[kictanet] Tandaa - An Honest Analysis

Tue Nov 18 16:11:08 EAT 2008

Dear All:

I hope the definitions below help to inform the discourse?

What is local content?

Answer

After decades of emphasis on providing access to the new communication
and information technologies, the international community and
development agencies are now asking themselves a very crucial question:
access to what? 

During the last few years there has been a growing recognition of the
need to generate local content and make it available through new and
traditional media in order to empower communities and lead them to an
inclusive knowledge society. Local content is the expression and
communication of a community's locally owned and adapted knowledge and
experience that is relevant to the community's situation . The process
of creating and disseminating local content provides opportunities for
members of the community to interact and communicate with each other,
expressing their own ideas, knowledge and culture in their own language.

A community is defined by its location, culture, language, or area of
interest. A community can comprise a whole region, a sub-region, a
nation, a village or a group of people with strong cultural, linguistic,
religious or common interest links. Thus, a community may comprise of a
handful of people or include millions; its members may share the same
location or be geographically dispersed. Communities are not static or
exclusive and individuals may belong to many communities at the same
time. For example, a woman living in a village in Mali may feel strong
ties with the community of women in her sub-region, take active part in
the life of the community of her village and, at the same time, be a
member of the Muslim community and the artists' collective of Mali. 

The need for local content

The lack of local content is evident across all media and information
channels. One needs to spend just a few minutes in front of a television
or computer screen to notice the overwhelming presence of content coming
from content providers in the developed countries, reflecting language,
values and lifestyles which are often vastly different from those of the
community "consuming" the content.

Content does not flow of its own accord; it needs owners or originators
with the motivation to create, adapt or exchange it. Obviously, the
agencies that 'push' global or non-local content are more powerful and
resourceful than those disseminating local content. With a few
exceptions (e.g. the telephone, community radio, or indigenous knowledge
systems), most formal content and communication 'channels' in developing
countries help to push 'external' content into local communities.
Counter efforts to distribute local content (such as African film, Asian
research publications, 'southern voices' in the media, or the e-trading
of traditional crafts) to global networks face an uphill struggle. 

While the importance of local content has often been raised in many
international meetings and by numerous donors and cooperation agencies,
concrete initiatives and expertise in this area are scarce. Many, if not
most, content initiatives using ICTs tend to 'push' external content
towards local communities. In other words, they mainly provide 'access'
to other people's knowledge. With a few exceptions, new technologies are
not used to strengthen the 'push' of local content from local people.
Generally, the balance between 'push' and 'pull' - or supply and demand
- is heavily weighted towards non-local rather than local content. 

It is important to note here that, while everyone is impressed by the
potential that the new ICTs offer for sharing and exchanging local
content, in many cases the 'new' technologies are still tape recorders,
radio, television, newspapers, or telephones. ICTs and the Internet are
still a small percentage of the 'toolkit' used to create and communicate
local content.

Regards

Eric Aligula Magolo, PhD

Senior Analyst

Infrastructure and Economic Services Division

Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA)

P.O. Box 56445, 00200 Nairobi, Kenya
Telephone:       +254-20-2719933/4
Fax:                +254-20-2719951
E-mail:            jairah at kippra.or.ke <mailto:jairah at kippra.or.ke> 
URL:              www.kippra.org <http://www.kippra.org/> 

Proudly Kenyan

"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been
granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I
do not shrink from this responsibility..........I welcome it."

John F. Kennedy 

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do
nothing."

Edmund Burke 

"Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though
checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who
neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray
twilight that knows not victory, nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt

"Ex Africa semper aliquid novi"

From: kictanet-bounces+jairah=kippra.or.ke at lists.kictanet.or.ke
[mailto:kictanet-bounces+jairah=kippra.or.ke at lists.kictanet.or.ke] On
Behalf Of aki
Sent: 18 November 2008 15:27
To: Eric Aligula
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Tandaa - An Honest Analysis

My last thoughts on this before it becomes more like a blogging site.
Robert, you are still unable to define local content and therefore
unable to match any criticism or critic. Mixing small words with bigger
words for the sake of it is the usual illusion. I think the severe
arrogance and phobia of local everything ( of course with the usual
spices such as politics, leaders and events, esle the traffic to sites
would not exist )  is over-rated and the best effort so far according to
you for local content  is a website that I'd never visit or waste any
time on.  

So simply moving forward, and as Josiah and the others mentioned :
Define local content and we will start to get somewhere. 

Get to the point. 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/pipermail/kictanet/attachments/20081118/2ac03b6e/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1661 bytes
Desc: image001.jpg
URL: <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/pipermail/kictanet/attachments/20081118/2ac03b6e/attachment.jpg>