AFRICA NEGOTIATES THE INTERNET

There is a roundtable on this topic at the African Studies Association meeting here in Washington on Thursday. It occurs to me that it is important to consider the Internet in broad context in Africa, and consider negotiating the Internet also in this broad context.

In my experience most people associate negotiation primarily with the rollout of Internet services. The key policy issues related to the rollout seem to be related to whether or not to have a monopoly ISP, whether or not to allow VSAT terminals to access the net internationally, (in many countries) the role of national telephone service provider monopolies vis a vis the ISPs, and regulation or limitation of content. Many seem to be interested in the rollout of telecenters which allow local community access via local “points of penetration” of the Internet in urban neighborhoods or rural communities.

Those already equipped with personal computers and (hard-wired) telephone service have been relatively quick to seek Internet service. (It has been suggested that there is little digital divide between nations in Internet connectivity, if one considers the denominator population in each country to include just those with hard-line telephone service and computers.) However, to achieve per capita rates of connection to the Internet approaching those in other continents, Sub-Saharan Africa is going to have to greatly expand telephone service and penetration of computers. Thus Africa’s negotiation of the Internet involves its negotiation of telephone and computer policy.

I would note that these negotiations are quite different in nature from that for Internet service for the already wired, and one from the other.
· The telephone system is a common property or commons. The key elements of negotiation have revolved around privatization of the telecommunications infrastructure, regulation, competition in provision of services, and pricing.
· The computer infrastructure is private property - owned piecemeal - with huge numbers of organizations and individuals investing in computers to serve their own individual needs. Negotiating the rollout of PC’s has involved issues of tariffs on hardware, software intellectual property rights and open-source policies, budgets for information technology within government agencies, incentives to the private sector for computer acquisition, and providing enabling services, such as computer training and computer related business services.

The “last mile problem” may be considered the problem of how one gets information between the ultimate users and the Internet terminal. In Africa, the vast majority of people will not have direct Internet access in the foreseeable future. Thus the last mile will be through intermediaries. Radio could be a major vehicle for getting information from the Internet to large numbers of Africans, and thus negotiating radio access may be a major element of “negotiating the Internet”. This involves not only negotiating the interface between the Internet and large scale broadcasters (often government radio networks), but also negotiating community radio – low power, low cost radio stations that can broadcast to local communities, and indeed broadcast in local languages.

I suggest that negotiating the Internet is also a matter of negotiating for content to be provided on the Internet that serves the need of the broadcast communities.

Intermediaries that can help large number of people to request and receive information from the Internet also include teachers, health workers, extension agents, officers of non-governmental organizations, etc. Indeed, in Africa, the most important aspect of the “last mile problem” for the next decade may be interconnecting these folk with the Internet rather than directly connecting the masses of the poor. I would suggest a role for telephone, such as the Voxiva system being test run in Peru, in addition to a role for radio and television (mass) media. The explosive growth of wireless telephony in Africa suggests that this will also be an important vehicle for dealing with the last mile, especially for the critical intermediaries. Again, I am suggesting an amplification of the concept of “negotiating the Internet” to include negotiating the availability and utilization of the Internet by a large class of intermediaries (individuals and organizations in which they function), as well as negotiating the content to be made available via the Internet to serve these intermediaries and (indirectly) their client populations.

I am interested in sustainable development in Africa, and especially in development that reduces poverty. I am not especially interested in rollout of the Internet per se, but rather in the way that rollout facilitates poverty-reducing and sustainable development. Thus I have been interested in the negotiations relating to the developmental applications of the Internet, such as those relating to e-commerce, e-government, telemedicine, distance education, etc. This too fits under my expanded definition of “negotiating the Internet”. Indeed, I suggest that negotiating the Internet may be an element within a Knowledge for Development framework, in which the application of knowledge to development becomes an overall approach to development, pervading all sectoral and institutional policies. If one can develop the institutions and policies that encourage people to seek and utilize more information well, then negotiating the role of the Internet in facilitating collection, organization, analysis and access of/to that information.

The above discussion has been positive in tone. I also believe that the Internet has considerable downside potential. In countries lacking sound policies promoting sustainable development and sound pro-poor policies, the Internet may prove to be a powerful instrument in implementing the wrong policies. It may enable African nations to move more rapidly toward isolationism, coercive government, adventuristic intrusion into the affairs of neighbor states, economic dualism, or general economic wrongheadedness. Moving faster in the wrong direction is not progress! How does one negotiate to avoid the “dark side” of Internet use?

Let me ask, to what degree does “negotiating the Internet” require negotiating overall development and poverty policies? Is it sufficient to negotiate the rollout and utilization of Internet services only in countries with good overall policy and institutional conditions (the approach which appears consistent with the new Bush Administration initiatives)? Or should our awareness of the development potential in the Internet suggest a more vigorous effort to negotiate for good overall sustainable development and poverty reduction policies and strategies? And how does one develop the right balance between negotiating on narrow issues to facilitate getting to positive results versus negotiating on larger and larger issues to assure the net will be well used?