Hello Christian,

Many of your questions seem to be based on the premise that “web2.0″ is a single, identifiable phenomenon. In fact, it is many different things, though they all share some common features e.g. user-generated content.

With that caution in mind, please find below some brief answers to your questions:

Christian Kreutz (CK): What are the key challenges to be tackled for web2.0 for rural development?
Lawrence Agbemabiese (LA): In the short-term, poor rural connectivity and connectivity costs relative to average rural incomes. However, the technological and economic issue aside, I think the biggest potential challenge/threats will be legal in nature–things like copyright infringement battles with Microsoft, royalty rate increases (which for example recently caused the shut-down of last.fm, government control over content (like what YouTube seems to suffer constantly nowadays) etc..

CK: Is free and open source software the main driver for web2.0 technology?
LA: Yes, especially from the perspective of low-income developing country users.

CK: Does web2.0 is all about connecting people or does it really involve knowledge sharing?
LA: It is a lot more than connecting people. I think the most important potential value of web2.0 is “collective intelligence” although for this to be realized, a lot more work is needed on means to “filter” useful/relevant data from the junk.

CK: Is connectivity one of the main issues around web2fordev or only a shortterm challenge?
LA: Definitely short-term, I predict that 10 years from now the connectivity challenge–even at the most remote sites on earth–will be
history.

CK: How can developing countries realize their own web2.0 applications?
LA: Is this absolutely necessary?! One thing about web2.0 and the internet in general is that it offers at last the real opportunity for
collective intelligence to transcend national boundaries (and hopefully, one day language barriers as well…!). But anyway, there is already a lot of promising ‘developing country’ web2.0 applications starting to appear out there. Muti, for example is one, and there is also Afrigadget and a few others.

CK: Does the increase of social networks enhance potential for learning?
LA: Definitely.

Well those are my thoughts.

Cheers,
Lawrence

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