A discussion about the politics of cell phone use - from the exploitation involved in the mining of coltan (an essential mineral used in consumer electronics) to the domination of phone companies.
This discussion took place at Bluestockings, during the event "Independent Media, Technology, and Self-Determination Struggles in Nigeria" on March 27, 2011.
Emem Okon of Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Center in the Niger Delta and Omoyele Sowore of Sahara Reporters will speak to the role of communications technology in struggles against political corruption and oil exploitation in Nigeria. Jamie McClelland of MayFirst/PeopleLink will address the changing role of communications technology in the internationalization of such struggles, and lead a discussion on what is to be done to seize this moment. This is the third of a series of reportbacks form the fourth IMC-Africa Convergence, held last month in Dakar, Senegal. Facilitated by Amy Dalton and Nicole Hummel.
From the Indymedia Africa Convergence, to a recent crackdown on hip-hop activists in Senegal, to women fighting back in the Niger Delta, to a new community radio in Mali… Tonight Best of Both Worlds explores the uprising that is simmering West Africa. Tune in for stories from women’s movements in the Niger Delta, music and updates from the musicians/activists of Keur Gui, and an interview with Indymedia’s Sphinx.
Featuring music from the Lijadu Sisters (Nigeria) and Keur Gui (Kaolack, Senegal).
Claudia Wegener sent these links: radio continental drift
a broad casting house in the bag of a listener
out to here unheard voices
a branch of the growing networks of sound workers,
audio artists, radio communities, and the street corner academies
of listening and broadcasting
around the world
radio is happening
when people loiter in public places
the air is free!
featured producers (in the order of their appearance part 1 & 2):
Takscentre, LOCAL ARTS & CULTURAL CENTRE http://www.takscentre.org
(contact: David Odwar (9) davidodwar@hotmail.com, Santa Joyce Laker (1) health_gulu_ug@yahoo.com )
Mega fm LOCAL PUBLIC BROADCASTER pka "Radio Freedom" megafm@bshnet.net (contact: Nicky Afaya (2), producer afaya7@hotmail.com, Okot Juma Jammieh)
TAILORS WORKSHOP @ GULU MARKET
(Acan Jennifer (3), Agnes Odoch agnes.odoch@yahoo.com, Ajok Lilian, Aber Khevine Vicky)
Gulu MC's interviewed:
AshBee (5) http://www.myspace.com/ashbee , DN (4) & Babu (aka Kites) (5)
Breakdance Project Uganda GULU BRANCH http://www.myspace.com/breakdanceprojectuganda;http://www.youtube.com/user/abramzt
(contact: Josh Jones, coordinator joshjones85@gmail.com ; Dennis Kilama (10), Latim Simon Peter; Benson (6), Bernhard, Ivan, Caroline, Brigitte)
The Remnant Voice HIPHOP PROJECT FOR STREET CHILDREN
theremnantvoice@yahoo.com (7) (contact: Ogen Rwot Jefferson http://www.gulucommunitychurch.com ; Ogen Rwot Felix)
Bosco Uganga BATTERY OPERATED SYSTEMS FOR COMMUNITY OUTREACH http://www.boscouganda.com , contact: info@boscouganda.com
Joseph Okumu, director; Stella Akiteng (8), project coordinator; Alfred Kilama, technical assistant)
Alimucan Janet, pupil at Gulu Central High School
for contact details see also: hhttp://radiocontinentaldrift.wordpress.com/radio-communities/
The Media Institute of Southern Africa, the West African Journalists' Association, the Media Foundation for West Africa and the Eastern Africa Journalists Association will all be participating in various events in Africa in acknowledgement of World Press Freedom Day on 3 May, 2009. For the 15th year in a row, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) is unveiling its report, "So this is Democracy", which looks at the state of the media in Southern Africa. MISA recorded 163 alerts in the year 2008, the most serious violations taking place in Tanzania - most notably the acid attack on journalist Saed Kubenea of the "Mwanahalisi". The government later banned the weekly, allegedly for publishing seditious material.
A similar distrust of private media has been the basis for media closures in Lesotho and Zimbabwe, says MISA. On 3 May, MISA's World Press Freedom Day statement and report will be available at www.misa.org for download.
The West African Journalists' Association (WAJA) is taking up UNESCO's theme of "media, dialogue and mutual understanding" by participating in demonstrations in Bamako, Mali and Dakar, Senegal and calling for talks between government and the media in West Africa. WAJA has high hopes that dialogue will help create an environment conducive to development of the media sector, "to decriminalise press offences and to put an end to the killings, assaults, arrests and imprisonment of journalists." For more info go to www.ujaowaja.org.
