2007

On the 27th of October I started my first day on the job as Officer Knowledge Sharing for Zambia and Ghana. Not in the office in The Hague, but in Lusaka Zambia. Which was a perfect start, because it was not only an introduction to IICD in Zambia, but a return for me as well. I lived for three years in Zambia, until December 2006.

Olaf introduced me at almost all the Lusaka based projects and in the 4 days in Lusaka we had a busy schedule. We visited in a short time 2 of the 4 Health projects, 3 of the education projects and 5 of the livelihood projects. Especially the trips to Chawama Youth project (in one of the Lusaka compounds) and ZARI (Zambian Agriculture Research Institute, just outside Lusaka).

I also was introduced to the Zambian Project node core team, where we discussed on the plans of 2008. But a main focus for my introduction was with e-brain the Zambian ICT network. I met the board and the office manager of the network, who could introduce me to the way they work, there 3rd quarter report and the plans for 2008.

During this week, there was also a Dutch consultant (John) in Lusaka (from one of the IICD partners, Altran). He worked with one of the partners in Zambia, OPPAZ (Organic Producers & Processors Association Zambia) to define the requirements for the design of an Internal Control System (ICS). The internal inspectors of OPPAZ could use the ICS system to assess the farmers, who are in the Organic certification process. They can do this in the field, together with the farmer, using a handheld computer and send this to a central database with GPRS. This system would be vital in the certification process of small scale organic farmer and will be piloted in 3 districts (Chongwe, Mpongwe and Mongu).

So all in all an interesting, busy first week where I could see what IICD is doing on the ground and where I could met most of the people in Zambia with who I will work.

Martine Koopman
Officer Knowledge Sharing Zambia and Ghana

As I am usually mostly working from the hotel or inner-city project headquarters when in Ecuador, paying a visit to a local site of one of our project partners is both interesting and a pleasure… even if it means that you’d have to get up at 4:15 in the morning to be picked op by our partners who runs the IICD supported CAMARI project.

The original plan was a two-day up-country visit to two communities that the project partner is active in. Unfortunately, one of the sites turned out not to have any connection, as they apparently forgot to pay for their electricity and had to go and fix this on the day of our visit. At least it was good to hear that connectivity problems are not only related to thunderstorms, bad equipment or political turmoil…

The adjusted plan therefore included one site about 4,5 hours from Quito. One of the persons responsible for the project and I talked about pets, favourite music and sports and of course the project itself in order to keep awake. In the meantime, scenes familiar from many Ecuador coffee table books unfolded: a sunrise over huge snow-capped volcanoes, indigenous women dressed in bright purple ponchos and black skirts and lazily grazing alpacas on the side of the road.

We passed a village with a large statue covered in different colours of bathroom tiles. “Do you know what that is?”, the partner asked. As I did not want to insult anyone, I did not dare say that the thing looked like a huge popsicle to me. “It’s a popsicle!” he said, “people here really love their ice cream.”

We arrived at the partner organisation’s office in the late morning (the project partner we work with again works with local partners in different communities). This local partner is responsible for getting certain amounts of produce, all carefully planned out on large hand-written boards, from the communities’ farmers and handicraft (wo)men to the selling point in Quito. Additionally, the information centre gives information on prices for the local produce. All tested ways to increase income of local producers and improve their decision-making on where, when and what to sell.

This was the theory. Walking around the community and talking to users of the projects I not only found out that the theory seemed to work (also proved by the encouraging evaluation data that had been coming in from the projects’ users for the last two years now), but that there was much more to it. In the first place: I probably had never before seen such an industrious village in my life! In a 2,5 hour walk I met cheese makers, sausage makers, mushroom dryers, furniture builders, football producers, nougat makers, chocolate makers, workers from the thread-factory and a group of women that knit sweaters from the thread produced in the factory. All of these micro businesses use the same communications network originally installed for the info centre for a nominal fee, which in turn helps coving a part of the info centre’s cost. The cheese factory communicates with surrounding communities that produce part of the cheese that they distribute all over the country. The chocolate factory sends e-mails back and forth about orders and packaging with Italian buyers.

The sheer existence of the info centre has over time sparked many of these initiatives. They are currently preparing to set up a VOIP-telephone, to compete with commercial (expensive and low quality) telephone provider Porta. And a Virtual Aula has been set up to provide all community members with internet access in an internet café setting. Contrary to international trends, the activity and communication possibilities have actually resulted in people moving into the community, rather than out of it, towards the city.

