[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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--
Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse \ / Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (Saar)
el at lisse.NA / * | Telephone: +264 81 124 6733 (cell)
PO Box 8421 \ /
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