The Acacia Learning Forum - 5-8 October, Dakar - 1 Translation(s)

The Acacia Learning Forum - 5-8 October, Dakar

Duration: 9 minutes and 58 seconds

Country: South Africa

Language: English

License: CC - Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike

Genre: None

Producer: The African Commons Project

Director: Anna Berthold

Views: 153 (3 embedded)

Posted by: acacia on Nov 27, 2009

An overview of The Acacia Learning Forum conference being held from the 5-8 October 2009 in Dakar, Senegal

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In 1997, IDRC established the Acacia program with the goal of unleashing
the potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to empower poor African communities.
Since then, Acacia has invested more than $40 million in ICT research, development and evaluation projects for Africa.
Now, at the mid-term of Acacia's third five year programme cycle,
partners from around the world come together to reflect on research achievements,
share outcomes and discuss ideas for future ICT research in Africa.
This is a meeting of all our partners over Africa
representatives from 13 African research networks and
several other projects.
We have one year left of our prospectus, and we are together to network; to consolidate our learnings
and it's an opportunity for us to pull together all the outcomes
that have been achieved.
I can say that we have many reasons why we chose Dakar
One is that we have an original office here, in Dakar, for west- and central Africa.
The second reason is that we organised the first
Acacia big conference in South Africa.
We decided that the next one will be in a Francophone country.
Third reason is that Senegal was
one of the first countries of implementation of the Acacia Programme.
The impressive thing that I saw here was
the energy of the people and the understanding, the clear understanding
that people have of the power of ICT4D research
to inform decision-making across sectors
and across themes and across ministries if you will
to really allow developement
proceed along lines that are
locally designed, locally made, and serve local needs
We Africans speak 2,000 languages,
we have one million voices, we need technology to speak our language.
I am the research director for the African network for localisation or 'Anloc', unlocking digital space to african languages, working on
making sure that Africans can participate in the digital age.
Health e-systems lead to healthy citizens.
People talk about e-health systems
what we are interested in, is health e- systems,
that lead to healthy and healthier citizens.
Imagine a world where people can receive quality
appropriate care whoever, whenever, and wherever they are.
We implement two projects
that are supported by the IDRC, it's a two way system
where health workers continue with medical education and also gather
health data and report it to the
district centre national Ministry of Health.
Our project is about
implementing simple management information systems
for use at micro finances and small SACCOs in the east African region.
Our project is about introducing
ICT for SME small and medium enterprises.
I'm reporting here about the project we are currently doing
which is a qualitative research project on student practices
student experiences with ICTs.
We are starting to see a very strong focus on the use of
cell phones for learning.
We not only need to get information to small
holder farmers in Africa, we need to make sure that they have the tools
or people around them have the tools
to enable them to act on that information.
This is a chart of people, government and technology
where you have the intersection
of people, government and technology
you then have an empowered citizen.
The most interesting part of the forum for me
was getting to meet a group of fascinating people.
Some of them I already knew and that was
really great to catch up and then talk about
opportunities for collaboration, for further research pushing stuff forward.
And it's always fascinating to come to
the origin where the problems are
and try to talk to the local people and then start to think of how you can find
solutions to solve these problems.
It was a good introduction to all the other Acacia projects
and an overview of some of the big debates in the world of ICT4D.
We saw that the interaction is going
very very well and I think by the second day
all people will start to networking, asking questions,
participating in the discussions.
So this is really what I loved in this activity.
Its a difficult thing to sum up three days of what I would call
rather intense thinking and dreaming and visioning.
But I came here to witness that process of how people were
envisioning the future of ICT for new research,
how IDRC fits into that picture and where we are going to go into the future.
So many people have sponsored ideas
around what is important, what is it that we should be researching,
how do we demonstrate the outcomes of this knowledge society,
how do we evaluate our impacts, if at all.
What I am committed to going on with
is researching how to surmount the barriers of policy
and received thinking in order to get African research onto the map
to open it up and to create space for African knowledge and African innovation
to have a presence in the world.
What did I just write down?
I think the question I am asking myself
does the informal sector of ICT
contribute to economic and social development in Africa.
Some of the initiatives that are happening in Mozambique; not all of us know about them
and sometimes we have even similar projects
being implemented and what we would like to see
in future was like how the existing framework can be used,
to align this.
Whatever we want to do
language and gender should
be a major common factor in all departments.
In addition to gender and language
I think the translation of research into
popular language which ordinary people can access
and understand and learn from
is something that needs to cut across all our projects.
We are interested in gathering country experiences
especially on the e-waste management issues.
We would also like to grow the network.
Firstly, I was the the only one that started in the South American corner.
In these following days I have had
great pleasure having met beautiful people here
and what I find is that within our continents
we share many, many things.
We have suffered many similar problems
and we are building similar solutions.
It would be great if we also made bridges between the networks
that side of the Atlantic and Africa
to learn together and to share more.
The fact that they are identifying challenges
suggests that if you can actually
interpret the problem very well
you are half way to coming up with a solution.
I don't see it as a negative thing at all
for researchers it is actually a very positive thing
to be able to articulate the context
to articulate the problem
and ask the right questions.
That's what funding researchers in development is all about;
people solving there own problems.
So going into the future,
I certainly see IDRC continuing to work with our partners
that we met here in Dakar.
I think the future looks very bright.
We have to re-envision as we always do;
where we think we're going.
But I am counting a lot on people that we met here,
and of course many others
to take us into that new direction.
So I am very excited and I think the conference was a total success. Thanks very much.