Talking to one of the “community economy”-founders, an Italian priest who has been in the village for over 35 years, it became clear that the effect of the network goes much further even. When asked about the most substantial changes for the community, he became really enthusiastic. Instead of elaborating on economic success or export, he talked about how the project opened up surrounding communities, till recent almost completely shut from the outside world. How young people there were seeing new possibilities, talking online with their friends in other communities. That, claimed the priest, was what was amazing about the new technology.

Every day, behind my desk in The Hague, I’m busy with the impact of our programmes: the statistics, the percentages, the lessons learned. The real life impact as seen in the community will probably always be impossible to capture….

Mr. Paul is running a telecentre in Katesh, in the north-east of Tanzania. His telecentre provides computer training, the only one in the region. His customers need information from the internet, like market price information. But the internet has not yet reached Katesh. Mr. Paul is planning to have an internet connection and an email address soon, but he needs information on how to go about it. 

I met Mr. Paul last week in Mwanza. He was one of the participants of the first Tanzanian Telecentre Network workshop. Together with many others, I have been planning this workshop for months. Meeting Mr. Paul made again clear to me why a telecentre network is needed. All participants came with questions and all came with answers on: How to improve their services to the community?. Where to get ICT support? Telecentre puzzles were solved in the workshop and its grapevines. Still many need to be solved. By sharing and by joining forces. 

In a speed geek session, every telecentre presented its approach to provide services to the community in a sustainable way. Some provide market price information to farmers; others provide computer courses to students, women, elderly, disabled, helping them to get a job. Some provide a community radio to inform the villages on burning issues like HIV-AIDS prevention, others provide library services. Some are entirely financed by the community; others share their internet connection with nearby schools. Some use VSAT connections; others have switched to recently available broadband. The telecentre leaders advised Mr Paul on all the available options. 

Through a mapping exercise, the telecentres present were indicated on a Google Earth map. Mr. Paul found out that other telecentres actually were not that far away from him! He now knows who he can contact for support. 

Then, after two days of workshopping, it is 4pm. It has been an exhausting day; participants discussed a vision, mission, objectives and organisational structure of their network, and made extensive use of the left part of their brains.

Would there still be anything wise to do, apart from calling it a day? Yes. Let’s use the right part of the brain and create a logo for the network! I was amazed by the sudden energy and creativity burst and tried to grasp it in a picture: the designers, including Mr. Paul standing in the middle, present the winning logo. 

Mr. Paul went back to Katesh, connected to a whole new network of colleagues through his mobile. With confidence he told me that the internet connection will soon follow.

This week is my first visit to the IICD country programme in Uganda. Within IICD, I am changing position and will be taking over the responsibility for project management in Uganda. In this trip a colleague is introducing me to the programme. So far the projects are really exciting. It is impressive to see how committed people are towards the projects. This weekend we visited the Health Child project, a new project which we are implementing together with Cordaid. Last week the project coordinator identified two rural communities to start Information Centers where women can be trained on Health prevention. The coordinator was a young woman, like myself. She quit her job in Kampala to live in the rural area to set up the centres. During the visit she and the rest of the implementing staff took us to one of the communities. The people were really keen on meeting us. They raised interesting questions, like how we would make sure that the elderly women of the community wouldn’t be excluded from this ‘innovative’ project. This shows that, fortunately, our end-users dare to be critical towards IICD.

More than 10 years of experience in applying information and communication technologies (ICT) to education, healthcare, governance and livelihoods in developing countries taught us that modern ICT make a difference and helps to improve the quality of life of people in developing countries. Still, one of the problems to overcome for successful implementation of ICT is connectivity. That is why looking for innovative solutions to ensure connectivity is an important aspect of our work.

It was at the eChallenges Conference in The Hague that my colleagues and I hoped to meet potential partners to help us solve this connectivity problem. This annual Conference, which took place from the 26 – 28 of October brings together research institutions, private and public sector partners to stimulate innovative information and communication solutions. To encourage innovative partnerships, the European Commission has set up a fund, CORDIS, for research activities that focus on specific problems, like for example healthcare improvement or citizen partnership.

Being responsible for representing IICD at the exhibition I was full of hope that I would encounter a lot of interesting people with challenging ideas about ICT-innovations that would make a real difference. And I did! Truly innovative solutions were presented for example on health checks at a distance which could be of use for elderly or disabled people who have difficulties getting out of the house. Or solutions to increase citizen involvement. But I could not stop thinking whether all these innovative solutions would really make a difference. Some technical solutions seem to be developed just for the sake of coming up with something different, something new instead of meeting a real need.

Like the digitisation of the pen; isn’t that just re-inventing something that already exists, but than packaging it into an electronic device that competes with, in this specific case, track changes within Word? I don’t know, but it made me feel sad. There are some real problems going on, like people who have no access to education or markets to sell their products or are unable to voice their needs. We need to get these people connected. We need to give them access to information and enable them to communicate. They don’t need gadgets. They need real innovative solutions to help them overcome the digital gap.

