Communicating for change

As I mentioned in my previous post, on Monday I attended a seminar on Information for Social Change, at the recent Cape Town Book Fair. The day-long seminar aimed to look at the role of new technologies the publishing arena.

Firoze Manji of Fahamu was the first speaker. He spoke about his organisation, which among other things, produces the regular email newsletter on African issues, Pambazuka. From small beginnings several years ago, Pambazuka now reaches 20 000 regular subscribers.

Manji had some sobering thoughts for people considering publishing on an electronic platform. He said that while many publishers are scrambling to get online and explore the potential of the Internet, Fahamu, having started with online ventures about 15 years ago, is now doing exactly the opposite -- looking at print, as the most accessible and viable publishing option in Africa. He said that despite advances in technology and increasing Internet access, most Africans still don't have internet connections, and if they do, they are generally slow and expensive. This is why, for example, the email newsletter Pambazuka is sent out in plain text -- to make it accessible to the thousands of subscribers who have slow, expensive connections, and old computers. And because of connectivity problems, Fahamu is now exploring options for print production and distribution of its newsletters.

Despite these sometimes frustrating realities, there were several examples of organisations using the Internet and new technologies in interesting ways. Dick Ng'ambi of the Centre for Educational Technology at the University of Cape Town talked about applications the Centre has developed for cell phones. For example, they have set up cell-phone-accessible discussion forums for certain courses, where students can send in anonymous comments via SMS, and receive responses from lecturers and other students. Rebecca Pointer of Equinet talked about how they use the Internet to maintain a network of people and organisations working in the area of health equity in Africa.

Eve Gray, also from UCT, spoke about the issue of Open Access -- free access to resources via the Internet. This is an interesting and exciting field and it provoked a lot of discussion. One of the examples of Open Access Gray highlighted is one I mentioned in my last post -- the HSRC press. The publishing wing of South Africa's Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) looked at its mission -- to disseminate and promote the impact of research -- and decided that in order to achieve this, it would make more sense to offer its materials free online, than to try to make money by charging for its publications. So, although the HSRC still prints and sells hard copies of its publications, everything is free for download online. As a result, Gray said, the HSRC has seen a massive increase in the dissemination of its publications and research, and a corresponding increase in funding coming in to the organisation. Its materials are downloaded in almost every country on the globe.

Interestingly, though Gray did not mention this, the HSRC press also makes excellent use of social networking technologies such as Facebook, in order to promote and market itself. There is an HSRC Press group on Facebook, for example, and Karen Bruns, the person in charge, uses this group in order to announce new publications and invite people to events. The HSRC Press also post podcasts onto its website containing short interviews with authors.

Gray also spoke of new models being explored for the printing and distribution of publications on the African continent.  The Internet and print-on-demand technologies are beginning to open up new options besides slow and costly freighting of printed material. But Gray also highlighted ongoing imbalances in knowledge production and distribution -- she displayed maps showing that by far the most scientific research is produced in the developed world, and the overwhelming majority of books and journals are produced in the North. We need to move beyond just thinking about how to disseminate these products more efficiently in Africa, she said, and look at how we stimulate more knowledge-production in our own continent.

The discussion at the seminar was rich and lively. It is clear that while the Web and cellphones are opening up exciting new opportunities, Africa still has a long, long way to go. Bandwidth is limited, and connection fees are prohibitive. Participants talked about the need to creatively explore how the Internet can be integrated with earlier technology and appropriate institutions in order to maximise access. For example, looking at how local radio stations can act as nodal points, bringing together the Internet and cellphones into broadcast situations in order to facilitate communal discussions, and give audiences access to information they might otherwise not be able to reach. Or looking at how libraries can also be used to widen access to information.

But the seminar made one thing very clear -- the book as we know it still has a bright future. Despite the availability of online and electronic resources, most people still prefer to have a hard copy in their hands, and to read (particularly lengthy material) on paper, rather than on a screen.