Transcript for The Acacia Learning Forum - 5-8 October, Dakar

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.