Retrieved from Allafrica News
 http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/current1.html

ISSUE NO 115
Week of 7/13/02

Local content has been one of the missing elements in the development of the internet in Africa. Without it, there is less demand for the internet than there might be otherwise. Major NGO One World has recently received money from the G8 Dot Force to pioneer a major local content initiative ­ the Open Knowledge Network - and it will focus initially on Africa. News Update spoke to its Chief Executive Peter Armstrong.

Why this initiative?

The starting point for the whole thing has been what we’ve all been working for over the years. Currently views about other people’s development are all in the third person. People in those countries need to be able to go into a telecentre and say what they think. The issue is how we can include their voices in the global conversation.

It’s not enough to say put them online. They can’t afford to pay the 50 cents to one dollar an hour to get access. Even if they were able to afford to get on, a the content is currently largely from the US or Europe. There’s not much of a balance so what do you do about that? How do you allow them to share content? The web as it is isn’t going to work.

So what approach have you taken?

The first principle is that they can work offline. You can have huge amounts of material on CD-ROMs and hard disks at virtually no cost. How do you update it? You use something very similar to a Palm Pilot "synch". You then offer a feed of new information once a day and this can then be redistributed at a local level to villages and government.

What’s the underlying technology?

Technologies will vary by country. We’re agnostic on this issue ­ phone, mobile, whatever works best to give a voice to people locally.

From your research what did you find people wanted?

We did surveys in Pondicherry (India) asking what information do you most need and what information do you most want to share. Two things came back consistently:

- Anything to do with improving livelihoods. Market prices and obvious things like the cost of fertilisers and seeds. Less obviously, the price of gold as this is the commodity that everyone holds their wealth in.

- A "suggestion box". The chance to write to local government about services; to the phone company and to those providing bus services. The idea of being able to complain and offer suggestions was really popular.

You don’t have to show latent demand. It’s there already.

How will information circulate in the network?

There will be common standards that allow file exchange for a wide range of types of file: in effect, it will be a file sharing network. People think that the creation of standards is a "top down" approach. But it allows you to exchange most types of digital files using XML metadata systems. We wanted something that would be very simple to implement and would give operators of the network software that did all this in the background.

With data capture, you can do really exciting things. For example it works well with existing content provider Worldspace. With a computer card, you can get 1gb an hour of information in Asian languages. That’s all undifferentiated so the only way you can pull out the data you want is if it is indexed.

In effect you’re creating an offline internet?

Yes, but one that works seamlessly with the online internet

How will the initiative get going?

We’ve just had been given funding and the green light for the Open Knowledge Network (OKN). Funding will be for three years and we should be able to attract further support as we go along. OKN developments will focus on Africa initially. We are planning a workshop in west Africa in November and one in East Africa in the Spring of next year. Please take part. Please try it. If you want to contact me, send a message to peter.armstrong@oneworld.net

Out of these consultation meetings we want to identify a series of hubs. These will be the file servers and providers of metadata at a local level. These will be NGOs that are already working with knowledge and people will be paid to do this.

These hubs will lead down to the telecentres who they will recruit. They can also input their own knowledge into the network.

How will you choose the hubs?

Once the network is formally set up, its governance will be decided. The decision-making powers will be with the hubs themselves.

What’s the business model?

If people want to do it, they’re putting their hands up to do a lot of hard work and be entrepreneurial. The elements of self-sufficiency are as follows:

- The hubs will charge the telecentres for a content service NOT the end-user. Not much but it will create an income stream. They will want it because it will bring more traffic into their telecentres.

- From their own government as a way of implementing e-government. A great example is from India where local government may have up to 34 officials monitoring one village, often through visits. What we’re offering is a system where information can go back up to them and this has enormous potential savings. Vice-versa, they distribute an enormous amount of information to the villages in print form.

- Advertising. People laugh at this. But even in the pilot, people came up to us and asked about it. They told us that the newspapers you send out are incredibly targeted by the choices of information made. Also it may not cost them that much to advertise but again it’s a stream of income. There’s also classified ads which are very popular. We didn’t charge for these in the pilot but you could.

There will be different business models in different locations.

What will a hub consist of in staffing and resource terms?

There will be a minimum of four people in a hub: two education people, one for marketing and a "techie". These hubs will be located within existing NGOs. There’s a lot of impressive groups in Africa, especially womens’ groups.

Will existing NGOs be able to do it?

It’s a case of people growing into the role. NGOs havn’t been very good at journalism. They tend to write for each other and for donors.

What about rights issues on content?

You can’t exchange knowledge without having enough rights to do so. The Berkman Institute at Harvard Law School is working on creating a robust open rights framework. The alternative is the privatisation of knowledge.

Won’t this displace private sector developments that might occur in the market?

I hope we’ve covered this base. You could say maximise the value of local content through patents, e-commerce and so on or as we’re trying to do spread knowledge so that as many people benefit as possible. However you don’t want to destroy the income-generating potential of local knowledge.

When someone inputs their knowledge, they have to say that they own it and are happy to share it (technically, assign rights to others). A hub might say a particular piece of content is really valuable and will be able to sell it but you’ve protected the content from multinationals patenting it.

What types of information do you think will become available?

I would guess that there will be health information, particularly on HIV/AIDS and that they’ll be a campaigning component to it. The Worldspace information that currently goes out in Africa. Imfundo’s resources for teachers in schools. No local school has an easy way of sharing things without the network. Information for small businesses. Things like business models and case studies. The kind of things small entrepreneurs need. Agriculture information. We’retalking to the FAO about that in some detail. If the information is very specialised and very local, the Open Knowledge Network may be too blunt a tool for it.

What’s the timescale?

There will be a year of consultation. We want the process to be demand-led and to ensure that people are happy with the prposed standards. We’ll be piloting the software and we’re hoping to launch it at WSIS next year. It will be opened in two countries in Africa and two elsewhere. Each year after that we will bring in four more countries. We’ve got a five year development plan.

Why did you lay the stress on entrepreneurship earlier?

We have to work with private companies, that way lies sustainability. You can’t keep asking donors to prop things up. One good example of a way out of the dependency trap is the Grameen phone.