[kictanet] Day 9 of 10:-IGF Discussion, Socio-Cultural Issues

Thu Aug 21 10:27:19 EAT 2008

Mucheru/Mwende,

http://www.google.co.tz is truly fantastic.  

I  had always been skeptical about the need for a multi-lingual Internet. But after visiting http://www.google.co.tz i suddenly realised what it means for someone who speaks and reads only one language e.g. Swahili.  It can truly open up  opportunities and change their lives.

I wish we had more Swahili content. Imagine wikipedia in Swahili or put the other way round - imagine that all that wealth of information in wikipedia is NOT available to the millions of Africans who speak/read only Swahili or their mother tongue. These folks are digitally handicapped and will never compete successfully in an English dominated Information Society/Internet.

We need companies like Google to make deliberate investments in these area in order to effectively jumpstart and widen our participation in the knowledge economy.

walu.

--- On Thu, 8/21/08, mwende njiraini <mwende.njiraini at gmail.com> wrote:
From: mwende njiraini <mwende.njiraini at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Day 9 of 10:-IGF Discussion, Socio-Cultural Issues
To: jwalu at yahoo.com
Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Date: Thursday, August 21, 2008, 10:12 AM

Great!  

Is Google East Africa tracking the utilisation of  http://www.google.co.tz?  I believe the statistics would provide information on the demand for kiswahili on the internet. 

Kind regards
Mwende

Disclaimer: These comments are the author's own.

On 8/21/08, Joseph Mucheru <jmucheru at google.com> wrote:

Just for your information we just launched the http://www.google.co.tz domain yesterday with Swahili as the default language. We are also hiring Luganda experts and this is just the start.

-- 
Joe Mucheru 
+254722522135
Google East Africa

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 21, 2008, at 8:36 AM, "mwende njiraini" <mwende.njiraini at gmail.com> wrote:

Morning!

Today we move to the final topic of our discussions: Socio-cultural issues.  

The internet is increasingly being utilized as a means to deliver essential services including health (Telemedicine), education (e-learning) and governance (e-government services).  This has lead to concerns that many may not take advantage of these developments due to socio-cultural issues such as language and other cultural barriers.

The English language continues to dominate the internet (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm) however there are several successful initiatives that have enabled the use of other languages.  Indeed, the Tunis agenda encouraged the realization of multilingualism leading to discussions on domain name management, access to local content, and protection of cultural diversity.  

Kiswahili was recently voted an official language by the African Union, and there are already several initiatives that seek to introduce Kiswahili on the internet.  With appropriate policies and incentives the internet can become a cultural platform specifically for the preservation of language. In your view is the use of the internet an effective means of language and cultural preservation? 

Again, you are encouraged to contribute to previous discussion threads.   

Kind regards
Mwende

Disclaimer: These comments are the author's own

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