A People Approach to Produce Web Content

The focus of this section is an introduction to the model that can be used to produce web resources in a given developing setting like Africa - fully covered in Lesson 5. There are thousands of web resources about those countries in developing environments. These web resources have become an indispensable source of information for the academic community, NGOs, government departments and companies. A majority of these web sites do not target the ordinary people in developing countries who need information to meet their day to day needs. The Africa Development Forum in Addis Ababa in October 1999 clearly decried the paucity of web content that meets the needs of people living in those countries. A theme paper: 'Democratising access to the Information Society' , highlighted the need to develop practical models that can be used to produce web resources that meet the specific needs of communities in Africa. In the discussion forums at the conference in which the author was a participant and a rapporteur, it was noted that three-quarters of the web content originates from outside the continent.

The President of Mali in his closing speech to ADF said that ICTs should be developed and used with the specific benefits for the people in mind, incorporating indigenous knowledge as much as possible. ICTs should not confuse the people by eroding their cultural identity and replacing it with lifestyles of waste, excessive consumption, and lack of morality and spiritual values. He also said that the knowledge base inherited through colonialism offered too much profit-seeking and separation from the spiritual. It had sometimes strangled local know how and initiative and replaced it with cultural mimicry. It is therefore important to blend the information with people's cultural perspectives - local web publishers should take the lead in the innovative production of content that gives it a true local flavour.

Information Gaps