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Collecting and Propagating Local Development Content

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Collecting and Propagating Local Development Content Collecting and Propagating Local Development Content The Case Stories RESEARCH REPORT No. 8, August 2002 Collecting and Propagating Local Development Content The Case Stories Report of a project carried out by IICD in association with the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology and funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) August 2002 Peter Ballantyne CONTENTS Why Local Content?......................................................................................................................... 1 Illustrating Local Content – The Case Stories ................................................................................. 2 Exporting handicrafts from Asia....................................................................................... 2 Global e-commerce by small and medium enterprises ................................................... 3 Kakoba women’s business CD (Uganda) ........................................................................ 4 Internet promotion and communications for Nigerian artists ........................................... 5 Rural development through radio (Nigeria)...................................................................... 7 Development through radio in Africa ............................................................................... 8 Malawi action theatre and creative community mobilisation............................................ 9 Disseminating agricultural information in Tanzania ....................................................... 11 Radio book series: Treatment of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe......................... 12 Women and ICTs in Uganda.......................................................................................... 13 Uganda public Information centre on debt..................................................................... 15 Virtual reality for development (Uganda) ....................................................................... 16 ICTs for African educators: An endogenous training module ........................................ 17 Producing and exchanging audio-visual endogenous productions ............................... 18 Digital development anthologies for Africa .................................................................... 20 African journals online (Africa)....................................................................................... 22 Tanzania Online............................................................................................................. 23 Africa Pulse (Southern Africa) ....................................................................................... 24 MetaBase: an online library contributing to social change (Central America)............... 25 Qwa-Qwa community radio (South Africa) .................................................................... 26 Revitalising traditional knowledge of Pacific navigation ................................................ 28 Community documentation of indigenous knowledge (Kenya)...................................... 29 Documenting indigenous knowledge in Sarawak (Malaysia) ........................................ 30 LI-BIRD Ko Chautari – Nepal participatory rural radio (Nepal)...................................... 31 Documenting traditional knowledge in Yunnan (China)................................................. 33 Difusión del Año Internacional de las Montañas en Bolivia........................................... 34 Monitor news service (Uganda) ..................................................................................... 35 Information Dispatch online news service (Zambia)...................................................... 37 Footsteps – a newsletter for development workers ....................................................... 38 Youths generating local content through local centres.................................................. 39 Armonia - An ICT publishing house for youth (Mexico) ................................................. 40 Annoura: Journal communautaire d’appui aux processus de la décentralisation (Mali) 42 Le logiciel Keyman - L’alphabétisation sur ordinateur (Mali) ......................................... 43 AfriAfya: A partnership for health knowledge and communication (Kenya). ................. 44 Traditional knowledge and community healthcare (Nigeria).......................................... 46 Communications for better health (Ghana).................................................................... 47 Digital health content: Producing health videos for health workers............................... 49 National Health Learning Materials Centre (Ghana) ..................................................... 50 Training of health workers to use WHO health information packages (Ghana) ............ 51 Disseminating HIV/AIDS information to communities in Kenya..................................... 52 Somos Diferentes…Somos Iguales (Nicaragua)........................................................... 53 Communications for better health – South Africa’s Health Systems Trust.................... 55 Developing a health knowledge network (South Africa) ................................................ 56 ACT e-health: A Tanzanian electronic health network .................................................. 59 Health information dissemination centres in East and Southern Africa......................... 59 OptoNews: Promoting visual and eye health in Africa................................................... 62 Electronic networking and communication support on HIV/AIDS.................................. 63 Health information for continuing professional development - CPD (Uganda).............. 65 AfricaSHARED: Access to medical research in Africa .................................................. 66 Current Health Information Zimbabwe: A digest for health professionals ..................... 68 Continuing medical education for through distance education (Uganda)...................... 70 Personal health information files for frontline health workers (Zimbabwe).................... 71 BDHealthInfo: Using ICTs to share health knowledge in Bangladesh .......................... 73 Shasthya Sanglap / Health Dialogue (Bangadesh) ....................................................... 73 COLARIS - Latin American Centre for Resources and Information on Eye Health....... 74 Generating data on the incidence of induced abortion in Nigeria.................................. 75 Service Brings Reward - Distance education radio for health workers (Nepal)............. 76 Manuals for HIV/AIDS health care providers (Nigeria) .................................................. 77 Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................ 78 WHY LOCAL CONTENT? One of the strengths of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as the Internet is the way they can help unlock distant expertise, knowledge and markets. However, this access – usually to ‘foreign’ content with foreign perspectives – has its limitations. Easier access to globalised knowledge is fast turning us into ‘consumers’ of distant and potentially irrelevant information. More worrying perhaps, developing countries are being ‘invaded’ by foreign ideas and values that may undermine or overwhelm local cultural heritage and economic livelihoods. If we are serious about the use of ICTs as an empowerment tool – so poor people can shape decisions that affect their lives, so they can grasp economic and social opportunities, and so they can deal with misfortunes and disasters - then this foreign content must be matched by the expression and communication of local knowledge that is relevant to local situations. To a large extent, this means that ICTs need to be conveyors of locally relevant messages and information. They need to provide opportunities for local people to interact and communicate with each other, expressing their own ideas, knowledge and culture in their own languages. This is not an easy task. As this report shows, content does not flow of its own accord; it needs owners or originators with the motivation to create, adapt or exchange it. As well as vision, these pioneers need to have the creative, technical and people skills to transform an idea into something that can be disseminated or exchanged. Moreover, since few of us have all the necessary capacities to create and communicate content, partnerships are essential to get the job done. There need to be very strong incentives for all the elements to come together at the right time and place. Beyond these critical capacity and incentive issues, local content faces intense competition. Even in remote areas, the powers that ‘push’ global or just non-local content are often much stronger than those ‘pushing’ local content. This can be seen in television programming, in advertising, in the spread of global brands, in classrooms using imported curricula and examinations, in the use of foreign languages in schools and universities, in the lowly status of local languages, on the Internet, in research, in the dissemination of ‘reliable’ scientific information, and even in the reliance on foreign technical assistance. With a few exceptions (phones, community radio, or indigenous knowledge systems), most formal content and communication ‘channels’ in developing countries help to push ‘external’ content into local communities. Counter efforts
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