6th Olympiad of the Mind
Paris, November 16-17, 2000
SPEAKING NOTES OF MINISTER BEN NGUBANE
The Communication Civilisation – a Blessing or
a Curse
First of all on behalf of my President, Thabo Mbeki,
I would like to thank the organisers of this 6th Olympiad for the
very kind invitation to participate in your discussions and to be
able to offer you some remarks on the topic of "The Communication
Civilisation – a Blessing or a Curse".
Let me also state that I will also be speaking in my capacity as
the Chairperson of the Commonwealth Science Council (the CSC) as
well as the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Commonwealth
Network for Information Technology for Development (COMNET-IT).
I cannot presuppose that you will all be familiar with the Commonwealth
so a few explanatory comments are in order.
The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 54 sovereign states
(50 of which are what we call developing countries), set up so that
the member countries can support each other, and work together towards
international goals. It is also a 'family' of nations. With their
common heritage in language, culture, law and education, Commonwealth
countries are able to work together in an atmosphere of greater
trust than generally prevails among nations.
The Commonwealth has been described as an organism that could evolve,
but could not have been constructed from a blueprint. This distinguishes
it from the United Nations, built around its charter in a conscious
endeavour to establish universally recognised standards for international
conduct.
Although the Commonwealth is an intergovernmental organisation,
with a membership that spans the developed, developing and the small
state, it remains very much an association of people, a 'family'
of 1.7 billion people from across the globe. My own country, South
Africa, rejoined the Commonwealth in 1995.
With this background you can understand that although my remarks
will be a perspective from the South, the Commonwealth allows us
to integrate north-south and east-west facets as well.
I would now like to turn to the topic that I've been asked to address
and the urgency of the title of my talk strikes a chord with the
growing concern about the "digital divide".
Whether the shift towards a "Communication Civilisation" is a blessing
or a curse, the revolutionary impact of ICT's is unavoidable. The
challenge is clearly to maximise the ability to exploit the opportunities
that arise. With this in mind we would wholeheartedly support fast-tracking
the implementation of the priorities on which the Digital Opportunities
Task Force set up after the G8 Summit in Okinawa is focussing on,
viz.
- Fostering policy, regulatory and network readiness
- Improving connectivity
- Increasing access and lowering costs
- Building and strengthening human capacity
- Encouraging participation in global e-commerce networks
Ten Commonwealth Heads of Government met in New York in September
under the chairmanship of President Mbeki. Among other decisions
this High Level Commonwealth Group set up an expert group to determine
how best the Commonwealth could play a role in building up information
technology capacities in Commonwealth countries.
The Commonwealth response has been to view the shift to a new "digital"
economy as presenting both severe challenges as well as opportunities
to our member countries.
As many but not all of you might be familiar with the nature and
magnitude of the challenges facing developing countries let me review
some of the salient features of the landscape.
The 1999 UNDP Human Development Report refers to global inequalities,
which have been growing with globalisation at an accelerated rate
(both within and between countries). The gap between incomes of
the fifth of the world's population living in the richest countries
to the fifth living in the poorest have risen from 30:1 in 1960,
to 60:1 in 1990 and to 74:1 in 1997. Besides inequalities of income,
reference is also made to inequalities of access to the Internet,
in a world where the speed of change compels people, companies and
countries to strive harder and faster to acquire the right knowledge
and skills to become and remain competitive in an emerging global
society.
Let me now turn now to the situation in Africa a continent that
is facing real prospects of being marginalized as we embark on what
the economist Lester Thurow calls the third industrial revolution.
The first industrial revolution of the last century we are very
familiar with. In Thurow's lexicon the second industrial revolution
was the information age and now for the first time in history, great
wealth will increasingly depend upon the control of knowledge, not
the control of natural resources such as land, gold and oil.
In Africa the internet has grown rapidly over the past few years.
At the end of 1996 only 11 countries had Internet access, but by
September 2000 all 54 countries and territories had achieved reliable
connectivity. Currently, Liberia has no local Internet services
(Liberia was connected last year, but lost its link when the ISP
failed to achieve commercial viability).
