Eric -Thank you for sharing this piece from the Digital Africa Summit.
The position paper somewhat echoes the slogan of the past that "content
is King". I believe it remains King, but regrettable the court has been
filled with tommyrot and jesters. The need for more African content is
especially important for African and non-Northern domains. Content
relevancy is the key.

An interesting counter-point to the value of content is a compelling
paper by Andrew Odlyzko who argues that the real value in the Internet
is found not in content -although ipso facto that is all the Internet
can carry, but in peer-to-peer communications and knowledge sharing
evidenced by the explosive use of file sharing, blogs, SMS, etc. An
interesting read: http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_2/odlyzko/

Stephen Settimi
Sr. Fellow, Knowledge Management USAID


-----Original Message-----
From: africasource2-l-bounces@lists.tacticaltech.org
[mailto: africasource2-l-bounces@lists.tacticaltech.org] On Behalf Of
Eric Osiakwan
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2006 4:21 AM
To: discuss@afrispa.org; AfriNIC Discuss; afnog@afnog.org
Cc: africasource2-l@lists.tacticaltech.org; kictanet@kictanet.or.ke;
En-ISPA_Team@afrispa.org; tier@tier.cs.berkeley.edu;
committee@afrispa.org; fibre-for-africa@lists.apc.org; afix@afrispa.org;
idlelo2@fossfa.net
Subject: [Africasource2-l] AfrISPA launches a paradigm shift to
stimulateInternet growth through CONTENT


On Thursday 23rd of March 2006 at the keynote session of the Digital
Africa Summit in Arebella Sheraton Grand Hotel, Cape Town, the African
Internet Service Providers Association (AfrISPA @ www.afrispa.org)
launched their first position paper in a series which is focused on
strategies for increased Internet growth. "A call for a paradigm shift
to stimulate Internet growth through content" is the first position
paper which argues that based on research finding, most African are
interested in the value they get out of connecting to the Internet and
not just for the sake of having access. Primarily their interest is
driven by the value of content that they locate which is relevant to
their lives and business.

According to Mr. Muriuki Mureithi of Summit Strategies who authored the
report on behalf of AfrISPA, it was intriguing to realize that even in
the semi-rural areas the interest of most small medium enterprises who
could afford the Internet was content; they asked the question "would I
find relevant material on the Internet which would aid the growth of my
business?". For them it was not just enough to use the Internet to
communicate but they also wanted to see how it fits into their business
processes for growth. Further the position of the lack of African
content on the Internet was expressed by some of the constituents
interviewed in the study.

Launching the report, Mr. William Stucke, Chairman of AfrISPA expressed
AfrISPA's interest in identifying other mechanism for stimulating
Internet growth on the continent hence the series of position papers
being undertaken with support from the Catalysing Access to ICTs in
Africa Programme (CATIA @ www.catia.ws). He outlined the ten point
recommendations of the study and emphasised the one that asks AfrISPA
members and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Africa to give a free
webpage or weblog (blog) to all their clients as well as develop simple
web publishing tools to help them publish their content.

The main objective of this position paper it to make the case for
Africans to move from being consumers to producers of content that is
relevant to their livelihoods and business. The culture of generating,
process and publishing content in Africa is so lacking that if we don't
take a strategic step to deal with it, all the Internet pipes that are
being built would lack the relevant content for our socio-economic
development.

Earlier, Mr. Eric M.K Osiakwan secretary of AfrISPA announced in his
presentation that Africa now has fifteen Internet Exchange Points (IXPs)
and twelve ISP Associations (ISPAs) however current efforts with other
regional institutions would result in the establishment of ten more
ISPAs and IXPs in 2006 with a projection of that to double in 2007. He
emphasised that the growth of these exchanges is based on content and
vice versa so the establishment of IXPs and the culture of developing
and publishing content must go hand in hand.

A copy of the study can be downloaded @
http://www.afrispa.org/PositionPapers/content.pdf

NB: Apologise for crossposting.




--
Eric M.K Osiakwan
Executive Secretary
AfrISPA (www.afrispa.org)
Tel: + 233.21.258800
Fax: + 233.21.258811
Cell: + 233.244.386792
Handle: eosiakwan
Snail Mail: Pmb 208, Accra-North
Office: BusyInternet - 42 Ring Road Central, Accra-North
Blog: http://afrispa.skybuilders.com/users/Eric/blog.html
Slang: "Tomorrow Now"
--

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