So let’s not talk about innovation just for innovations’ sake, but let’s talk about innovation to solve real problems.

I am already back in The Netherlands but I still owe you a reflection of the third and therefore last day of the Cross Country Learning Event (CCLE) in Tanzania. The first and second days are also covered in blogs.

During the third day we had a ‘ peer-to-peer assist'. For those who do not know the term, a peer-to-peer assist is a session whereby a project owner presents a problem/challenge to other project owners, with the request to come forward with suggestions for improvements or solving certain problems. People came forward with realistic problems and this session evoked sparkling discussions. For instance a certain project owner in Uganda was struggling with setting up a maintenance system in the periphery. How do you maintain contacts with the help desk organisations if your computer breaks down? And therefore if there is no communication, how do you financially maintain such a support/maintenance system? One of the options discussed was the suggestion for setting up a kind of fee for members/users so that we can finance such a maintenance system. A Tanzanian organisation had some experience with it, which helped actually its Ugandan counterpart to move forward.

Generally I learned that the peer-to-peer sessions indeed did assist the project owners with their problems and that the interaction between project owners did bring forward suggestions based on practical experiences. Is this remark an open door? I hope so.

We ended the three-day seminar with an evaluation session. It brought forward some nice remarks which I want to share with you.

• “Out of the three expectations I did only meet one. I expected Power Point presentations: no Power Points. I expected hand outs every evening: no hand outs. I expected knowledge: there was an overwhelming amount of knowledge.”
• “5 th October ( the closing date of the CCLE ) should continue.”
• “CCLE is a big library.”
• “Mali has inspired. It gives courage. Hope to meet again.”
• “Thanks for the commitment of IICD and Cordaid.”
• “Expectations were met. Do not stop here.”
• “We shared much more than in other types of seminars. It was not possible to sleep at this seminar.”
• “The level commitment was very good. Health does not know any boundaries and this is also shown in the East-West exchange.”
• “You made us take part of the whole process and the added value will not run away from me. “
• “Simple is beautiful. Very interesting and wonderful. Asante Sana.”

Thursday, 4th October 2007, the second day of the Cross Country Learning Event (CCLE) in Tanzania. A blog on the first day has also been posted.

It is remarkable to see how many people exchange information during a CCLE and it is a pity to see that you can never capture all the information which crosses the table. For me it also proves that there is a huge demand for information exchange and that the methodology used (open space) does bring forward the most important issues at stake, such as human resources and leveraging. In itself this is in line with the outcome of IICD’s M&E analysis. It is also encouraging to see that creating the right scene open ups the mind for an exchange. For the specialists in facilitation this might be an open door, but for people who are more focussed on determining directions it is good to be part of these exercises.

Leveraging
It also appears that leveraging is not just an IICD issue. It is a natural phenomenon which already takes place since ages. The only difference is that we tagged it as an IICD phenomenon. It is obvious that leveraging takes place if there are results, political willingness to expand and if there are the right circumstances. For instance in Uganda the project ‘Promoting Continuing Medical Education among Rural Health Workers by use of ICT’ of Uganda Martyrs University (UMU) is successful. UMU was approached by the Ministry of Health to expand the project to three other hospitals. At the moment of the request UMU was not ready to expand and therefore they turned the request down. The same accounts for the Kinondoni project, which I visited last Monday. People of Kinondoni are approached by other local governments to implement the project in their municipality. For these organisations it is difficult to do that because you need also the methodology to introduce such kind of projects, which means that they also use the methodology which made the projects so successful. This visit also taught me that maintenance of projects in some kind of form is important. I saw outdated software and a server room which was not suitable to be a server room. Leaking airconditioners does not create the right environment for a server room.

Dealing with governments
Another remark which strikes me is the fact that dealing with governments is not as difficult as often expressed by civil society. It is a matter of managing expectations and informing and even involving them at the start of the project. For some countries this might not be such kind of a problem because the mechanism is available to inform the government. What I understood is that Uganda has such kind of a mechanism in place. For some of the projects of civil society you need to seek the approval of the Ugandan government. Despite the fact that it might be a cumbersome process it also has positive effects.

At the CCLE, representatives of Malawi (CHAM and the School of Medicine) are present. I had a chat with them about our possible involvement in Malawi with Cordaid. They are very enthusiastic. Not so much for the funds, but more for the methodology we are applying and of which the CCLE is an example. I have been trying to temper their expectations and despite the fact that they were nodding I am not sure if I was that successful in the management of expectations. The fact that they are heavily involved in World Space receiver might be a hurdle to take, but may be we can integrate that in the approach.

