Reflections on the breakaway sessions

What this means for national policy & future Acacia research

The two Acacia research partners involved in policy formulation and monitoring in their countries, Eng Venãncio Massingue, VC, Universidade Edouardo Mondlane (UEM), Mozambique and Alison Gillwald, Research Fellow, LINK Centre, Wits University, South Africa, were asked to reflect on the feedback from the breakaway sessions, as well as to suggest what this means for national policies and future Acacia research.

Synthesis:

Pilot projects are good demonstrations for what can be achieved in communities, and clear messages to policy makers of what should be addressed in policy.

However, they also demonstrate structural economic and policy problems. These structural issues need to be addressed in the next phase of research in order to ensure validation of the research activities in the first Acacia phase. Then the countries that have benefited from the piloting projects can move beyond mere small scale, ad hoc project benefits achieve diffusion of these technologies amongst the marginalized population. This cannot be achieved unless our policies integrate and balance the participation of

the public sector;
the private sector;
the means to address the under-serviced and marginal communities especially in rural and peri-urban settings

and not address any one of these at detrimental expense to the other.

The outcome of pro-poor ICT policies and activities is that they have focused on marginalized communities without mainstreaming the benefits of ICTs to the majority of the population resulting in expensive, and unsustainable pilots and continuation of structural problems that militate against the benefits of these pilots being available to all under serviced communities.

Venãncio Massingue, VC, UEM

We have learned from the participants of today’s session that the work that has been done with ICTs and communities, and with activists, and in schools is significant. In particular, we must continue working with these groups. Even the small projects have valuable impacts. We need to explicate these small things. It is clear we need to continue to focus on women and marginalized communities

Policy is necessary but policy activities continue parallel to these piloting activities. ICT policies are necessary to extend the reach to an entire country. Piloting is therefore important because it informs policy that is appropriate and practical.

Policy needs to be seen as a tool that will enable the implementation. The relationship between research and policy is what helps with policy. Policy has to be managed within the framework. There are strong and weak points that require adjustments.

If we have a research body that through its publications can allow for the visualization of projects and provide access to projects then, in my opinion, we have added value to what politicians debate about. We have done the research. Politicians follow our rules, they will act according to what we say, because it is backed by research, what we know is better. They know if they ignore us they loose us to the brain drain of skilled people leaving Africa. African’s ideas that are not accommodated by the politicians of the day are the ones that leave. Our policies must counter that brain drain. We need to attract those researchers back but the challenge is how can we offer them $5000 when the local researchers are working for $500?

Reflecting on the outcomes of the Networking Schools breakaway session, Venãncio said it was a good suggestion that there should be a Minister of Rural Affairs, because that person would not enjoy the urban comforts and amenities every day, but rather would have to experience the lack of services in their daily lives. He said he observed that when the National ICT Policy was being drafted in Mozambique every one arrived in suits and ties and no one represented the rural poor.

“We need to develop provincial strategies. What we are doing under Acacia is to set up a group of researchers able to spend time championing in the provinces in order to derive provincial strategies. On the other hand, we want to explore school networking down to the primary levels of school. Unlike the problems described in the feedback session where South African principals are scared of letting the community onto their school properties because of the risk of having the equipment stolen and the school property vandalized, the schools in Mozambique are respected and not fall victim to crime.

The group that reported back its findings on networking communities spoke about the multiple use of ICT facilities. This supported his own research that less than 20% of computers were fully used in Mozambique. The examples given by the school in Inhambane, EPCI, where both the community and the school children are using the facility, was an excellent solution for efficient use of the facilities.

Finally, if we could invent some ways of empowering leadership then we must find ways or models that build leaders and we must make sure that we combine our efforts and share our resources.

Alison Gillwald, Research Fellow, LINK Centre, Wits University

It is clear from our discussion that there is consensus around the issues of access and affordability of communications services. We need to think innovatively to provide broader access to ICTs and not just telephone access. It is clear from the examples mentioned that value-added services do ensure access to information to the resource-poor communities. For this reason we need a serious critique of what is working and what is not. The real challenge is we don’t know how huge the gaps are.

A cross cutting issue in the areas focused on is the shortage of human resources of the kind needed to drive an information society and network economy. We have to acknowledge we have human resources problems. We know that every year in South Africa there is a shortage of 3 500 engineers in South Africa for example. We also know that South Africa ranked 42 out of 45 countries for mathematics skills in an international study done a couple of years agoThe need for scientific innovation and R&D are often referred to, but there is little understanding of the need for a more holistic lifelong training and education strategy for supplier, for consumers for public servants and citizens..

For example the need for policy and regulatory skills for example are as critical as scientific exploration, as we know sound regulatory frameworks are one of the critical determinant of foreign direct investment. Yet there remains a chronic lack of implementation capacity to deliver on what may be very sound policies.

The tables I showed in my earlier PowerPoint presentation “Why Policy Matters” show that 75% of internet costs are actually made up of the costs passed on by the monopoly telecoms operator in most of the countries identified and not the ISPs who are operating in most cases on very narrow margins. As long as the cost of accessing the Internet remain so high, Internet diffusion, a goal of every one of the countries identified, will be restrained.

