[below is roughly what I hope to talk about this afternoon [1] for the benefit of you netizens lurking out there and observing the web2fordev conference [2] vicariously from the comfort of your computer monitors!]
Hello - I am Tobias Eigen from Kabissa, and I am here today to talk to you about Web 2.0 in African civil society.
We have learned alot in the last few days about Web 2.0. One big part is that it is about participation. This means sharing! It also means acknowledging and expressing support for one another. This happens in the blogosphere.. as Jayanta Chatterjee [3] said on Monday, "we all appreciate appreciation". There is a way to do this in a setting like this too - it's called Twinkling! Is there someone in the audience who can tell us what that means??
"when spiderwebs unite, they can tie up a lion"
Why Kabissa, civil society and Web 2.0? We seek to create revolutionary change in Africa. Civil society orgs are change agents - and Web 2.0 can empower them to join and engage with a community of organizations seeking to create change in their communities.
Can someone give me a very quick definition of civil society [4]?
Yes, that's great - the key point for me is that civil society organizations are a powerful force when they are organized to create the change they wish to see in their communities. These groups work in rural areas, in urban areas, on a national or regional policy level, as networks, and as tiny community based groups working on the micro level.
The web has always a potential for empowering organizations in Africa, but many groups still are frustrated by the high cost and barriers to doing things like creating and maintaining websites. Last year we began a process of experimenting with web 2.0 tools - always with a mind to how they can be adopted by African civil society.
The results of that effort we have documented right here on the Kabissa wiki [5]. As you can see, we have attempted to distill our learnings in three sections on the wiki - concepts, experiments, resources. You are welcome to visit the wiki to read it and print it out for offline reading. Like many wikis, this one is still a work in progress, so please also contribute to the resources and suggest improvements. When I return home I will be updating it with all the wonderful things I have learned here!
If I could try to summarize the lessons learned quickly, it would be to say the following: African organizations are using web 2.0 but not actively in support of their mission. the reasons for this are as obvious as they seem - there is a lack of understanding of what the tools can do for them. Reasons for this are also obvious - lack of access and time makes it difficult to play with the tools as we do in rich countries, the terminology makes no sense, and the examples readily available online really look like just fun and games being played by young people in rich countries with the bandwidth and time to burn - and are not serious. It's no surprise then that serious organizations shy away from it.
Now I'd like to show you three examples, then we can have a discussion. I hope someone asks me the tough questions so we can get to the challenges and lessons learned. :-)
Audio Blogging the Nigerian Election in February 2007
When the elections were approaching last spring, I wrote the Blueprint for a Nigerian Election Blog [6] on my personal blog. A Kabissa member, the Stakeholder Democracy Network [7] took the bait and went and created the blog. Greenlightnigeria.org [8] is hosted on Kabissa using WordPress [9] freely available open source software and makes use of evoca [10](see bottom of the page) to allow people to record messages through the website and by calling into a special phone number. The site is currently not being actively maintained.
A particularly powerful example of a contributed audio interview is A youth from Sagbama, Bayelsa State commenting on the 21st April elections [11].
Help International Cameroon is Web 2.0 enabled!
Towards the bottom of the comments on my blog post where I have been gathering info on web 2.0 in African civil society [12], I posted a lovely email I received a few days ago from HINT [13], a star Kabissa member in Cameroon, that demonstrates a clear and confident comfort with Web 2.0 technologies for reaching out to stakeholders and supporters.
Sneak preview of the Kabissa Online Community Website
Here are two early mockups of the Kabissa Online Community Website, coming soon! The mockups are rough, but begin to demonstrate how organizations will be able to tunnel through the site to find and connect with one another.
Links:
[1] http://www.web2fordev.net/448.html
[2] http://www.web2fordev.net
[3] http://blog.web2fordev.net/2007/09/24/sharing-farmers-knowledge-through-audioblog/
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society
[5] http://www.kabisa.org/wiki/web_2.0/start
[6] http://www.saidia.org/2007/03/15/blueprint-for-a-nigerian-civil-society-election-blog/
[7] http://www.stakeholderdemocracy.org
[8] http://www.greenlightnigeria.org
[9] http://www.wordpress.org
[10] http://www.greenlightnigeria.org/2007/04/15/have-your-say-on-the-first-round/
[11] http://www.greenlightnigeria.org/2007/04/25/audio-a-youth-from-sagbama-bayelsa-state-commenting-on-the-april-21st-elections/
[12] http://www.kabissa.org/blog/2007/08/17/are-you-blogging-help-us-to-gather-info-on-web-20-in-african-civil-society
[13] http://www.hintonline.org
[14] http://www.kabissa.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/searchbrowsemockup1.jpg
[15] http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2082/2244898219_010f09ee91_m.jpg