Publicity
Another thing: there was an article published about the workshop in an English newspaper and it appears that the same article will be published in Kiswahili today. Coming weekend another article about ICT4 health will be published. Therefore COSTECH and IICD made a major step forward in putting ICT on the political agenda. What I also learned from this exercise is that journalists are stubborn people. You have explained very clearly the message you want to get across and they pick out one sentence. They have picked out my remark about the fact that the health services have improved as compared with seven years ago. Conclusion and lesson learned: journalists are independent but as interviewee you are confronted with the consequences.

Love for Africa
Enough reflection for the day. I am just looking out of the window and the first rainshowers are starting to poor in Dar es Salaam. It reminds me of one of the factors why it is always pleasant to be back on this continent despite all its challenges and difficulties. It is the sky. The combination of grey clouds coming in from the ocean, light softened by the rains and trees illuminated beautifully by the raising sun (it is just after 6:00 in the morning) makes the continent so beautiful.

See you in The Hague.

Deem

Wednesday, 3rd October 2008. First blog session from Dar es Salaam. It will be a kind of diary, through which I want to share with you some impressions on the cross country learning events (CCLE). This annual events brings together people working with ICT4D in the health sector. It’s a perfect opportunity for exchanging experiences, learning and therewith adding value to the development of ICT applications in the health sector.

First impressions are good. There is a lot of exchange and indeed what I also detect, is that there is a huge need for interaction. Discussions are lively and people are eager to share their experiences. There is also a lot of laughter and that shows that the atmosphere is excellent. Quotes reflect general ideas. The following were made during the first day.

‘A CCLE is a kind of library’ or ‘a thinking might create problems and other thinking might create challenges’. The best one of the day is the following: ‘I was only thinking in terms of the broadening bandwidth. Face-to-face meeting like the one over here creates the broadest bandwidth’.

Official openings in Africa are a special kind of sport. The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MoH) was present and the highest authority of COSTECH. Nice speeches which were far too long. Leveraging was highlighted and I think that through the presence of the highest civil servant of MoH we have an entrance at the Ministry for leveraging. We should take advantage of this significant step forward. There were also a bunch of journalists representing different newspapers and television stations. This resulted in an item on the 19:00 hours news of approximately 5 minutes. I have not seen the newspapers yet and how many times IICD is mentioned. Pity that the papers are not read in Europe as it may assist us in the acquisition of funds.

During the first day we exchanged information about all the projects which have been or are being initiated. This brought forward a lively exchange and in between the different sessions people also started to extract knowledge from each other. It is a pity that all the knowledge exchanged can never be captured completely. In general the projects in Eastern and Southern Africa can be clustered in a few categories. There are projects focussing on health management information systems, e-learning/distance learning, tele-consultation. There are also projects which cannot be captured in these categories, such as the one about data for blood transfusion in Zambia and the one about community health.

The projects of Mali are very interesting for the participants coming from the other side of the continent. I am afraid that there is an eagerness to adopt this project also for the Eastern and Southern region. The reason that the people like this project is that it is very focussed and practical. Think big and act small is an adagio which should also be a guideline for the other projects.

Some of the projects are still in the formation phase. That is not a problem for the participants, but I am of the opinion that it also dilutes the CCLE a bit. The exchange remains vague because it can not be based on true experiences during the implementation phase.

The analysis of the M&E data done by my IICD colleague Hannah is shared extensively. We sticked the lessons learned to the wall and requested for comments. That is happening now. It is nice way how we can use the M&E in a project. The challenge remains how we can specify the lessons learned better. Maybe we should add some qualitative data and a qualitative analysis. I am wondering if we can extract more lessons learned on the basis of the data we are gathering as lessons learned are usually also context dependent so-to-say.

The Health Management Information Systems are at different stages of development. Most of them are still busy with the organisation at central level, whereas the step of organizing the data at the more peripheral level and especially the jump that the peripheral health units should make use of these data for the improvement of their management is not made. I have the impression that many of the managers also did not make the jump mentally so there is a lot awareness to be done.

What also strikes me is that there is hardly any discussion about software, like was the case in discussions on the CCLE online Dgroup.

So far the first impressions. Shall try to share some more of the experiences tomorrow.

But my head is still buzzing. My lunch date today said “everyone who was here was relevant”… and “I learned to my limits”. I have to agree that even I have been fully saturated with participatory web (web2fordev) these past 5 days which is truly amazing. I didn’t think that could happen.

