Stakeholder Democracy Network (SDN)

SDN supports communities, especially those in the global South where big businesses' impacts are greatest, to communicate and negotiate with other stakeholders whose investments and operations affect their lives, livelihoods and environment. A longtime Kabissa member, SDN makes sophisticated use of ICTs and in particular the web, most recently with the just launched online journal greenlightnigeria.org: "We hope to create a channel of communication between activists, election monitors on the ground, and the outside world that has a stake in the success of democracy in Nigeria."

Introducing Stakeholder Democracy Network

Stakeholder Democracy Network is a not-for-profit organisation, independent of all governments and political parties. It was founded in 2001 by Chris Newsom and Tim Concannon, and now has two full time Co-ordinators - Joseph Croft and Damka Pueba - six staff and two offices, one in London and another in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria.

SDN supports communities, especially those in the global South where big businesses' impacts are greatest, to communicate and negotiate with other stakeholders whose investments and operations affect their lives, livelihoods and environment.

We support organisations and communities' efforts to:

• Work out what they need for a better life
• Communicate those needs to other people and organisations with a stake in their land and resources
• Negotiate for a better future
• Promote peace, and the cultural survival of unrepresented peoples

At the moment our focus is on supporting communities in Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea region who live alongside oil, gas and mining facilities. We help them to communicate and negotiate with business, government and others with a stake in their land and its resources.

In Nigeria, through our four programmes, we:

• Ensure communities' voices are listened to
• Help to address the causes of conflict and to build peace
• Work with youth, women's and faith-based groups to support the institutions of society
• Promote greater accountability by government institutions

We publish reports and analysis of how people's daily realities in Nigeria affect all stakeholders in the region's natural and human resources.

We support the work of scholars trying to understand how oil affects life in the Gulf of Guinea.

We have offices in Port Harcourt and London. This means we can communicate information, opinions and ideas from villages, creeks and communities to the centre of global commerce and media.

We are able to talk to politicians and businesses in countries that depend on oil from West Africa, and who have a stake in the region's future beyond the Petroleum Age.

An Election Blog for Nigerian Civil Society

One of our current projects is an experimental online journal at greenlightnigeria.org. We have launched this with amazing encouragement and support from our friends and colleagues at Kabissa, ahead of the elections in mid-April 2007. We hope to create a channel of communication between activists, election monitors on the ground, and the outside world that has a stake in the success of democracy in Nigeria.

 

The role of ICT

 

On a basic and obvious level: we work on two continents, so email and the basic services Kabissa provides are the glue that holds our work together. We have a mailman list that we use to slightly reduce the hassle of circulating a monthly news and bi-monthly analysis bulletin.

On a less obvious level, we are only now starting to use ICT in our other work to its fullest - to honest - because we have only recently expanded from a two person organisation to a six person organisation.

Examples of ICT tools and solutions used by SDN

We run a website which at the moment is still an archive of analysis documents, publications and funding proposals. Soon, we want it to get across a message that people outside Nigeria should care and do care about ordinary people's lives. The "angry black man in balaclava in the way of you oil" stereotype is just one story. There are millions of others. Nigeria presently is a terrible country full of wonderful people: along with corruption, pollution and conflict there is also beauty and music and happiness. We hope that tools like YouTube and podcasting are going to make an immense difference in humanising our work, to adding faces and warm, human voices to a story that to the outside world must seem like one of only despair.

The greenlightnigeria.org blog, and using tagging and interactivity through it, will be an interesting experiment to see how we can make those links with the outside world, to communicate what communities want instead of pollution and rigged elections on a day to day basis.

Barriers to ICT that you had to overcome

A general lack of time and resources. Getting bogged down by trying to get everything absolutely right first time.

Advice for fellow Kabissa members

Don't be afraid to make mistakes, you get more things right than wrong if you persevere. This is why blogging is potentially so important... it makes it possible to get news and opinions out with minimum fuss and bother. Give people options. Not everyone viewing your site may even have graphics turned on, but they should still be able to get the basic information. I always add a link to a loband.org version of the SDN website.