Until recently I had never really given a thought to the role of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the development of the developing world, especially Africa. Each time I was faced with the question of ICTs I would resort to “parroting the half-digested rhetoric” that Africa is in the fast-lane of technology and it is all gains for the region. Half-digested rhetoric I say because this is really only what the mainstream media using the same ICTs has conditioned us to believe, and we never have a second thought to evaluate the role of ICTs on the global agenda politically and economically, and the location of Africa within that context. Recently at the 2nd International Conference on Human Rights Education in Durban I was asked a question by a student participant on my thoughts on social media with regard to human rights education and social media and young people generally. I responded that social media is useful in reaching out to young people especially on the view that this is perhaps one of the few best ways to reach out to this “facebook generation” and educate them on human rights, mobilising them for a human rights culture. As I responded, it made me to reflect on the way we as young people see social media and its utility, and subsequently on the role of ICTs in the larger development agenda, especially with regard to what it has brought for Africa thus far. This essay seeks to broaden our perceptions as we tackle the issue of ICTs, and to help us as a continent in mapping a way forward in putting Africa on the development path through ICTs. The essay draws from the work of Y. Z. Ya’u “The New Imperialism and Africa in the Global Electronic Village”[1] and the insights of Emmanuel Sairosi at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.[2]
In the globalised world
ICT is the fulcrum of globalisation. This is now an unquestionable fact. Through ICTs distance and space, though still relevant, have collapsed as stumbling blocks to communication and interaction. With the increasingly faster and widening use of the internet, contemporary communication goes faster, farther, wider, cheaper and clearer. This is unprecedented. This generation has witnessed telemedicine saving lives, robots teaching children, e-commerce making trade easier, e-governance and the development of disaster mitigation strategies. It is true that ICTs have transformed lives. For what we are used to learning on ICTs, or at least what we are supposed to know, it ends here. Yet this is where the real story begins. This essay will take it further from here and explore virtual colonialism and the truths beyond this hyper-optimism that blurs people’s vision on ICTs, the social re-orientation being fostered, and the emergence of a single-market economy through ICTs, all driven by power-politics.
In 2009 a revolution occurred in Iran. It was never televised but was publicised on Twitter, earning itself the tile “the Twitter Revolution”. In 2010 a revolution occurred in Egypt and a dictator fell. The masses were brought together through Facebook and it was termed the “Facebook Revolution”. In most countries ranked as the most media repressive nations of the world,[3] citizen journalism has filled the gap, and hand-held gadgets and social media is used to circumvent repressive media laws. All these events attest to the mobilising power of modern ICTs. It is this same power that has facilitated virtual colonisation through ICTs, a vehicle for the proliferation of structural power “to secure the virgin markets of developing countries and also to configure the world in the interests of the new imperial powers”.[4] This is a new platform for the “masters” of ICT to strengthen hegemonic hold over the world.
High-tech terrorism?
Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder and director, received, among others, the 2009 Amnesty International UK Media Award for his publications and in 2010 the Reader’s Choice Award by TIME Magazine as well as the Sam Adams Award. In the same year US Vice President Joe Biden, US Senator Mitch McConnell and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich labelled Assange a “high tech terrorist”. How then is it that one man receives such awards by reputable organisations whilst being labelled a terrorist, all for the same acts? The answer is there is information, according to his accusers, that is classified and is not meant for public consumption, never mind that it is about that same public! Julian’s crime is to have revealed this ‘exclusive’ information. His is “exceptional courage and initiative in pursuit of human rights."[5] It is because he is a journalist "whose work has penetrated the established version of events and told an unpalatable truth that exposes establishment propaganda, or 'official drivel'".[6] When he was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism the judges said, "WikiLeaks has been portrayed as a phenomenon of the hi-tech age, which it is. But it's much more. Its goal of justice through transparency is in the oldest and finest tradition of journalism."[7] This highlights the first tool of control furthered by hegemonic powers through ICTs, information rationing and the control of what knowledge is to be known as the “right knowledge”, and what information gets to who. With the control of what information reaches to who comes agenda setting.