Is this the beginning of a movement, paradigm shift, breaking of silo’s and re-landscaping of the development web? My father worked his whole career in development. I wonder how he will respond when I explain to him how we have set up a facebook group with the IICD local partners and are going to try out the “web to text” functionality, keeping each other up to date on our moods.

Getting back to my lunch date, I was actually working alongside him for almost an hour before I realized who he was! I blame the coffee cup in his picture. Ismael Pena-Lopez from amongst other things the ICTlogy blog. His is a blog high up on my list of blogs I try to follow when I have time. And one whom I wondered if I would ever meet live. I am very grateful I did. Besides the fact that we realized he probably met my father years ago, he reminded me of the importance of reflection.

User generated content is needed, and is good, and is a revolution on the scale and availability that it is now… but I might easily forget how reflection, analysis, and abstraction can help us learn to a higher degree. Especially after days, weeks, months of running… not only for this conference but other activities, it is time to reflect.

At the end of the ICT Best Practice Forum in Ouagadougou the Vice-President of Microsoft Africa can finally hold his speech. He takes plenty of time to tell how philanthropically his company will approach Africa in the coming years. Almost moved to tears he tells about his visit to a college in Ouagadougou, and how he was shocked about the poor (ICT) conditions that these pupils had to cope with. And about the ICT-design awards that he was asked to hand out as part of a Microsoft sponsored contest to a number of teachers in Burkina Faso who managed to distinguish themselves in the field of ICT. And about how proud he was on the fact that these teachers had been able to develop themselves thanks to the Microsoft Partners in Learning (PIL) programme.

Unfortunately the good man was misinformed by the local representative of PIL. The PIL-programme of Microsoft is operating in Burkina Faso since 2004 – or better said: it is barely operating. Since the start, 40 teachers at the most have been trained, and barely anything is noticed of a systematic roll out by the government. Of the ten thousands of computers that Microsoft would ship to Burkina Faso is nothing ever heard anymore. Than again, the government never bought large numbers of Microsoft licences as was agreed upon in the deal between Burkina Faso and Microsoft.

None of the 12 teachers who won a price in the contest supported by Microsoft ever took part in the PIL-programme: the first two awards have been handed out to teachers who took part in the 1-year post-graduate multimedia programme of the French Campus Numérique. And the other 8 award winners are trained as part of an educational training programme provided by our local partner ZCP and supported by us.

The circus of large international conferences on ICT for development keeps going on. Since someone first used the words ‘digital divide’ in the late nineties, more than one  thousand gatherings world-wide were organised to discuss this reputed problem. You can ask yourself how many projects could have been set up to bridge the divide with the millions of euros that is spent on these conferences. I agree with the coordinator of our National ICT for Development network, Sylvestre Ouédroago in Burkina Faso, who made the following remark in his book ‘L’ordinateur et le Djembé’ in the chapter ‘The modern griot’: ‘I travelled around attending several conferences and singing the extreme poverty of Africa. With a stern look, neatly dressed in a suit, and carrying my portable computer and my cell phone, I went to every place for which I received an invitation letter. (…) I made so many trips that I hardly worked, and when I did, it was often on the plane or at the airport while waiting for a plane. Have I become a new griot, or a praise singer of modern times? Was I preaching a message of hope or disaster in order to design new juicy projects that would bring benefits only to their designers who are always eager to experiment new salvation approaches? In fact, many heads of State that I criticize have the same approach!” At all these conferences you meet the same people and hear the same stories and in these past ten years very little has changed in the countries concerned.

The Microsoft Unlimited Potential programme (‘Connections, Communities, Partnerships’ – they know how to sell the programme with nice slogans) is a new version of the human side of Microsoft; the company is putting an enormous effort into promoting this programme amongst others in Africa. One of the ways to do this are the ICT Best Practice Forums that Microsoft, together with ECA and national governments, this year organises on West, North and East and South-East Africa. The first edition takes place in June in Ouagadougou, and as an important player in Burkina Faso I am supposed to represent IICD. When I read the programme the first thing that gains my interest is the absolute lack of best practices of Burkina Faso itself and that while Burkina Faso is hosting the event… and a number of by IICD supported projects in Education and Agriculture are nice examples of how you can use ICT for local needs. Were this projects not good enough compared to those of best practices of other countries? Did Microsoft/CEA miss out on them? Did the local government not put them forward? The Minister of ICT is capable enough doing so out of disrespect for the civil society. .. However it may be, we have to deal with best practices of countries like South-Africa, Tunisia, Egypt and Nigeria – and there are a few interesting presentations to attend. Are the best practices applicable in Burkina Faso? I doubt it. All these countries are miles ahead with regard to governance, economic situation and infrastructure compared to Burkina Faso. And why do we always have to look at best practices? A Forum addressing worst practices would probably be more educative!

