[wsfii-discuss] Onward to Africa

[thomas thaler]

The “World Summit of Free Information Infrastructure” is, in my opinion, something that constructs itself every time when people come together under the WSFII label. So it’s somehow difficult to write about a WSFII community. The following therefore will only speak about the perspective of mainly European “Free Wireless (or in a broader sense also “Free Infrastructure) Activists”. 

Venturing into the poorer parts of this planet still seams to be very difficult business for western mindsets. One may think that the huge cultural gap or varying government regulations are the reason for this. I think we better look at things a different way, when we talk about community centered infrastructure building.
I think one can call the two main obstacles in dealings of this kind “Corruption” and “Lack of Insight”. Both of them are quite tricky. 

For corruption comes in many brands and has many faces. Its not just about bribing policeman, it’s more about the many things that can go wrong, when widely different income levels are encountered and different economy models clash. 
The “Lack of Insight” problem looks plain at the surface. For sure, a western geek will have a hard time, implementing citizen based wireless infrastructure along European lines, when he or she finds out, that nearly every single pre-condition is missing in a certain area. But things get much more complicated when you dig deeper. Many westerners seem to have difficulties to get reliable information in poorer countries. Even if it is possible to overcome language barriers, very often the cultural gaps can not be bridged. 

So people rely on the help of interpreters of some kind. Unluckily good “interpreters” seem to be rarely found. Usually westerners will go for the counterpart they can speak to easily. But very often a person that can talk to a western mind is also orientated to the “global” western culture, and not so much to local communities. By communicating with such “interpreters” it can get difficult to get in touch with local communities. False information is given, because the “interpreter” does not possess a in depth knowledge about things local, because he or she doesn’t understand and like the western intentions, because he or she is ashamed of the poverty, oppression and corruption in his country, and many reasons more.

When we want to reach out, to encourage the build up of community based infrastructure it’s really essential to keep such matters in mind. We have to find good interpreters or find other ways to bridge the cultural gap and speak to local community directly. 
This has been achieved by various initiatives many times before. But on the other hand is still a considerable break in many areas. The majority of “development” projects have always followed more of a top down approach. Many aid programs still rely on local power structures, even under circumstances where this is not mandatory. It’s just so much easier to work with “interpreters” that you can “speak” to, even if it means to feed a, lot of your resources into chains of corruption.

When we want to see free, community based information infrastructures emerge in poor countries, we, for sure, need communities as partners. And we will not reach these communities by putting up information somewhere on the internet. Because the communities we are looking for are exactly those that have no, ore very limited access. So we have to find other ways, to get in contact with those that could have a need for the offer we have to make now, and from whose contributions we can hope to benefit in the future. 

For a start this will be communities that are already structured, already have a manifested need for information infrastructures, and are somehow close to the skills and recourses to support them. In many countries, I believe, educational institutions, and civil society organizations of different kinds, could be such partners, if the values of community empowerment and distributed ownership are shared.

This does not mean, in my opinion, that genuine citizen based networks are not possible, at least where economic conditions are a little better. Maybe new concepts have to be found here, because in many cases even the PC front-end will be hard to finance. But I do definitely not share the opinion, that community building is impossible in poor countries, because everybody is fighting for survival. This may be true for very unstable circumstances. But very often, especially in rural areas, you will find even very poor sections of society that are well able to support collaborative undertakings of different kinds.  

Many of the views stated so far, are maybe also applicable for the ad hoc community of a WSFII gathering. So the following would be the lessons learned for a World Summit in African in 2007.

*  Let’s make sure that the “free” is not forgotten, that sharing, openness and creativity are values embraced were we go, before we go.

* Let’s scout for communities that could be possible partners actively, while keeping the digital divide in mind.

* Let’s choose our middlemen and “interpreters” wisely, and skip them where possible. 

* Let’s build robust webs of trust before we go, to avoid the many traps caused by corruption and cultural gaps.

So if anybody has some money to spend, please spend it NOW. Spend it on a thorough survey and on enabling an active process of linking. This could be a great contribution, helping to achieve the goals stated above, and possibly making meshing possible in the end.   

A thorough survey is also necessary to find/ prepare a place where as many people as possible can gather and stay save, healthy and productive. And, to stress this again, where we can work together in an atmosphere that will encourage freedom and sharing in an open and creative way. Than the gem of the WISFII spirit may shine again, and we can hope for lasting results. 

The offer, to go to Winnaba, Ghana, in my opinion, looks very promising. For practical reasons English will be the dominant language. So if we don’t want to go to obvious and “easy accessible” South Africa, Ghana could be a good choice.

Thanks for reading that far.

Thomas