Most
of the people living in the world today will never use a telephone
in their lifetime.
This truism is hard to comprehend for Americans
accustomed to the Internet and an ever-growing use of communication
technology that ties the world together. The limited impact of twentieth-century
communication in much of the developing world makes one wonder whether
the new technologies of the twenty-first century will have much
relevance for large parts of the world. The Internet and new information
technologies might appear to be an unaffordable luxury for countries
facing intractable social problems of hunger, poverty, and disease.
In fact, the opposite is true. The relatively high
expense of telephones and print-based media has left developing
countries with inferior communication networks and educational systems
that undermine all efforts at economic development and play into
the hands of undemocratic forces. As a lower-cost pathway that allows
information to be more accessible, transferable, and manageable,
the Internet has a revolutionary potential to transform these societies.
Ready access to information can be a catalyst for economic and social
transformation that supports fast-paced sustainable development
and democratic political structures. In July 2000 the leaders of
the G8 industrialized democratic nations recognized this potential
in signing the Okinawa
Charter on the Global Information Society. Countries largely
excluded from print-based knowledge networks and unable to exploit
telephone-based communication networks stand to gain the most by
access to the increasingly global information society.
At MSU, MATRIX:
The Center for the Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online,
a research center in the College of Arts and Letters, has joined
with the African Studies Center to develop a series of projects
to bring the promises of the global information society to more
people in the developing world. Various of these projects have also
involved the Women
and International Development Program (WID) and the MSU
Museum, as well as faculty in the Colleges
of Arts and Letters and Social
Science. The goal of these projects is to build networks that
support education, democracy, and development.
One such project, the South African National Cultural
Heritage Training and Technology Project, was mentioned in the spring
2001 issue of this publication http://www.isp.
msu.edu/international/2-1/6.html#2. Current information can
be found at http://www.saculturalheritage.org/.
Two other such projects, African
Online Digital Library, and Internet
and Women's Democratic Organizing, illustrate the breadth of
these ongoing efforts. Building upon these successes, a new opportunity
as a partner in an initiative of the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID) called DOT-COMopens
up possibilities to extend these partnerships in Africa and elsewhere
in the developing world. |
Giving voice to those who have not been heard in print is one of
the main goals of MATRIX's many development projects. With funding
from the National Science Foundation, MATRIX
has launched the first U.S.-African digital library partnership,
the African Online Digital Library (AODL). The main research challenge
of the AODL has been to represent nonstandard African language characters
on the Web. Following best practices in digital library development,
MATRIX has crafted a suite of tools to work with indigenous languages.
Working with Professor of History David Robinson, a West African
specialist, in the coming months MATRIX staff will bring on line
a rich variety of materials in Pulaar; many other African languages
will follow. MATRIX is pioneering multilingual delivery and search,
tying African language material to French and English translations
and presenting both the transcriptions and actual oral narratives
in creative and instructive on-line galleries of image, text, and
sound. This will facilitate teaching and preservation of African
languages.
MATRIX believes that if the Internet is to reach its potential
as an instrument for development and democracy, both within developing
countries and worldwide, then all voices need to be heard on line.
Education is a two-way process; developed countries need to learn
much more about other parts of the world. Equally important, giving
voice on the Web to developing countries leads to a sense of ownership
and engagement in the new tools of the global information age. As
access to information becomes more widely dispersed and the available
online information more diverse and useful, we all stand to benefit.
 The
worldwide gender gap in Internet technology (IT) skills and use
is largest in developing countries where women's rights are often
most precarious. In response to this problem, MATRIX, the African
Studies Center, and the Women and International Development Program
at Michigan State University are engaged in an ongoing project to
enhance the IT skills of women leaders in West Africa. For three
years, with support from the U.S. Department of State Citizen Exchanges
program, groups of key women leaders from Senegal, Mali, Ghana,
and Nigeria have come to MSU for a three-week intensive workshop.
The participants have been remarkably talented and diverse, including
women's rights activists, human rights lawyers, gender studies professors,
legislators and judges, health activists, and voting rights organizers.
While at MSU, they have visited women's organizations and participated
in an ongoing seminar organized by Professor Lisa Fine on women's
rights and activism in the United States. At the same time, they
have been immersed in MATRIX's in-depth, hands-on training program
in Internet technology. Each participant has produced a Web page
for her organization and returned to her country with a broad understanding
in how to use IT to support women's rights and activism and training
materials to extend this knowledge throughout her organization.
Building upon these and other Internet-based development projects,
MATRIX spearheaded MSU's application to participate in DOT-COM,
the U.S. government's new cross-cutting initiative to increase digital
opportunities for the underserved around the world. In September
2001, the consortium, which MSU joined, was awarded the contract
by USAID to enhance the IT component of USAID-sponsored development
work around the world over the next five years. The DOT-COM partnership
offers a unique opportunity to build upon MATRIX's experience within
Africa and involve MSU faculty and students in projects worldwide
to utilize the Internet for development and democracy. -Mark
Kornbluh |
BACK: Long-Term Commitments ...