Despite the rapid growth of Internet access in Africa it has been
largely confined to the capital cities, although a growing number
of countries do have points of presence, POPs, in some of the secondary
towns (currently 16 countries – Algeria, Angola, Botswana, DRC,
Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria,
Tanzania, Tunisia, Zambia and Zimbabwe) and South Africa has POPs
in about 100 cities and towns. In some countries the national telecom
operators have made a special policy to peovide local call Internet
access across the whole country. With the massively reduced costs
for those in remote areas that this provides, it is surprising that
so far only 15 of the 53 countries have adopted this strategy –
Benin, Burkina Faso, Cap Vert, Ethiopia, Gabon, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius,
Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, Tchad, Togo, Tunisia and Zimbabwe.
In response to the high cost (according to the OECD, in '97, 20 hours of Internet access in the US cost $29, including telephone
charges. Although European costs were generally higher, all of these
countries have per capita incomes which are at least 10 times greater
than the African average) of full Internet-based services and the
slow speed of the web, and also because of the overriding importance
of electronic mail, lower e-mail-only services have been launched
by many ISPs and are continuing to attract subscribers.
There is also a rapidly growing interest in kiosks, cybercafes and
other forms of public Internet access, such as adding PCs to community
phone-shops, schools, police stations and clinics which can share
the cost of equipment and access amongst a larger number of users.
Due to high international tariffs and lack of circuit capacity,
obtaining sufficient international bandwidth for delivering web
pages over the Internet is still a major problem in most African
countries. Until recently few of the countries outside of South
Africa had international Internet links larger than 64 Kbps, but
today 24 countries have 512 Kbps or more, and 15 countries have
outgoing links of 1 Mbps or more.
However, in spite of the considerable progress made in Africa comparison
with the rest of the world indicates that much more needs to be
done and quickly. According to figures from the UN Economic Commission
for Africa Internet access amongst the North American and European
population is 1 in 4 and the world average is 1 in 38. For Africa
the ratio is 1 in 1,500 persons.
What can African and other developing countries do to balance or
counter the enormous lead that industrialised countries have? As
I have already indicated the implementation of the recommendations
of the G8 Task Force and the Commonwealth High Level Group are absolutely
essential for ensuring that an enabling policy framework, infrastructure
and capacity building and strengthening of our institutions and
people are all promoted.
This building of capacity in Africa and other developing country
regions of the world will also contribute to balancing the inherent
tendencies in globalisation towards monopolies and oligopolies where
for example around 90 percent of world internet traffic goes through
hubs in the U.S.A. And with this situation in mind it would be important
to raise awareness of the implications of this issue in a number
of areas, e.g. internet hubbing, e-commerce portals, and cultural
dominance.
What I've tried to illustrate so far should tell you that we believe
that rather than a curse (and hence prompting us to say there is
nothing we can do) we are of the view that we should be looking
at ways to tease out blessings from the third industrial revolution.
One immediate perspective is to regard the programs and activities
already underway in many developing countries and being enhanced
by the attention given to the problem posed by a digital divide
by the G8 countries, the UN and the Commonwealth, as responding
to the 80:20 rule. In other words addressing the top 20% of the
issues would take us 80% towards a solution for them. The key issues
that are being tackled as I see it are the following –
Political Sensitisation and Ownership
Policy and Regulatory Development
Managerial Capability
Empowering Society – Access and Education
I want to now touch on what might be a way for developing countries
to accelerate the development of knowledge-based economies. My thoughts
are based on the trend towards urbanisation and the growth of mega-cities.
Urban centres offer access to a critical mass of infrastructure,
human and financial capital, culture etc. In economic terms trade
between countries can be viewed as driven by trade between cities
and urban centres in a given country could be seen as the engine
of social, economic and cultural activity for a much larger area.
If this argument holds then our efforts to bridge the digital divide
should ensure that with competition for limited resources an evaluation
of the pros and cons of focussing on delivering low cost, reliable,
large bandwidth connectivity to urban centres would be essential.
Let me now turn to an aspect which I regard as critical to developing
countries being able to leapfrog if you wish across the digital
divide. And to illustrate the point I would start by paraphrasing
Sam Walmart who I believe said that the key to business success
was "Location, Location, Location". So for success in deriving benefits
from the use of ICTs I would suggest that the key is "Content, Content,
Content"
Those of us from developing countries recognise that we all come
from rich countries inhabited by poor people. But in the digital
age our wealth is now much more than our genetic and natural resources?
