Answering
the Four Key Questions
ARISE:
Building
a database of African professionals, researchers and activists
By Sean Kane
Associate Lecturer/Researcher
LINK and Wits University
T: +27 11 717 3583
F: +27 11 717 3910
Background
The ARISE project is in the process of building a database
of African professionals, researchers and activists concerned with the social
issues involved in building the Information Society in Africa. The project
objectives are to:
Create a directory of all researchers, academics,
consultants, activists and others active in research around social issues of
developing the Information Society in Africa. This will include individuals,
organisations and initiatives. This will be made available on the web;
Develop a network of African professionals to discuss the
key issues in building the Information Society in Africa, to produce an African
Research Agenda for the Information Society.
Q1: Tell us about the high points in your project or
research programme.
The high point of the programme has been the willingness of
people who we have contacted to participate the project becoming so enthusiastic
about our efforts that they turn around and offer to help us out. This includes
Ellen Olafson writing a feature on the project for the Development Gateway,
Mavis Ampah offering to host project results with the African Connection,
Dorothy Okello of Wougnet posting ARISE invitations on their network, Antoine
Rukebusha providing us with contacts, and many others. The help that these
people have provided us with has made our task of reaching as many people
involved in the social aspects of the ICT field and inviting them to participate
in the network much easier.
Q2. Tell us about the low points in your project or
research programme.
In collaborative work one is not always in control of the
project or able to identify always why things are not going according to plan.
We have not had as good a response as we had hoped from other regions.
Q3. Tell us about the people in these projects or
research programmes.
The partners for this project include the Informatics
Centre at the University of Eduardo Modlane in Mozambique, ENDA in Senegal,
Lishan Adam of UNECA, Mike Jensen and SangoNet in South Africa, Muriuki Mureithi
of Summit Strategies in Kenya, and Albert Nsengiyumva in Rwanda. With the help
of these people and those mentioned in Q1 we have been able to contact
approximately 3,000 people active in the ICT field in Africa and have had over
400 of them register for the network so far.
Q4. If you were to do this programme or research again,
would you do it differently? Explain.
Yes, the primary
changes that we would make would be around the timing of different project
tasks. For example, our original plan has a fully functional website with a
database of people registered for the network as one of the last steps for the
project. However, during the course of the project we have found that it would
have been helpful to get the website functional before contacting people to
participate in ARISE. In the absence of a website where people can register
themselves, we have created a large amount of additional data entry work for
ourselves. More importantly, many of the people contacted have asked about the
website and indicated that would prefer to provide their details through the
website rather than text based emails. The website would also make it easier to
get information about the project out to the online community.
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