The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) is teaming up with the Ghana Journalists Association to put dialogue between the government and the media in practice. On 4 May, press freedom advocates, such as Kwame Karikari, executive director of MFWA, and the presidents of Ghana's journalists', newspaper publishers' and independent broadcasters' associations, can exchange views with the Minister of Information, Zita Okaikoi at a symposium at the Ghana International Press Centre in Accra. On 6 May, more talks will follow on how to turn GBC - Ghana Broadcasting Corporation - into a "true public service broadcaster." For more info go to www.mediafound.org.
Worried about the growing intolerance towards independent journalism and rising violence against journalists, the Eastern Africa Journalists Association is organising a workshop on 2-3 May in Kigali, Rwanda. IFEX members the Media Institute from Kenya and Somalia's National Union of Somali Journalists will be among some of the attendees addressing the situation facing journalists and media in eastern Africa, including journalists' safety and working conditions, professional ethical standards, the place of investigative journalism in the region, and media as a tool for dialogue and reconciliation. For more information email moise@eaja.org or omar@nusoj.org.
Rikus Wegman | 14 January 2008, 1:24 pm Last friday de balie in Amsterdam was host to the fill the gap conference: Mobile revolution, hope or hype? The 5th annual Fill the Gap conference started of with a short introduction about where the mobile phone is at the moment in Africa. The focus in this introduction was on new ways of use for the mobile phone that are especially created for African use. A good example of this new use can be seen in the possibility to send family or friends money via sms. By sending an sms to a certain number and attaching a certain amount of money to it, the person who receives the sms can go to a local telephone-cash point and collect the money. More on this specific subject can be read on the African Matrix blog.
After this short introduction of where mobile telephones are at the moment in Africa the first speaker was Christoph Stork. Stork is senior researcher for the LINK Research Centre ICT Africa (RIA) in Johannesburg. He talked about the research network of universities and think tanks from 18 African countries from where he did research into the use of mobile phones in SME. One of his conclusions was that; for the mobile to be sustained in Africa one of the most important things is creating a business climate. He also found that access and use have a positive impact on profit in both small, middle and ‘big’ SME’s. This looked quite obvious to most of the people in the room butt Stork defended himself by stating that an important piece of scientific research is showing and proofing the obvious. He closed of his argument that was filled with a lot of different numbers, percentages and calculations by naming the problems that mobile phone users are having at the moment. He talked about problems with the high prices and the low capacity of the networks.Next up was Lotte Pelckmans from the African Studies Centre of the University of Leiden. She was on the verge of starting research on the ways mobile telephones were able to drastically and revolutionary change social relations in Africa. Because the project was still in a starting phase she could not show any interesting outcomes at the moment but she did make the audience aware of the huge importance that Africans attach to their mobile phone. Even if they don’t actually have money to make a phone call they still use their phone in special ways. The obvious examples of this way of telephone use where beeping and flashing. When you are beeping or flashing you only let your telephone ring once in order to let the person on the other end know that you are either thinking of them or that you need them to call you back. In my point of view this is not a typically African thing because I know a lot of young kids in England who use the same way of communicating when they are low on money. Another example that she mentioned that I did find really interesting were the 3 second calls in Mali. According to Pelckmans there is a provider in Mali that has a service in which the first 3 seconds of a call are for free. She said she knew a lot of people who used this service by making really short calls and then calling back. These conversations can last up to 2 hours…..
The next speaker that was interviewed was Shafiu Shaibu. Shafiu Shaibu from the SEND Foundation in Ghana is interested in how information resources can transform the life of farmers in north-eastern Ghana. As a soy-bean former he found out personally the importance of knowing the different bean prices from around the country to show where the best proffit can be made. They use huge chalkboards to show all the different prices from around the area. They tried to use internet to exchange the price information, but the costs of the access via VSAT were too high. He is looking into the possibility to start using mobile phones for this information exchange because this would be a cheaper form.
Ethan Zuckerman was the next speaker in line. He stated that it is important to understand why African people are interested in mobile phones. He showed that there are almost 100 million handsets in sub-Saharan African and illustrated the awareness that people have of the mobile phone by showing that 97% or Tanzanian people are aware of mobile phone use and are ‘able’ to make a call in case of need. These numbers to me were quite astonishing because they show that although there are a lot of technical and financial problems surrounding mobile telephone use in Africa there is a lot of interest in the medium. People in Africa are aware of the mobile phone and very much willing to use the medium. According to Zuckerman “Mobile is a powerful tool to make your own media”. In activism it is a really good tool to use. It offers what Zuckerman calls “sousveillance”, which is the bottom-up new form of surveillance and serves as a powerful new way of exposing and showing ‘Africa’ to the rest of the world.
