Ethan Zuckerman gave the keynote speech on the final day of the Web2forDev conference, held at FAO in Rome, 24^th-27^th September 2007. Ethan is the co-founder of Global Voices, the world’s largest aggregator of media in the South. The Global Voices Forum brings together bloggers from around the globe.

Here are some quotes from that speech today:

Zuckerman on our new interest in old technology:

‘Email preceded the Internet… blogs are ten years old, and Wikis have been around since 1995… If most of this stuff is twenty years old, why are we talking about it now? Because it’s not about the tools, it’s about the people.’

‘The reason that it matters now is that we are experiencing a seismic shift – it’s about who can be brought together with these tools.’

Zuckerman on mobile phones:

‘When we think about participatory web, it’s not about laptops and high bandwidth… it’s about mobile phones. There are 3 billion handsets worldwide, and its estimated 80-90% of people in the developing world can access a mobile phone if they need to. This is a level of penetration of technology that changes the rules of the game. We need to broaden our thinking beyond the Web.’

‘For example, Interactive Radio for Justice gives people, particularly women, the opportunity to send questions via SMS to very powerful people. No, it’s not Flickr; no, it doesn’t have tags, but it’s back-and-forth participatory, it’s appropriate to the people it’s trying to reach.’

Zuckerman on Wikipedia:

‘Get smart about Wikipedia. It’s the ninth most popular site in the entire world. This it literally the biggest bang for the buck you can do.’

Zuckerman on why you should blog:
‘Think about who you’re trying to reach and how… if someone just signs a petition and says, “this is important to me”, it’s not enough. We’re looking for participation here… This is the reason to blog: links. Blogs are full of links and Google loves links – the more links you have, the higher up the search engine results you’ll appear. It makes sense to look at this as an eco-system approach. You have to link to figure out how to participate.’

At the Web2forDev conference, everyone has been saying that it’s not about the technology – it’s about the people. It’s about what people can do with the technology – and what ‘mash-ups’ of tools and approaches are appropriate and really working.

I came to this conference to find people who are really doing participatory web – not just using the technology, but facilitating real empowerment and positive change. Our plan at IIED is to co-publish with CTA a special issue of the Participatory Learning and Action series on participatory web for development – so I needed to find real examples.

Well, yesterday I was lucky enough to see Ednah Karamagi give her presentation, Enhancing Knowledge Sharing in the Rural Community through Adoption of Web 2.0 tools.  

I felt like I had found a magic bean.  Ednah works for a Ugandan NGO, Busoga Rural Open Source & Development (BROSDI). It’s a not-for-profit organisation that works with government and civil society in improving rural livelihoods. Within BROSDI is a project called Collecting and Exchanging of Local Agriculture Content (CELAC).                       

Both BROSDI and CELAC project make extensive use of Web 2.0 approaches. But it’s a real combination of Web 2.0 and grassroots participation. For example, CELAC is almost entirely populated with locally generated content. As Ednah says, ‘We are sharing information from our great grandfathers that we are losing in our generation.’  

Essentially, it’s a great combination of the online – Blogs, Google Maps, Wikis, online documentation, chatrooms – and the offline – a weekly mobile phone SMS farmers’ information service, village knowledge brokers, monthly farmer forum meetings, village meetings, radio, and hard copy documentation. They are even developing an e-learning tool for primary school children. 

Ednah is candid about the challenges they face. ‘The Internet is expensive, and needs power,’ she says. ‘It’s a problem in a country where access to electricity is intermittent.’ There is also the issue that people need to change their attitudes towards sharing information, rather than ‘hoarding’ it. And sometimes the technology doesn’t work – and is abandoned. ‘We did have a Wiki,’ Ednah says. ‘But the staff rejected it, as it was too complicated. But we plan to have a new Wiki for developing training material so that we can all comment and add to it.’ 

Ednah was a real inspiration. There was a long list of real life examples – not just the different technologies – but how the technology has made a real, positive change to people’s lives. My favourite was Cissy and her turkey farm. Ednah told us, ‘She learnt how to rear turkeys on SMS!’

This morning, I overheard Dr Hansjorg Neun of CTA talking to Ednah Karamagi. He asked Ednah, ‘Why do you think you have been so successful?’

Ednah’s reply was, ‘You have to use as many methods as you can to reach your community.’

Well, BROSDI are doing that in style. Let’s hope they continue to get the support they need to keep this pioneering organisation going from strength to strength.    

Participatory Web for Development is circling the point in a spiral formation of Web 2fordev. This was noted in a key note address delivered by Association for Progressive Communications (APC) Anriette Esterhuysen, Executive Director at the opening of the conference on Web2fordev at the Food Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome, Italy which started today and will end on September 28.

She also observed that mainstreaming of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in development was a victory for many of the people who have embraced technology but as with gender mainstreaming, there was a risk that it can be mainstreamed to the extent of being marginalised.

Anriette observed that basic challenges remain in the words of one of the contributors to the Web2fordev d-group discussion that took place before the conference: “As soon as a few rural communities begin understanding the basics of the internet and world wide web, a new tools box with new knowledge emerge. It’s like running a race in which there is no finishing line. If you are a participant in this you can’t help but feeling a sense of fatigue,” Charles Dhewa wrote.

She noticed that in her experience working with online databases and email systems in the late 80s the term ICT4D did not exist. APC, which emerged at the same time, called itself a ‘network’, supporting ‘global computer communications for environment, human rights, development and peace’

She added that even the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Networking Programme, which, like APC, and a partnership built early pre-public internet e-mail networks for Universities and development NGOs did not use the term.

She said that the term was associated with the telecom boom of the 1990s, the telecom policy reform process: privatisation, liberalisation, opening of markets to international operators.

