I have always tried to keep this column free from personal gripes and bickering. However, the last post I wrote (Meaningless mutterings about the University of Stellenbosch) drew the attention of people at the university’s Gericke library who opened up access to resources for me. I sincerely hope that they will not get into trouble. I now have full access, as a member of the public, to publicly funded resources. I should mention their names (and their utter grace, kindness and professional conduct) but I fear they may be persecuted by the institution. I feel embarrassed; I threw a tantrum, albeit with tongue deeply in cheek, and I personally gained from it. Such personal aggrandisement is bang out of order! To the friendly, generous and kind people at the Gericke library, I doff my cap. You stood up to exercise discretion and (actually) demonstrated your expressed commitment to open public access to information. I am humbled. I will not abuse the privilege.
A dear friend — the film maker Robyn Aronstam — once pointed out how, when foreign visitors came to South Africa they were amazed (and befuddled) by the fact that we do not enjoy rapid and uninterrupted access to the internet. Robyn said that the access to the internet remains a privilege in South Africa. And she is quite right.
One of the important measures of inequality in the world is precisely the disparities in access to information between rich countries of the European world, and the poorest of the poor. These disparities are not just about going online and playing video games or downloading porn; it is about access to vital information about health care or knowledge production and about epistemic rights, among other.
In June this year I travelled to South America where I was to join a research project in the Amazon region. Before I left the United States, I went online to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention website to learn about Malaria, Yellow Fever and other communicable diseases or health hazards in the Upper Mazaruni — where the borders of Venezuela, Guyana and Northern Brazil meet. Within less than an hour I knew the risks I faced, where to go and what to do about the necessary precautions. Not everyone in the world has such access — especially not the people who may well need access to information quite quickly. There is a great divide in access to the internet that prevents such rapid access to information. The World Health Organisation’s Global Outbreak and Response Network and South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Disease are open to public access — if you have a computer and access to the internet.
Access to the internet is measured in terms of the Digital Access Index (DAI). The index ranking is, usually, divided into four tiers of access: High, Upper, Medium and Lower Access Countries. South Africa is ranked 13th among the Medium Access Countries. Globally South Africa is the most connected country in Africa at 78th in a listing of 178 countries.
While HIV/Aids is a serious problem that has had much publicity, hundreds of thousands of people die ever year of communicable diseases. Many of these deaths can be prevented with the help of access to information. Among the more serious of these communicable diseases are Tuberculosis and Malaria. Consider the following statistics from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA):
Tuberculosis
- TB infection rate now exceeds 100 000 inhabitants per annum
- 1.5-million new cases of TB are recorded each year
- TB causes 600 000 deaths each year, about a quarter of all avoidable deaths;
- It is the leading cause of deaths among adolescents and adults
- Globally, TB is likely to kill 30-million people this decade
Malaria
- 90% of all malaria cases occur in Africa
- About 1.8 million people die of malaria each year
- About 1.6 million children die of malaria each year
- Malaria accounts for one in five of all childhood deaths
- Globally, approximately 300 million of the world’s population suffer from malaria. This is the largest disease burden in the world
According to the IAEA both diseases are becoming more resistant to the drugs that are currently available for treatment and drug resistant strains are posing a global threat. One way to stop, and roll back the impact of communicable disease in Africa is to establish surveillance and rapid response mechanisms – in both instances, access to information becomes vital. The key to any advancement in reducing disparities in access to knowledge and information disparities is, in the first instance, access to information. For now, and for my personal research and work, I am one of the lucky ones — I have access to the internet — millions of others do not.
“One of the important measures of inequality in the world is precisely the disparities in access to information between rich countries of the European world, and the poorest of the poor.”
Are the countries of the European world the only ones worth mentioning in this comparison? Aren’t Arab countries and certain Asian countries damn wealthy too? And what about the intra-African disparities between Africa’s oil rich elites and the rest of the populations of Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo and Nigeria?
