Nancy Hafkin, ECA's Chief of Development Information Services Section, believes in the creation, management and dissemination of information so that Africans can find relevant material on the Internet that is generated by Africans
It is really quite amazing how much is out there already," says Ms. Nancy Hafkin, pointing to the contents of Africa on the Internet: An Annotated Guide to African Web Sites. The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has published this 279-page volume as a first attempt at listing all web sites "produced by Africans, hosted in Africa or containing African content." The volume moves from Algeria to Zimbabwe, covering available categories from arts to tourism. Already posted on the ECA website <www.un.org/Depts/eca/adf>, the Guide will be updated, corrected and available also in print and on CD-ROM.
Ms. Hafkin leads the Promoting Information Technology for Development
team in ECA's Development Information Services Division. She was
already at ECA when it began work in 1979 on a Pan-African Documentation
and Information System (PADIS) with the UN Development Programme
(UNDP), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) and the Canadian International Development Research Centre
(IDRC) as "intellectual and financial partners." The
aim was to increase access to organized information for development
planning. The method was to set up a computerized database at
ECA to centralize and disseminate such information, and train
specialists to build national databases.
There were successes. PADIS built up a bibliographic database of development information "which is still maintained, and linked to ECA's statistical database." Several hundred Africans were trained in development information management software, and 23 countries have maintained databases for development planning. At its peak in 1994-95, PADIS had 40 national participating centres, "sometimes in universities, or in the information and documentation centres of finance and planning ministries, all using PADIS methodology and producing national publications."
But the concept was well ahead of the technological realities: neither the producers nor the seekers had access to satellite connections for electronic information transfer between national centres and Addis Ababa. So there was initial reliance on photocopies and postal offices. Also, PADIS documents were mainly ECA documents. "It proved impossible to get a copy from every national system of every document they input. You had to write, call, or later, fax your information request; then databases were searched and the [bibliographic] answers were sent back. Then you chose what documents you wanted. Through letters, the process could take three years. Would the people you were writing to still be there? Would they still remember, or care?"
ECA began work with IDRC on computer networking in 1987, the same year PADIS was renamed the Pan-African Development Information System. ECA realized that the Internet could do "in extremely decentralized fashion what we had naively hoped to do in 1979 with a fairly centralized database." ECA continues to help African countries and institutions make their organized information available through the Internet, on CD-ROMs and other electronic tools of communication and networking.
Ms. Hafkin says people often think "this whole information age is about getting connected. But that only makes you a receiver. The whole point is to become a producer, not just a consumer. That's the message we try to get across in every meeting, seminar and workshop we organize."
She notes that La Francophonie, the French-speakers' international cultural association, is making "very substantial" grants for content development. Worldwide Internet content in French is dwarfed by that in English but in Africa, the francophone contribution "is quite significant. The exciting thing is that it comes from the grassroots, from NGOs, local associations and entrepreneurs, and gender is an important aspect of it."
ECA encourages content development at regional and national level and gets requests for training. But "unless you organize the information in documents and databases, you can't put anything on your website. So we begin with information management and basic website development." ECA also "tries to link governments with local private sector firms that can provide training and support services."
Ms. Hafkin emphasizes that "user needs must always come
first. You must think about where you are working, what kind of
information you and those you are working with need and try to
use the new technologies to satisfy needs without being technology
driven." She urges people to think about practical ways to
blend together the old and new technologies in order to reach
people and help make their knowledge accessible.
