[AfrICANN-discuss] Re: [africs-ig] Africa report

Dr Eberhard Lisse el at lisse.NA
Tue May 28 13:46:08 SAST 2013


My view is that eloquence in Africa is most certainly not lacking. In
particular when it comes to rationalizing why something can not be done...

el

on 2013-05-28 12:27 Dandjinou Pierre said the following:
> Mawaki,
> 
> You said it all ! collecting the information and documenting those
> relevant events as the ones Nnenna alludes to should be the focus. But
> this calls for resources (human and financial resources). The way some
> parts of the world do this is through regional organizations such as the
> European commission who commissioned (!!) appropriate studies and white
> papers.
> 
> Our challenge here is how to get the Africa Union commission and other
> RECs interested.
> 
>  Pierre
> 
> 
> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 12:42 PM, Mawaki Chango <kichango at gmail.com
> <mailto:kichango at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     All,
>      
>     There is a lot to be done in Africa. So one might think it is even
>     more crucial here to bring in all segments of the society which can
>     help improve our understanding and practice. I totally agree
>     that academia should be invited in what we do at all levels. It
>     doesn't matter how much you slice this, you can't avoid education,
>     training, research without a serious loss. As recently as last year
>     I was doing a survey in an African country and one of my respondents
>     working in a public research agency told me once she asked to
>     consult a document (which was not a government classified document
>     but has to do with some development issues in one sector of
>     activity) at another government agency, then after asking what
>     exactly she was looking for her colleague opened the corresponding
>     pages for her to make note of, while concealing the non-related
>     contents. That's the mindset we're up against. In many places, it is
>     the very notion of collecting information and making it easy to
>     retrieve later on which is lacking. Believe it or not, in some
>     countries ICT-related policy documents are said to exist but cannot
>     be easily found by the public. For the medium and long-term there is
>     a need to educate and train information specialists, librarians,
>     people who are prepared to identify relevant data gathering
>     opportunities and sources and people who are prepared to
>     systematically gather and curate information, index it and make it
>     easy to find and retrieve at any point in the future. This can only
>     help all researchers, academic or practitioners, to do their job
>     better as well as decision-makers, for that matter.
>      
>     In any case, and particularly for the short term, the best we can do
>     is to gather raw data whenever possible, I agree with Nnenna on that
>     (Reports are just a means to build reference repositories for such
>     data and there may be other ways). The most important (and urgent)
>     is to make sure the data (as per the data points she just
>     indicated) is available somewhere for the public to access.
>     Otherwise, how is one to debate cogently about the geopolitics of
>     the Internet in Africa without knowing which African countries were
>     there during relevant proceedings, which ones contributed language,
>     what their rationale was, what the different positions among African
>     countries are and which ones took which positions and why, etc. A
>     handful of people may be able to find out with a reasonable time
>     investment but most people, who might use that information for
>     useful things that we cannot even predict, won't be able to find it.
>     Not to mention that the more aware the public, the greater the
>     benefits of the debate.
>      
>     So yes, we need to demonstrate more awareness for the necessity to
>     collect information and systematically document what we do and
>     relevant events, to associate academia and other researchers and
>     work with them in order to facilitate data collection and
>     information retrieval for research and policy analysis as well as
>     for decision-making, policy-making and public information.
>      
>     Best,
>      
>     Mawaki  
> 
> 
>     On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Nnenna Nwakanma <nnenna75 at gmail.com
>     <mailto:nnenna75 at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>         SM, all
>          I am talking about an Africa report directly in relation to the:
>         WCIT - World Conference on Information Technology
>         WTPF - World Telecommunications and ICT Policy Forum
>         WSIS+10 - World Summit of Information SOciety + 10 meetings
> 
>         It is not about "what worked in a country" but rather the sum
>         total of:
> 
>          1. Which African countries contribted content
>          2. In which areas/domains were African countries
>             working/interested in
>          3. Which Countries had delegations
>          4. What commissions/committees of the policy rounds did they
>             chair/work on
>          5. What Ministers were present? What panels did they feature
>             on? What content did they contribute?
>          6. What engagements, what plans, what future..
> 
>             All of that in the framework of global Internet/ICT Policy
> 
>         Best
> 
> 
>         Nnenna
> 
> 
> 
>         On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 8:28 AM, SM <sm at resistor.net
>         <mailto:sm at resistor.net>> wrote:
> 
>             Hi Nnenna,
>             At 00:04 28-05-2013, Nnenna Nwakanma wrote:
> 
>                 I honestly do believe that if we have an "Africa report"
>                 after each of these meetings, such will come in handy
>                 when we are planning for the future.
> 
> 
>             Replicating what worked in Country X does not work well.
>              The quality of reports are in my opinion relatively low.
>              That might be due to research constraints.  The reader
>             would expect an Africa report to include as many countries
>             as possible.  Reports generally cover a few countries as
>             case studies and are extrapolated from there.
> 
>             There isn't a breath of expertise as input; either the
>             expertise is not there, or it is untapped, or there is lack
>             of interest.
> 
>             Regards,
>             -sm
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> 
> -- 
> Pierre Dandjinou
> Cotonou - 229 90 087784 / 66566610
> Dakar 221 77 639 30 41
> www.scg.bj <http://www.scg.bj/>
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> 
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-- 
Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse  \        / Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (Saar)
el at lisse.NA            / *     |   Telephone: +264 81 124 6733 (cell)
PO Box 8421             \     /
Bachbrecht, Namibia     ;____/


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