Our knowledge economy
We live in an information economy; a knowledge-based society where the man with the most knowledge wields the most power and chances of survival. Africa’s integration in the global information economy circuit is one of being at the receiving end, a position condemned to information poverty. Africa is configured with the information and knowledge passed on to it, and this is aided by the next portal of control; that Africa is a net consumer of information communication technology and has almost zero production. What this means is that as a region we lack control of access to ICTs, and where we have access we find ourselves without any real option on content. It is monopoly over information by the global north, who happen to be the producers and subsequently the controllers of the content. Never mind the fact that Africa is the world’s largest producer of coltan, and of course may other raw materials in the ICT manufacturing industry. This monopoly of information and information poverty and dependence has been institutionalised through the most powerful organisations of the world, economically and otherwise, among them, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It is evident the World Bank and the IMF manipulated their monopoly over “expert knowledge” and prescribed destructive structural adjustment programmes in the developing world at the height of the neo-liberal creed. Today no one country that was involved in those programmes can stand up and show positive results thereof. Not even those who got A+ ratings for perfection in the implementation of the programmes. Only the ignorant do not know that participant countries emerged poorer than before. In fact the World Bank has now transformed itself into the “knowledge bank”. Together with the WTO, the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and all its constituent agreements in the form of TRIPS, GATS and the Agreement on Telecommunications, among others, have also assumed the role of spreading capitalism and laissez faire economics where they do not work. As has already been noted, Africa is in a different stage of development, one that the global north passed through decades ago, and Africa is in need of the developmental state, the Mercantilist approach. Through ICT’s Africa is being forced off-track from its course of development and whatever benefit is to be derived therefrom is at best unsustainable and at worst self-destructive in the medium to long-term. In all this the state has been relegated to the creator of a conducive environment for private sector-led development, with the giant ICT multinational co-orporations emerging the biggest winners.
Still on access, ICTs are more expensive in the developing regions than the developed world, yet Africa is said to be in the fast lane of technology. It has been established that there are more internet uses in the United States alone than the entire African Continent, in spite of the huge population differences.[8] This “marginality of Africa in cyberspace” is responsible for the digital divide between the global north and the global south, a structural relationship wherein the developed world stands to benefit more and Africa the least. As it stands, the region has poor ICT infrastructure to develop ICT usage for mutual benefit and has found comfort in being dumping ground for obsolete technology.
The great trek: ICTs and wealth transfer
On the economic front, Africa has experienced a multiplicity of phases in its history wherein massive transfer of wealth occurred from this peripheral region to the imperial core in the global north. The trans-Atlantic slave trade saw huge and crippling human capital transfers. Then came the trade of chartered companies that was neither symmetrical in outcome nor “legitimate” as it is sometimes referred to. Afterwards came colonialism, wherein arbitrary expropriation of resources occurred. Natural resources and minerals were looted. Post-colonialism came the period of structural adjustment programmes following the Washington Consensus, wherein large amounts of money were paid to the developed nations and the global financial institutions as balance-of-payments for debts that are, apparently, never fully paid up even to this day. At present we are I a new phase of wealth transfer, this time through ICTs. Ya’u identifies areas through which ICTs are leading to the movement of wealth to the developed world as electronic transfers, repatriation of profits by ICT firms, cost of connection to the internet backbone and the costs of importing the equipment and building ICT infrastructure.
The current and trendy way to do business is now e-transactions. Electronic transactions being invisible are difficult to tax. The implication is lost state revenue and higher profit margins for the transitional corporations who do business across national borders. With e-transactions, capital is highly mobile and can be transferred to foreign lands easily.
As Africa is not engaged in production of ICT equipment and infrastructure, it is heavily dependent on imports, and the cost of is very high. Added to the cost of connecting to the internet backbone and to various enabling networks, all based and controlled in the global north, Africa parts with large amounts of capital funds.
The use of ICTs itself opens up trading opportunities and access to wide markets. From all perspectives the global north has cashed-in with this as Africa’s markets are opened up without protective barriers. Prima facie there is nothing wrong with opening up to wide markets of the world. The problem with this is that while developed countries get unlimited access to the virgin markets of Africa and the developing world, aided by the free-trade prescriptions of the WTO and the conditionalities of the Bretton Woods Institutions’ development assistance, developing countries are in no position to undertake reciprocal trade in developed countries. Inevitably this regime results in surplus value for the developed countries, entrenching all the propositions of the neo-liberal Marxists’ dependency theory. In essence, ICTs erase boarders and unites the world into a single, but brutally competitive market in which Africa stands no chance (Ya’u, 13).
