph.D in Social Anthropology from Cornell University and currently teaches in the Anthropology Department at the Universidad Metropolitana, Iztapalapa Campus, in México DF.
Robinson presented the four stage Internet development in Latin America: 1º commercial dial-up; 2º official connectivity program, 3º the emerging culture of cyber cafés; 4º what he called the emergent cyber-apartheid (elites access to broadband vs. mobile telephones for the rest of the population).
Robinson pointed out that in Latin America, regulatory agencies lack political, legal and institutional independence, and also that there are dramatic income distribution differentials and limited consumer protection.
Currently, mobile telephony surpasses fixed lines and those who are young and poor may have a prepaid mobile phone and use a cyber café.
According to the 2007 Monelos State survey led by Scott Robinson and his researching team, the Mexican cyber cafés mostly use Windows OS and are unfamiliar with open source tools. Their most frequent users are students of both sexes but teachers don’t use them. This means that there’s a growing gulf between students and teachers.
The commercial cyber café model is different from the telecenter model. In fact, the telecenter is a point of access to the Internet, generally sponsored by an NGO, that offers training and creates information available online for dealing with local problems. On the other hand, cyber cafés’ patrons make little use of educational and learning opportunities and are much more oriented toward a consumption model of renting screen time.
However, according to Robinson, national elites prefer this kind of access and consumption because they don’t have very deep commitment to truly universal access.
Robinson concluded his presentation by calling our attention to contradictory scenarios such as:
* Mobile telephony and cyber cafés synergy or discrimination?
* A young client universe with a potential innovation caldron or a captive consumer of infotainment?
* Digital inclusion or apartheid?
Finally, Robinson introduced some concrete proposals to the participants of the International School on Digital Transformation. These were namely to create an online study portal with a broad range of study questions with a logical route to correct answers keyed to university multiple choice entrance exams and to catalyze regional hardware, software, botnet and virus security check-up networks anchored in cyber cafés.
Discussion: Questions to Scott Robinson included why media activism around technology built during the nineties is fading away and what happens when community communications become commodified. Scott Robinson said that national elites and operators such as Microsoft aren’t interested in universal Internet access and that he doesn’t see innovation coming from the elite. When asked about the sustainability of telecenters, Scott Robinson said that if the telecenters aren’t community sustained and funded they are unable to survive.
Warigia Bowman, “Challenges and opportunities for information technology policy in East Africa”
Warigia Bowman earned her doctorate at Harvard at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Mississippi Department of Public Policy Leadership. She is keenly interested in rural development issues, both in the United States and in Africa.
Warigia began by asking us, if we had already been in Africa, since the African reality is completely different from that of the developed North. According to Warigia, Africa is the frontier of policy and the frontier of technology. However, she said, we need to reframe Africa and consider it as a place of opportunity and economic growth.
“Today, I am not going to use powerpoint”, Warigia said, calling our attention to the fact that some of the older kinds of technology, such as books, the printing press, copy machines, telephones, radio, TV, etc., are more in use in the developing world. As Warigia reminded us, information technology is not just the computers and Internet but also the written notes she held in her hand or the chalk and the blackboard in a rural village school.
Warigia’ s research is focused in East Africa, namely in the countries of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania, and she is really interested in the access to ICTs in rural East Africa. According to her, some of the core questions we need to address while studying the rural east African context are: Who, What, Where, How and For Whom? We must keep in mind that penetration rates are low and widely divergent between African countries and within African countries and one of the most interesting questions is “what is the technology that is best suited to getting access for rural areas?” In 2009, two consortia, TEAMS and Eassy, brought an undersea cable to the Eastern Africa coast and as Warigia said: “Now we have cable, so we are at a technological choice point as Douglas Schuler suggested. It is the right approach to cable all rural areas in Africa?” As she pointed out it is most likely that phone based, low-bandwidth application will be fundamental as well.
Africans should be thought of as active producers of technology and content and not as mere passive consumers. In this emerging, highly complex and contradictory, scenario, the public sector can create a fertile environment through laws, policies and regulation which makes it easy for private sector actors to enter the ICT market. Civil society can force the government to act and academics should act as part of the civil society promoting political and technical solutions that keep Africa connected, not isolated.
Warigia concluded her talk by calling our attention to some critical issues:
- Electrification. The rural electrification is a real constraint. It may not be desirable to fill Africa with the same amount of electric consumables that the developed North, Warigia said. We need to think about more sustainable solutions.
- Literacy. How can we use public access points to increase both literacy and digital literacy?
- Gender. We must take into consideration women’s social and cultural constrains in what concerns attending public access points and envision alternative gender based solutions such as allowing them to attend different times and spaces than men.
- Environment. Hardware needs to be able to withstand potentially hostile physical environment.
- Recycling and sustainability. We should be aware of the disposal and recycling of hardware.
Discussion: Government can play a positive role and we can make political choices about technology. Telecenters sustainability is a problem all over the world and according to Warigia if she was to build one she would keep it small and would ask people, namely the women and the elderly, what they really need. A telecenter is a multitask place that should meet the true needs of the community. Warigia stressed some positive examples in what concerns public politics such as the Uganda’s case where the regulation made it easy for private sectors actors to enter ICT market fostering a very competitive market.