He also gave an interesting examples of new ways of mobile use. In Africa there is a lot of counterfit fake medicine available. In most pharmacies you run a great risk of instead of buying the medicines you so desperately need you wind up with a piece of chalk or other fake medicines. Zuckerman was telling about a pharmaceutic company (mPadigree) who dealt with this problem by sealing their medicines with a code that people could sms to a certain number. If the code is correct and not already in use the medicine would be real and usable. This to me once again was a great example of new ways to use mobile phones that could really mean something to help the people in Africa. According to Zuckerman, the most important thing is getting a tool that is available for everyone. With mobile we are not there yet….. but we are closer than ever. The question is if by closing the digital divide we are creating new divides is also an interesting question that Zuckerman touched upon. As a business man you have to have a mobile, if you don’t have one you’re excluded. Does the mobile phone create new divides?
The conference ended with an interview with Kenyan professor Firoze Manji. The interview started with Manji explaining the current situation in his home-country. (There is a great list of bloggers who are blogging about the current Kenyan situation on whiteafrican.com) Manji wanted to make clear that it’s people who make revolutions, and that no technologies ever does. He stated that Pencils have contributed more then mobiles and suggested to do research into the pencil instead of the mobile phone. According to Manji the phone won’t make the difference, it's how people use the tools available. After a short discussion between Stork and Manji in which Manji doubted the significance of Stork’s research.
To me, one of the most important and interesting things about these kind of conferences is to see so many people with an interest in ICT in Africa together in one room. People from Hivos, IICD, oneworld, the tropeninstitute and a lot of other organizations were present and it was interesting to exchange views. For me personally the conference was a big success with a lot of interesting people present. from the Masters of Media at the University of Amsterdam
I received this letter from Joan Churchill: Dear Friends, My apologies for writing one letter to all of you, but I am about to disappear to Alaska on a production & wanted to get this to you. If you click on the link below, you can read about the hate campaign against Hubert Sauper's documentary, "Darwin's Nightmare." We’re asking you to sign a letter of support that will be given to the French judge presiding over Hubert's case against a French professor who has carried out a relentless and far-reaching campaign of defamation and intimidation against him and the film. It's an incredible story complete with manufactured websites depicting Hubert & bin Laden having a beer, faked interviews with the subjects of "Darwin's Nightmare," where one hears the interviewer say, "what I want you to say is...."
But what's really going on is that "Darwin's Nightmare" shook the government of Tanzania & threatened the corporate powers whose profits rely on the misery of victims of AIDS, poverty, starvation, & the numerous wars fueled by the trade of arms for fish. So they went after Hubert & "Darwin's Nightmare," a film that has won more awards throughout the world than one can count.
I hope you will read the history & sign the letter of support.. The trial begins this week. This is not just about one film, but about the issue as it affects all documentarians' right to practice their craft free of threats of calumny & censorship. Onwards, Joan Churchill to sign http://www.stolendev.com/hubert/ user name: doc password: signer
After I posted this I received an email from my friend Katharina who has written articles critical of the film. Her position is that "Of course this campaign against the filmmaker is disgusting and so are the arguments and threats brought by the Tanzanian government.." She says it is a "well-intentioned film" but that ultimately it is naive and is mostly good for promoting the filmmaker. That Sauper had not "even done the most basic research before embarking on this project, or even read some post colonial theory, he is more an “adventurer” than a researcher..." The biggest problem for her is that the "film offers a kind of christian catharsis for the (white)viewer: you go in, feel really bad with these people for a while, maybe cry a bit, then you don´t eat victoria lake bass for a minute or two, and feel better about yourself. this does not change the situation in Tanzania one bit."
She mentions that Sauper did not try to contact local people who were working on the issue: "at the time of his shoot there even was an indymedia group working out of Dar-Es-Saalam. Sauper did not contact them or other Tanzanians who have done research on this subject. the only articulate Tansanian in his film appears at the very end – before that all we see are victims, who need help but can't help themselves – I find this a very dangerous, Eurocentric and paternalistic perspective that always reminds me of the catholic mission magazines my grandmother had on her coffee table. showing poverty like that is one of the most paralysing things happening to african countries – and i guess we have seen by now that it does not change anything, on the contrary, it reinforces the same stereotypes again and again. We are so used to these images, i think they even make us feel better." Katharina is a filmmaker who has also worked in Africa: "As a filmmakers, this is exactly what I have always worked against. I think what we should do is to give these people a voice and help them to get organized poitically to get out of the situation. pity is the last thing they need. I followed the reaction of the African community here in Vienna a little bit: Darwins Nightmare was condemned by them as well as his film about Rwanda (which is horrible). i have not met one person of African descent who had anything positive to say about the film, and i have not met more than 10 white people who criticised it - isnt´that strange? i guess the post colonial discourse has not reached the film world yet."
Waves of Change is a survey of community media around the US and the world. In addition to this web site, there will be a DVD set with segments produced in many countries. We need your help to finish this series! Contributions to Deep Dish, a 501 C3 organization are tax exempt. Please contribute to help us finish the series! All donors will receive a free copy of the DVD set. Go to the Deep Dish web site to donate.
