ICT, Information and Communication Technology, is the most important and changing sector of this decade, and it will probably stay like that during certain years. If it is quite fully developed in industrialized countries so that a majority of people have access to mobiles, pc, and other communication technologies, it is not especially the case in other parts of the world.
This particular study analyse the place of Africa in ICT world development.
ICT, a global changer
ICT changes everything, from the economy to the government, through people way of living. All these things are not the same any more since ICT invades our daily life. In this world revolution, Africa is not left out, thanks to a growing awareness of governments which try to include ICT in their development strategies.
After watching the two clips and the lecture of Matti Sinko, my first question was;
Why does everybody always need to follow the world development trends? Why is it essential that Africa follows the world way of development? Is it the only way to be happy and to survive in this world? Can't they have a happy life without ICT? This questioning is related to globalization, and to the fact that it seems impossible to try to live in another way than the one proposed by the world economic and technology leaders. Personally, I don't like this way of world development, because it imposes a way of living which is not especially the best.
ICT for education and development
In Uganda, women goes from village to village with a laptop, and uses it as a tool to teach people how to make little incomes, how to improve their way of life, how to learn basics. And one can indeed imagine the important source of information that can represent a computer, even without internet connection, but with some simple software. So are an easy way to provide information to people.
In Rwanda, IT is a growing sector, and governments are really aware of the potential that ICT represent. In that sense, they try to make it a central development point, because it is source of jobs and income. The objective is then to obtain an easier and cheaper communication network.
For example, we can hear about an old soldier who is now working in ICT technologies, because he's aware of the potential of these technologies.
A second example is given by the medical sector, which uses mobiles to synchronise their information, thanks to TRACNET, a real time mobile phone technology. TRACNET has the function of
- Collecting
- Storing
- Retrieving
- Disseminating
the information about medics management, about patients, etc.
This last example shows the adaptation of Rwanda in using new technologies to improve efficiently one piece of their society. And it is one example among others. So one can imagine that ICT can effectively improve the way of life of African people, and that it is probably not such a bad thing to bring to them these technologies, which can be seen as an almost infinite source of knowledge.
To end, I want to Thank Matti Sinko for his E-presentation.