On shaping perceptions: “Africa the darkest continent”
Through the internet and other media outlets, people have written and proliferated the most negative of things about a continent they have never set foot on. And they have turned away the mind of the world from Africa, painting everything associated with Africa black. The media has painted a picture of Africa as the continent that will and can never be industrialised, as a continent in ongoing conflict emanating from almost primitive savagery resident in Africa.
It has not ended there, the perception of Africans themselves have been conditioned, alienated from their true selves. Indeed brainwashing and psychological conditioning has never been easier. It is rather unfortunate that the internet has been used for wholesale consumerism of Western cultures. Inevitably Africa has lost a significant part of its distinct civilisation, culture, pride and identity, and the little that is left is continually being lost. Once again the West has found another tool to spread Western civilisation across the globe as the universal civilisation that all ought to adopt.
Moving forward
This essay should never be misconstrued as implying that ICTs are undesired, but that the current institutional arrangements allow for manipulation and encourages a widening of the digital divide and for the use of ICTs as a vehicle for control and agendas setting by the powerful nations over the weaker. The solution is certainly not for Africa to isolate itself. It can neither be disconnecting Africa from the world. Rather it is to channel ICTs for development where there is access to it, and not using it for wholesale consumerism of foreign cultures and filtered information systematically designed to perpetuate dependence. Indeed hope never dries, and there are remedies.
Africa must seek to be a producer. Without production, Africa will continue to provide a market for developing nations at its detriment, and capital flight will continue to occur at unprecedented levels, unabated. Production will certainly not be achieved over night, but existing efforts have been minimal, and all that is needed is to widen and speed up such existing efforts.
ICT themselves move along with literacy. Production and channelling ICT for development is impossible without basic literacy ad ICT education, and this draws attention to the need for an educated continent if the lucrative benefits brought by the ICT revolution are to be harvested. For ICT development projectisation specifically, the status quo calls for an integration of ICT education at all levels of the education system.
In all these endeavours, Africa ought to keep in mind the goal of first bridging the digital divide so that the asymmetrical outcome of ICTs at a global scale is done away with. Also to note is that the digital divide is not in isolation, but an extension of a wider divide featuring imperial domination by the core, in itself also a tool to deepen and widen the divide. Efforts to eliminate or narrow the digital divide specifically will thus be hardly successful should other areas be ignored, politically and economically. What is required is a holistic approach where there is concurrent initiative to catch-up in economic development and technological sophistication, and in resisting hegemonic dominance furthered though economic and technological tools.
It is never too late for Africa to Act and indeed hope never dries up.
[1] Y. Z. Ya’u “The New Imperialism and Africa in the Global Electronic Village” (2004) Review of African Political Economy No.99:11-29, ROAPE Publications Ltd.
[2] Emmanuel Sairosi is a Lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, School of Politics.
[3] Rankings are made annually be Freedom House and the 2012 rankings are available at http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/inline_images/FIW%202012%20Booklet--Final.pdf
[4] Ya’u “The New Imperialism and Africa in the Global Electronic Village” (2004), 11.
[5] Hayes, Isabel (2 February 2011) "Julian Assange awarded Sydney peace medal". The Sydney Morning Herald. Australian Associated Press. Available at http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/julian-assange-awarded-sydney-peace-medal-20110202-1ad7y.html. Retrieved 19 May 2012.
[6] “Julian Assange wins Martha Gellhorn journalism prize” 2 June 2011 The Guardian Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jun/02/julian-assange-martha-gelhorn-prize. Retrieved 19 May 2012.
[7] “Julian Assange wins Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism” 2 June 2011 Available at http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/julian-assange-wins-martha-gellhorn-prize-for-journalism/s2/a544492/. Accessed 21 May 2012.
[8] With a population of over 1 billion people, Africa has only 139,875,242 users (6.2 % of the world’s internet users): http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm. The Unites States alone with a population of 313,232,044 (as at 2011) has 245,203,319 users: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats14.htm#north.