The project “District computerization Kinondoni” is to bring about good governance in the Kinondoni District (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) by harnessing information for decision-making through the use of ICT. The project has been in implementation for some time now and has been using IICD's Monitoring and Evaluation system since 2003. This time around, a new approach was taken during the Focus Group Meeting.

On the 20th of April, 30 ICT users from various levels and departments of the Kinondoni municipality and four ICT staff members assembled in a Focus Group meeting to discuss the results of the questionnaires that were collected last year among the end users of the project. An important conclusion from the data coming out of these questionnaires was that generally, users viewed quite an impact of the project in their organisation, in terms of empowerment of the users working with ICT and the impact ICT was having on the organisation when it came to productivity and efficient reporting. The results also showed that improvements could be made to improve satisfaction, mainly where training of the users and technical assistance by the ICT staff was concerned.

In order to address the challenges, role play was used to facilitate the dialogue. One group of end users and one group consisting of ICT staff members were both asked to prepare a small play on the issues concerning technical assistance. Each group had to address positive and negative aspects of the technical assistance and in both plays end users and ICT staff members had to be acted out. This motivated the participants to step in each other shoes and to take both points of view into consideration. Two other groups, both consisting of end users, made plays concerning organisational efficiency: Does ICT really make the workplace more efficient?

The plays (in Kiswahili) resulted in a lot of laughter and sounds of approval; many participants recognised the situations in the scenes that for instance showed a member of the ICT staff using very technical language with puzzled-looking users or a secretary without appropriate training, trying to help out her boss who was too busy to deal with the computer.

After all plays, the participants made a list of concrete points of action. Interesting was that this action was expected not only from the ICT staff members, but also from the management and all users. Ideas that came up had to do with lessening the pressure on the ICT staff by on the one hand training and aiding users to better cope with problems themselves. The ICT staff could for instance make notes with very basic trouble shooting issues, so the users do not need to call upon the ICT staff for relatively simple problems. On the other hand, the ICT staff can be trained to better and simpler communicate with their end users. They can also be helped to develop a way that allows the staff to better deal with the limited time that they have: which problems have priority above others and what can users expect from them in terms of promptness of the assistance?

The meeting was enthusiastically reflected upon. As one of the ICT staff members put it: ”It would be really good if we could do this again next time. I feel that people now understand more about the ICT staff, that we are busy too, and that we understand them better. And everybody enjoyed it!”

Microsoft needs to re-conquer Africa one way or another. From Bill Gates’ perspective his company loses millions of dollars each day, only because almost every user on the African continent works with a pirated copy of Windows. The average African, and the average African organisation does not see why he should pay for a product that he can get for free from his neighbour. Those Microsoft licenses are pretty expensive, especially compared to African standards: who is willing to pay an average of 2 or even 3 monthly salary for Office suite? So Gates & co. will have to think of another way to conquer the hearts of the African people. Various high-profile community programmes were launched by Microsoft: Partners in Learning for example offers governments an opportunity to purchase (expired) Microsoft licenses for education and to make use of the education CD-roms of Microsoft. In exchange Microsoft can ask the government to fight with pirated copying. These so called community investment programmes are used to the utmost advantage by Microsoft: if a government is allowed to buy 20,000 Microsoft licences for say5 euros each while the normal price is about 50 euros, then Microsoft donates 20,000 X 45 euros= 900,000 euros to that country! Of course that looks really good in a press release. Only a shame that most African countries who signed, never bought those licences.

When I tell people that I am the Managing Director of an NGO that is specialised in ICT and development, people first raise their eye-brows and then start raising questions about the necessity of ICT for developing countries. Surely it cannot be as important as food, security or health care?

I agree it is not. Still, it is vital for improving life in developing countries. ICT is a tool for enabling people to get the right information and to be able to voice out needs, share ideas and knowledge. Many development problems find their origin in a lack of information and communication. Having access to ICT and being able to use it is just as important as being able to read and write. Just think of what would happen if ICT would disappear out of our daily lives… We cannot do without it anymore.

IICD is working with local partners in the South to use the benefits of ICT to improve education, governance, health care, (agricultural) livelihoods and environment. We help local partners to explore how they can adapt ICT through small projects, we take care of capacity development and stimulate them to share experiences among each other. We also encourage them to convince government of the need for a strategy and policies on the use of ICT to further improve development of the country and people’s lives.

To get a better understanding of the necessity of working on ICT in developing countries we have launched a new website that explicitly shows what our work is all about. Videos, photos, online articles and publications and a blog written by staff members of IICD with stories about the work on the ground will help to visualise what ICT for development is all about. At first sight ICT and development may be an unusual combination, but we hope to convince you that it is not.

