No really. I don’t understand. I mean, we never really learn or think about Submarine Communications Cables, we just use them all the time. I was listening to a radio program a few nights ago, and they were discussing how the west coast of Africa has only one fiber optic cable to carry high speed internet access. When I did a web search I found numerous articles from… oh a bit over a week ago talking about east Africa just now getting a fiber optic cable.
I am having a really hard time finding information about the ownership of these cables and who pays for their development and maintenance, but I wonder what narrative could be constructed examining the decisions that led to development and lack their of in Africa.
I came across the following video about the myth of African unity on YouTube from Polity. The speaker is Dr. Paul-Simon Handy of the Institute for Security Studies. I found it very interesting and thought it raised a lot of good points people don’t often like to discuss or consider. The main ones that stood out to me are that Africa is a very diverse continent that is not all black and does not have a common power to rise against any longer. Basically, we are in a post-post-Colonial world at this point, and it is up to governments, people and academics to determine that that is going to look like. I have been doing a lot of thinking on the idea of a new Pan-Africanism, wondering what it would look like and what the goals would be.
From the YouTube video description:
The idea of Pan-Africanism should be revisited, with the aim of reorienting it towards service delivery, performance and efficient governance.
The French text on the backdrop says “Knowledge emancipates Africa”.
Knowledge and access to that knowledge has been shown time and time again to have a positive impact on society. That is one of the reasons I feel so passionately about making sure that young people are able to use the internet, provided they have access to it, to look up meaningful information and connect with each other. I believe that with more and more dialogues happening, there is no limit on the ideas and solutions people are capable of coming up with. Knowledge does emancipate, and it also opens up new worlds.
When I think of the original Pan-Africanism, it had strong links to slavery. This meant that it reflected the entire diaspora. Where do black people from outside of Africa fit in to this new Pan-Africanism? If the global coverage of Obama showed anything, it is that even if we are not necessarily unified, we do look at major success stories and see our own potential, regardless of our background or country of origin. We see it and think that we can and will do better and know that we are the writers of our future. Our common histories link our successes, failures and futures.
I hope that in the future I am in a position where I can help create a future filled with knowledge and access.
It is amazing what we find if we actually make a determined effort to look, and what we miss out of sheer laziness. I confess to my laziness. I often refer to myself as an average, overeducated, underachiever… however, I am working on this. I have set up many filters to get information I would otherwise miss that is of interest to me, so I can continue to be lazy but still catch the stuff I would normally miss. This brings me to the article I came across today from the African Press Agency.
“Inclusive development” represents an approach to development that encourages all people to recognize the development issues they themselves face, participate in addressing them, and enjoy the fruits of such endeavors.
Anyway, here is the quote that got me from the APA article:
The head of JICA office in Dakar was speaking at the opening of an international training workshop on school data collection and processing, with the participation of over 30 education experts from Burkina Faso (7), Niger (6) and Senegal (10), as well as JICA and Senegal’s Education ministry representatives.
It is amazing to see what other countries are doing to help with education in places. I believe I will be following JICA and what they are doing in my quest to be a little less lazy as well.
I came across this article from Voice of America about the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). They launched a new project called called the Broadband Infrastructure Network with the goal of bringing broadband internet access to all of Africa. As stated in a previous post, only 5.5% of the continent has access to the internet, so this is a big endeavor.
“We recognise that this NEPAD e-Schools Initiative holds substantial benefits for all African people. Through the use of ICT, we can raise the levels of our educational standards and improve the education and skills of our young people. And above all, we can address inequality, poverty and unemployment in our countries.”
She noted that taking this initiative forward marked the beginning of meeting the challenges of bridging the digital divide.
I love it, I love it, I love it!!! The whole article is actually great, so it should be read in its entirety. I’m mad I hadn’t heard of this commission before. It looks like the VOA article might be about something that started a while ago, and I’m not seeing any recent activities on the site, but it is definitely something I will be watching closely from this point forward because it is trying to do something big.