By simply aligning policy with technological and global developments, the telecoms operators could net even larger revenues from leasing facilities to the ISPs and at the same time contributing to national objectives. As far as gender is concerned, there are multiple research opportunities. Gender research on the basis of social justice remain important but again rather than arguing for the inclusion of women on the grounds of morality, which has been so unsuccessful, economic arguments need to be developed. With the most valuable asset of the knowledge economy being the knowledge workers, no country wishing to participate in the information economy can afford not to utilize all its available human resources.

The type of research that was needed was overall sector performance research. For instance, the South African telecommunications sector needs to be appraised against it stated aims.

we should be measuring the effects of policy and take a serious look at whether it has achieved the stated objectives, against national sector indicators.
We need to monitor and evaluate the implementation of policies, processes of implementation, and weigh outcomes against objectives, identify what processes and practices are contributing to good governance, what the bottlenecks are in achieving goals etc.
Meanwhile, we need to review definitions of universality which teledensity by fixed-line access only, in the light of the excelerated take up of mobile telephony and reaxamine what constitutes a public good in a network economy and information society..
We cannot look at the implementation of policy without looking at the implementation effects
- What is the cost of services to the consumer for instance if we implement the 50% discount on education rates (e-rate) to schools. We know that when we have worked with operators on the obligations set for them they have argued that they have to find a way of subsidizing the cost of these obligations and they simply do it by charging more to paying clients. The whole service is therefore more expensive.
- Take Acacia’s own initiatives of researching ICTs in communities. We tend to look at the traditional issues [of community management, resource poor delivery, etc] rather than looking at the problem in a new way, and the effects of for instance, the global shake-out in the telecoms sector.
- Despite the good intentions of the first round of telecom policy, central objectives of affordable access were not met with the policy mechanisms proposed such as the exclusivity- privatization strategy for Telkom. A serious critique of this needed, not to point fingers but to ensure that others who look to South Africa do not make the same mistakes and so that we learn from our past in order to create a better future..
- Pro-poor policies have to be critically assessed. They are not good simply because they are pro-poor. Many have historically been narrow and in focusing on the marginalized rather than mainstreaming the benefits of ICTs to the majority of the population they have sometimes had the effect of further excluding the marginalized from the mainstream. The effect is expensive pilots and not being able to achieve the ubiquity required to see the benefits of ICT in society.
- We should be looking at ICTs around job creation, in the various sectors, tourism, agriculture, and taking a look at all those sectoral policies and integrating ICTs into each of them
- Various other economic growth strategy are dependent on cost effective pricing of telecommunications. The linkages here need to be examined..
- We need to look for solutions in mainstreaming ICTs in our economy and not look for donor funding in the marginalized areas.
- Most importantly government must itself be a user of ICTs and services in order to demonstrate the benefits of ICTs and so the idea in Mozambique of getting provincial governments aware is a good one, and in South Africa we have powerful local government but on the whole it is totally under-resources, what should be done in terms of ICTs?
- Importantly, a current research gap isin the area of appropriate and relevant content development and developmental applications
- We need to look at ICT policies within an integrated policy framework which includes trade strategies, strategies on import substitution, especially the manufacture of cheaper substitute computing equipment.

To sum up: Our policies need to integrate ICTs in a cross-sectoral way and their implementation needs to be coordinated to ensure that there are not policy gaps. For example our licensing of underserviced areas as a strategy to contribute to universal access and empowerment of HDI and SMME is well intentioned, but unless it is accompanied by a sound financial strategy , flexible regulatory framework with strong protection for the new entrants, those being licensed are being set up for failure..

Our policies also need to integrate and balance the participation of

The public sector
The private sector
and how to address the under-serviced and marginal communities especially in rural and peri-urban settings

and not address any one of these at detrimental expense to the other.

Comments and questions

Venãncio: I agree that we need information policy, and it is very important that we have alignment with different policies, but it is quiet impossible to foresee the needed financial resources to ensure implementation of policies. Our policies should help us to mobilize those resources

Charley, Link Centre: how do we create opportunities for participation in the benefits of policies? How do all the identified segmented communities get accredited for sharing in those benefits and so how do we ensure that it is women, workers, youths, etc that will benefit.

Shafika, Schoolnet Africa: I understand what Alison is saying about systematic change, but if the system is producing more unemployment, then we’ll always have the problem of people not be able to afford services. How do we address the systemic issues that perpetuate poverty? It seems the only answer is socialism!

Sandile Ndawonde, Greennetwork: Projects like mine, the Greennetwork, trying to set up individual stand-alone ICT facilities for communities-based organisations should actually be integrated with projects like schoolnetworking. We should together address the issue of job creation through ICTs.

Last remarks:

Venâncio: We need to, through pilot projects, identify models that allow for the implementation and management of policies. For this we need to continue to build up a body of research which policy-makers can reliably adopt and validate our findings.

Alison: For the kind of research that we are looking at timing is extremely important. We need 3-5 years to study the impacts of our policies and to begin to get meaningful benchmarks and trends studies underway and our research supporters need to appreciate the need for longer-termed research and policy development. We need to integrate our macro-policies, make sure our national policies and frameworks are not fragmented.

Clive Emdon: It was a pleasure being with you today. As internet projects you really need to be better communicators. Your stories need to be projected into the WSSD and into the national media.

"They are human stories reflecting the difficulties of change: it is essential for us to understand what sustainable development means."

ICTs for Sustainable Development