Our wealth is now as much a reflection of our human capital and
how we harness and develop this resource. This is what Thurow refers
to as the creation of a global economy based on man-made brain power
industries.
In many developing countries we are not yet able to capitalise on
our human assets and in conventional terms it would be unrealistic
to think that we could leapfrog in a conventional sense.
Where I feel we could make a leap is in valuing and developing the
innovative and creative capacities of our peoples and of course
at the same time integrate this with the use of ICTs.
What I am talking about is the linking of this third industrial
revolution to a learning revolution where innovative thinking drives
the learning experience; where people of all ages are encouraged
to see through things so that they can see things through and are
given the freedom to imagine what they will learn when they learn
to imagine.
What's a creative person? A painter or craftsman who thinks like
a scientist as he challenges every practice and philosophy of art?
A secretary who fixes her typing mistakes by inventing "liquid paper"
and then proceeds to manufacture and market this practical fluid
for office supplies worldwide? A child who solves a math problem
in an unconventional way through visualisation?
Creativity isn't a "Who", it's a "How"
Who are creative people? Visionaries who harness the forces of electricity
to create alternating current motors, oscillation transformers,
world wireless transmitters? Or are they "failures" – a cynical
term that was once applied to young Thomas Edison by a teacher who
said he was "too stupid to learn anything"?
What do creative people do differently than "uncreative" people;
or rather people who believe that they're not creative, even though
they are, indeed? Do they listen to the world differently, as the
musician and composer Hugh Masekela does? Do they look at the world
differently – searching for new meanings, associations and purposes
– as Nelson Mandela does?
How do we value this difference in thinking, creating, in inventing
and innovating, and in performance? Clearly if we don't recognise
the value of creativity and creative people we will never nurture
them.
Creativity is the Key to Growth and Success
The literature on human development makes this point almost self-evident.
Creativity is learning-curiousity-imagination-discovery-communication
all naturally linked together. In recent years, many scientific
studies and historical accounts have highlighted the fact that creativity
isn't just about learning in unconventional and unconstrained ways.
It's also about reflecting on and applying our learnings in new
ways. Ways that challenge our knowledge and assumptions. Ways that
make us rethink the meaning of things we thought we knew so well.
And ways that prompt us to discover new uses for things we believed
we already used up completely exhausting their possibilities.
Creativity is the Means of Connecting and Transforming Things
Creativity allows us to put together ideas and transform our knowledge
that had previously been separated or regarded as separate. In the
process, it adds new meanings and purposes, while broadening and
deepening our understanding of the thing it connects and transforms.
That's what makes it so invaluable and fundamental to advancing
human development.
By continually applying one's creativity, one enhances the possibility
of arriving at a point where one can practically apply one's innovation
with tangible results – unlocking the freedom to wonder. In the
words of Socrates – "Wisdom begins with wonder".
In my view the by-line for CISCO Systems Networking Academy captures
the essence of where I feel developing countries can aim to leapfrog,
i.e. "Geniuses wanted: No Previous Experience Required".
In response to this challenge and opportunity we are working on
a pan-Commonwealth project that will set up or enhance the interactive
science discovery center capability in member countries. This program
is entitled "From scientific curiousity to creativity and innovation
through literacy and numeracy". The program relies on interactive
exhibits to underpin an outreach program that uses non-formal educational
techniques and was launched last November in South Africa at the
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The program is currently
being expanded to Southern and East Africa.
Knowledge Networking for Solutions: Opportunity for Bridging the
Divide?
The challenge and opportunity that Africa faces is to bridge the
divide by focussing as much on "content" as on the other facets
of ICTs, i.e. focussing on knowledge networking within and between
countries. The two Commonwealth organisations that I chair are actively
engaged in integrating work on improving the policy framework and
promoting good practices for ICTs in Commonwealth countries with
work on improving their innovative capability to apply S&T.
One of our main objectives is to bring innovation to the center
of national planning and development and to set up knowledge networks
within and between countries to support robust and sustainable national
systems of innovation.
In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished delegates to
this Olympiad I hope that not only will you join me in taking an
optimistic view of what needs to be done to enable African and other
developing countries to bridge the digital divide, but that you
will also consider ways in which you can individually and in the
organisations you represent develop a partnership with us.
Thank you.
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