On some days, goals you have set for yourself, match perfectly yet mysteriously with those others have set for themselves. There is no better feeding ground for cooperation. Today is a day where the circle is completed, or is a higher power at work?

With the office of Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) in Bamako, I have agreed to explore possible synergies between our activities and those of SNV-Mali. In previous years I have subconsciously avoided Dutch development organizations in Mali. I expect the reason for this was twofold. On the one hand because I wanted our programme to develop and find it’s own way, and on the other because for us at IICD, our local partners are our main focus. I felt it more important, on my trips to Mali, to spend time with local partners. However, now that our programme has matured, I see a growing need to create strategic alliances with development partners who have a higher level of sectoral expertise than we do. In that regard, the longstanding track record of SNV in Mali, and the fact that their methodology lies in line with ours, offers many opportunities.

But the turning point for following up talk with action, is a recently published article in Capacity.org by Elsbeth Lodenstein and others about a health project by SNV and KIT in Mali. Through an action research project in the region of Koulikoro they have developed a methodology which helps the communication between local policy makers and basic health services to improve in previous years. One of the keys for improving communication and understanding turned out to be to make data more transparent and accessible. This allowed policy makers to feed their decision making processes with simple indicators. IICD partners are currently formulating a project proposal for “informatiseren van de data collectie” in the same region. Therefore it is self evident that it would be beneficial to bring the two teams together. With SNV staff I agreed to convene a meeting in six weeks time, during which both trajectories will be presented and discussed by the parties involved. Our partners can probably reap lessons learned from the experiences of SNV staff, and in turn, SNV staff can gain greater insight into the advantages of ICT in a similar process. In this way, both our partners and SNV have a concrete issue around which a first cooperation and collaboration can be formalized. Small scale and concrete, just the way I like it.

In the evening I visited Hugo Verkuijl, an old associate of mine who worked at KIT for many years and who just like me married a Malian. In cooperation with KIT he is now setting up the first biodiesel company in Mali. A very nice project making use of the seed of the Jatropha plant. In this project not only the environmental benefits are gained but also income generated for farmers by selling biodiesel and carbon credits. When we sit down for a drink on the beautiful terrace of hotel Mandé which spans over the Niger river, who do we bump into but a KIT-colleague of Hugo’s. He tells us that he has worked with SNV on a very nice programme in the health sector in the Koulikoro region. And we could read all about it in an article published recently with Elsbeth Lodenstein on Capacity.org….

Below: François Laureys(left) with Mr Joachim Tanoano, Minister for Post and ICT, and Mr Michèl Pepin, Programme Manager for ADEN in Burkina Faso

November 5th 2008, Bamako, Mali, 7 in the morning. A special day had started.

The first day of the long awaited Cross-Country Learning Event (CCLE) on Livelihood Opportunities, the event that IICD organises for project partners by theme once every few years and that in this occasion has fallen under my ‘livelihoods’ range of responsibilities. The bus to Sikasso was waiting in front of the hotel, already loaded with four translators and their technician with his equipment, two ladies introduced to me as ‘hostesses,’ Mady, the cheerful local co-organiser representative, bananas, peanuts and bottles of water and flavoured sodas, a shy boy that never revealed his role but that would smile to our greetings in poor French, and of course, the driver. The bus is to take us to Sikasso, capital city of the southern region with the same name, where many of IICD’s supported livelihoods projects in the country are located. It is my first time in Mali, as well as for 21 other participants coming from 7 different countries. They are expectant. I am expectant. We have invited them to a tri-lingual workshop in rural Mali to exchange experiences about rural content for rural lives: how farmers in the most disadvantaged areas are working with information and communication technologies (ICTs) to create and disseminate local content in ways that are meaningful for them. And in this context we are all first timers.

Fortunately, most of the participants had arrived on time to Bamako the night before, and the two Zambians that missed their flight (for those mysterious excuses given by airlines) would be arriving later in the day. With the help and mobile phone of my IICD colleague Bénédicte Marcilly, the connoisseur of the local logistics and my partner for the event, we were getting a transport for the two we were leaving behind to catch up with us in Sikasso. We were promised they would be picked up upon arrival. Yes of course we would pay all the extra expenses. So we departed, Sikasso: there we go.

But the day had not started here. From early hours many participants, myself, and about half of the world had been watching the results of the 2008 United States Presidential Elections. “Yes we can” had replaced the greeting “Good morning” that day. The Mirabeau Hotel TVs seemed to be all connected, tuned in the same channel that showed a large picture of Barak Obama in the background, with journalists discussing in French the implications of this election for us all. We had had breakfast smiling, watching the screen. Excitement was in the air, and for me, a white Latin-American woman, receiving this news surrounded by African colleagues made those mixed feelings for history, race, humanity and development come together in a very moving awakening. This was a historical moment, and we were living in it.