Our country is being held back by a grossly uncompetitive communications sector. If you cross the border into provincial Namibia, cellphone rates plummet – I buy a prepaid SIM with R20 airtime which lasts me 10 days worth of calling (including calls to Cape Town.) Poorer African countries then our own have far more sophisticated cellphone services, especially the ingenious cellphones-as-money practices. But what do you expect.
When it comes to addressing the digital divide in SA, you will find the usual suspects are quick to point fingers at the government for the lack of internet connectivity!!!
In reality however, its actually the private sector that shirks its responsibility in order to keep technology out of the hands of the masses. In most democracies throughout the world, its the private sector economy that creates the internet infrastructure and promotes entrepreneurship in technology. Unfortunately the controllers of our economy who have the power to provide cheap internet connectivity see no advantages in empowering the black majority through technology.
Even India, China, Brazil etc. have surpassed us in bridging the digital divide. I wonder why? Welcome home, to our great digital divide!
Too true, although you do not acknowledge the huge advances in access to information, and the co-ordination of health and other projects, made by the arrival of mobile phones.
What is remarkable is that the mobile networks have almost all been built by private companies.
Admittedly in many African countries these are usually owned by those close to power and the licences to build the networks awarded with the stink of corrupt practises, but still the towers were built and now sit, in their fenced compounds with own generator and armed guards, right across the most remote areas of Africa.
So the answer to the very pressing need for not only internet access but broadband access in Africa, may be to take responsibility away from governments and aid agencies and let the capitalists loose.
The white person who caused the most deaths in Africa wasn’t a colonialist, or a member of the National Party, or a former President. It was Rachel Carson.
Another do-gooder who arrogantly knows what’s best for us all, just like the rest of the Left wing nut-jobs out there.
Africa has always been at least 20 years behind the rest of the western world. We only got TV in the 1970′s after all. I would also add that this was partly because the apartheid govt did not wish us to have access to information so perhaps it is a nationalist thing. Additionally I might add the advent of the internet has not been without some less than positive benefits such as practised by people like hackers and the availability of intimate details of any person who uses it to any Tom, Dick or Harry. Not everything about the Internet has been beneficial. Job losses have resulted in a burgeoning population etc and when the power grid goes down the whole of society grinds to a halt. What did we do BC before Computers? We used telegraph and telephone and less sophisticated technology and somehow the world was a simpler and safer place to live in. Thanks to technology not even our children are safe from perverted human predators! For all that I could not imagine life without the immediacy of the net.
Easy and inexpensive internet access to all is no doubt going to be Utopia. The reality though is that basic life-skills and education will be the building blocks to get there.
In Canada there is public access at the public libraries. One is still constrained to library hours and queues for computers when the kids are out of school. If you have a laptop you can sit inside and link up or even outside when the library is closed – quite a common site, except at -30C.
Might this be an option for South Africa?
Dave Harris,
“..in order to keep technology out of the hands of the masses”
You are wrong! There is no conspiracy by the private sector to keep internet out of the hands of the masses. Media companies would be very happy if far more people had access to internet, as that means more advertising revenue. Half a million people, mostly Black, access Sowetan newspaper on-line.
Only large telecom operators can get cheap internet to the masses, whether to individuals or to households. MTN, a co. headed by Blacks, did not try to do so until very recently, when competitive pressures forced it to lower prices. Telkom, almost 40% of which is owned by govt., did not do so. DoC, ICASA and other govt. departments and agencies are able to apply some pressure on Telkom – they have not, or if they have, they have been totally ineffectual.
BCX and Dimension Data are large private companies which have Blacks in influential positions and such companies could have made a difference in public internet access, but they did not. The Western Cape Prov. Govt. has made internet accessible to many, in public libraries, at no charge. Small companies are trying to make a difference in public internet access, but its only large companies or govt which can make a major impact in a short space of time.
In Brazil, about half of all those who access internet, do so at public internet access facilities, and many of these facilities are state supported.
Telecommunications: Government makes the rules (ICASA), sets the prices, participates in the market, limits the number of operators, dictates employment practices, and punishes employers every time the employer creates a job with levies contributions and whatnot….
And some bloggers here blame the private sector, strewth!