“It was this time that various ‘high-level’ initiatives and new buzz-words emerged… the Digital Opportunities Task Force, the United Nations Information Communication Technologies (UN ICT) Task Force, and, the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS),” Anriette said.

She however noticed that there were Pros and Cons to people’s approach to technology. The tendency to technology-driven hype, notions of “leap-frogging over development challenges.”

She explained that this often diverted attention from investment in more traditional and not mutually exclusive information and communications infrastructure such as libraries, community media, and the people and skills needed to maintain such infrastructure.

She observed that this was in many ways ‘disconnected’ from development. ICT4D experts rarely had experience in development work and many development people were skeptical, even suspicious, of ICT4D efforts.

On the Prons, Anriette says it put the lack of access and infrastructure on the development agenda, and the growing gap between those with access to ICTs and those without and also raised awareness of how not addressing this gap could deepen existing social and economic divides as more and more transactions, decisions took place.

She also noticed that it focused attention on the need for ICT skills and capacity development, but… there was a hidden ‘con’ in this observing the puritanical approach.

“The standard ICT4D approach to capacity building in the use of ICTs in developing countries was quite puritanical,” she said. This she explains was not surprising. “Development is serious work, poverty is real, people’s lives and livelihoods are at risk but, it produced an approach to ICT appropriation and skill development which unintentionally contributed to maintaining the digital divide.”

Anritte explained that for many people from the developing countries, in places like South Africa, Kenya, Ghana with relatively good access, their first introductions to ICTs was through some very ambitious ICT4D project, where, with limited resources and access they had to demonstrate the ‘impact of ICTs on poverty alleviation’. Every project was a pilot, with an uncertain future. Not exactly an environment that was conducive to creative learning.

In contrast, she said people in the developed World appropriated ICTs in more ‘selfish’ ways. Personal, private e-mail, Computer games and in a few years, online shopping and dating, music and TV downloads. She observed that these online actions were still not possible for many people in the developing world because even there is access, there is lack of bandwidth.

But, in the developed world children and teenagers had the opportunity and freedom to explore technology in ways that produced a generation of creative geeks; the geeks behind the development of Web 2.0 and social networking platforms.

Today she noticed that the hype is over following increased access has increased, and new solutions are emerging: mobile phones as handheld internet devices, fuel cells, more effective solar technology, and computers that consume less energy.

She added that there has been a shift away from approaching at ICT4D as a stand alone sector and that a more mature approach has evolved, with the use of ICTs being integrated into development work e.g. in the agricultural sector. “This event, the stories and experience that you will share, will illustrate this.”

By Brenda Zulu

Interview with Jon Corbett, Steering Committee, Web2forDev Conference, Rome, 25th September 2007

On my second day at the conference venue here at FAO in Rome, I feel that I am delving a little deeper into how – and whether – Web 2.0 is actually participatory. But I still want to investigate this further: exactly how are the Web 2.0 community of practice integrating participatory approaches to development with ‘participatory’ web?

I wanted to get to grips with some comments I had heard about Web 2.0 since I had arrived in Rome. First, I wanted I wanted to question Steering Committee member Jon Corbett about what the differences are between ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) and Web 2.0, with its plethora of applications such as blogging, vblogging, audioblogging, wikis, and social bookmarking.

According to Corbett, Web 2.0 is still a form of ICT – ICT is just an umbrella term, which covers all forms of digital information technologies. ‘But,’ Corbett argues, ‘Web 2.0 is markedly different from other ICTs. It doesn’t just solicit; it thrives on the participation of people. It’s what fundamentally makes it different. Web 2.0 wouldn’t exist if it weren’t populated by people using it.’

But perhaps more importantly, I also wanted to probe deeper into a comment Corbett made on Sunday, before the conference.

‘Web 2.0 is parallel to participatory development,’ Corbett had stated. ‘It’s about empowering people to take a role, it’s about citizen media.’ So I asked him today, why do you describe it as parallel to participatory development?

‘Ah, it’s not exactly parallel,’ he says, and goes on to explain. ‘I’ve been working with digital information technology with indigenous communities since 1995. In the past, it was different. All the content was produced with communities, but there was a steep learning curve in terms of the technology. But with Web 2.0, it simplifies how people interact – and it thrives on people contributing knowledge, and hence the comparison to participatory development.’

Essentially, what Corbett argues is that Web 2.0 requires the active participation of people in creating the content online – unlike in the past, when technical experts traditionally drove the uses of ICTs, in both the set-up and populating with content.

‘The technical experts were essentially the gatekeepers of the technology,’ Corbett says. ‘But Web 2.0 now offers opportunities for communities to interact with the technology – anyone can create content, you don’t have to be an expert.’

So is this why he describes it as parallel to participatory development? ‘Yes, as it’s about direct engagement, not about being represented by experts,’ says Corbett.

But, I argue, what about those without the time, access or inclination to take part in Web 2.0 for development?

‘There will still be a lot of people who are passive recipients rather than active participants,’ agrees Corbett, ‘But you could argue that this is the same as any other form of development today. The main difference is that Web 2.0 invites everyone to participate – and there’s no requirement any longer for it to be expert driven.’

‘It’s about early adopters,’ Corbett continues. ‘Early adopters of the technologies and applications get on board – just look at the people who are attending this conference. People like Ethan Zuckerman with Global Voices , or Kado Muir [who is presenting a session at Web2forDev on the ‘Outback Movement for Cultural Survival Using Web 2.0: An Aboriginal Case Study’]. These people have already identified that their communities, or the communities they work with, can benefit from Web 2.0.’  

It’s good to know that there are real examples of participatory development integrated with Web 2.0 applications out there, within this community of practice. I feel that I am a little closer to understanding this ‘mash-up’ of participatory approaches and ‘participatory web’. But I still have more questions to ask….