The 5 hour road trip on the air conditioned bus went so smoothly that left us pleasantly surprised. No incidents, neither caws nor goats blockades, they would just run away from the loud bus horn. In Sikasso, the Hotel Kaaki Palace’s receptionist was ready for us, with all the room keys spread on the counter: Pick your room! Great. Someone handed me key 306, a room which I later discovered had no working TV, no mosquito net, and was too far from internet reach (afterwards we learned only 4 rooms in the ground floor could get signal). That was ok, I somehow had the feeling that we would not have time anyway to watch TV or worry about mosquitoes. And for the internet, that was to be solved by quietly camping outside those four ‘connected’ rooms around midnight.

Despite all the bananas and peanuts provided during the trip by the hostesses, we were hungry. So all on to the bus again through the Sikasso market to arrive at the facilities of IER (National Institute for Agricultural Research), where the 3-day workshop was to be held. The group of ‘transformatices’, women that work in the transformation of products like mangos, coconut and potatoes, received us with music and dancing, playing drums with such a skill that even surprised local Malian men participants. This would only be a first introduction to what we would later experience of Sikasso’s music richness. We were then kindly served salad, chicken, couscous, fruit. Welcoming remarks by our hosts filled the atmosphere, which together with those women that were cooking, dancing and chanting for us, made us quickly leave behind all the trip exhaustion, doubts and challenges since deciding to plan this event in Sikasso months ago.

And the activities began, only two hours later than planned, that afternoon. Introductory remarks, ice breakers, story telling. Everybody participated actively, and people had this extra energy that we organisers recognized as reflection of the excitement and power of coming together. (see picture)

We finished that day with a visit to the IICD supported Sene Kulafoni Bulon project. We toured the facilities, the computers, looked at the produce display window and got introduced to this concrete example of close collaboration between three large farmers' organisations in Sikasso (the Union of Mango producers, the Federation of Potato producers and the Federation of women Mango Transformers) and the regional branch of Mali’s IER that focuses on the transformation chain of products. What particularly struck me was the lecture of a poem in Bambara, written by a member of the project, and using the IICD acronym as inspiration (see picture). We soon had become part of the Sene Kulafoni Bulon’s fanclub, wearing their t-shirt and taking pictures with each of their team members. And as it could not get any better, the left behind Zambian participants arrived right on time to get to sit at the dinner table.

“As you can see here, computers are no longer a taboo for farmers” were the words of Dede Togola Konde, a very charismatic and energetic women and one of the project directors, when thanking us for the visit. As everybody clapped and smiled, and started digging into their chicken plates, I wondered how many things were no longer taboos, starting today, for all of us sitting at that table and for the world. That was a very special day, from dawn to dusk. I am sure it will certainly stay with many of us for years to come.

The hotel in Bamako where I have always been staying since I started working for IICD in Mali seven years ago, has recently opened up a restaurant. The ‘Grill Chez Jean-Claude’ offers exactly what it promises: good grills. An unsuspected nice extra feature of the restaurant is the English translation of its menu. “All is accompaniments with the choice are been useful with the grills”, it states mysteriously, while the starters section offers “Pork Butchery” (Assiette charcutière), and “Grills furnished” (Grillades garnies). Also highly recommended: “Shrimp Lawyer” (Avocat Crevette) or “Lawyer Vinegar” (Avocat Vinaigrette). Long live Babelfish automatic translations!

Often during ICT4D conferences one can witness a modern version of a traditional circus act. I call it ‘The champion parade’. In the desperate battle for Success stories and Best Practices on ICT4D, donors and ICT related NGO’s like to put forward ‘their’ champions during the international conference and boast about how – thanks to their project or programme - these originally underprivileged poor bastards were lifted to new heights and unlimited opportunities. Once discovered and highlighted by a well-known ICT4D institution, the champion in question can be assured of receiving invitations for numerous other conferences – where other organizers on their turn can boast about their discovery.

During the ICT Best Practice Forum in Ouagadougou, there were numerous of these parades and attempts of appropriation of other’s successes. One that particularly struck me was the following one, which occurred during a conversation I had with a UNECA-official. We were talking about Mali, and I mentioned an IICD project partner who works on telemedicine. “Ah”, said the official, “Yes I know him very well - what’s his name… We from UNECA nurtured him!”
Nice nurturing relationship that must have been – hey, what’s your name again?