ICT

Gendered ICT and Peacebuilding in Africa: A case of Missed Opportunities

storytelling — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:20:33 -0600

Author : Shastry Njeru, Midlands State University, P. Bag 9055, Gweru, Zimbabwe

Abstract

Inter-operability and use of ICT in crisis situations is not only about saving life, but a new life. The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has cathartic effects on divided societies. In violent conflicts that have taken place in modern times women have suffered much more than their male counterparts because of their ‘biological fate’ or what others have called ‘anatomy of destiny’. In most of Africa, women constitute the majority in the population. Yet they remain marginalized in knowledge, networks, and economic and political matters. As a result a lot of energy is left out in the process of national healing and peacebuilding. The recognition of women can provide ‘a new set of opportunities’ for nurturing a fragile peacebuilding process. The peacebuilding processes could be strengthened if organizations, people and regions connect ‘in effective multi-sectoral and peace building networks and provided with active and open knowledge banks. ICT can provide such connections, case studies and can bridge communication gaps between peace process stakeholders. The women can participate in the process from the grassroots upwards. This paper posits that marginalizing women can be retrogressive in the peacebuilding process and ICT can be used to mitigate against this problem in Africa.

Introduction

The United Nations Resolution 1325 of 2000 dealing with “Women, Peace and Security’1 was ground breaking for women’s peace activism in the sense that it provided a coherent policy framework for promoting women’s involvement in the wide array of issues related to peace and security (Crisis Group 2006). However, the progress along this resolution has been more limited in countries where leaderships remain hostile to a greater role for women in peacemaking and peacebuilding. What can be done to dismantle the barriers that prevent women from greater participation in conflict prevention, conflict resolution, peacebuilding and post-conflict governance? Yet, women peacebuilders, often without formal support, are trying to bring security to their communities, countries and regions. What can be done to recognise and support the role and capacities of women in preventing and mitigating conflict so that it does not remain an afterthought? Against a backdrop of persistent violence, exclusion and decaying social services, many see improving the status of women as an issue to be addressed further down the road, in a time of peace. Consensus is not strong around the view that women in Africa need to be empowered through gendered ICT to enable them to be involved confidently in their nations’ peacebuilding programmes.

In majority of cases women have been left out as a result of their gender rather than supposed incompatibility with ICT. Just like many institutions in Africa, the ICT has not effectively escaped the problems of gender discrimination. The belief that technology knows no gender is openly challenged in Africa where technology is not only framed in a masculine way but is refusing to change. Even in economies like South Africa, only ‘17% of women have access to ICT related services’ (Huyer and Sikoska 2003) . Women have watched the benefits of technology accruing to men for a long time from a distance and bridges to this divide have been constantly destroyed with every step. There is a group of critics who argue persuasively that in Africa women need clean water, adequate food, health rather than worry about ICT. They do not see the connection between these necessities with ICT.

On daily basis in a normal peaceful African state, structural conditions are pitted against empowering of women. During times of war women suffer all kinds of violations and in peace times the cultural stakes are far against them. Some women are married off early in their lives to cover family debts, they forced out of school to give way to sons, and they are enslaved and kept illiterate because they are women. Recognizing the gravity of violations against women during war times and in the spirit of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 of 2000, the encouragement of the eventual use of the ICT in peacebuilding can have that cathartic effect on the women.

In violent conflicts that have taken place in modern times in Africa, women have suffered much more than their male counterparts because of their ‘biological fate’ or what is called ‘anatomy of destiny’ despite their numeral superiority. Example is Zimbabwe where women constitute 52% of the population (CSO 2006). They have suffered the discomfiture of poverty, drought, hunger, imprisonment and degradation. Yet in Africa, women constitute the majority in the population, yet still minority in decision-making. The inclusion of women in the ICT spheres is necessary for national growth and prosperity (Chamberlain 2002). Yet again they remain marginalized in knowledge, networks, and economic and political matters. Closing and making inaccessible the information management and frameworks to key all stakeholders, particularly women, undermines the ability of ICT to save lives in a crisis situation. Women need to know where they can get information, food, medicines, protection, and networks. ICT can help in this. By inter-operability of information, accessing to it will be made possible to all as digital barriers are pulled down by availability of information. The guarantees that systems, tools and mechanisms can exchange information seamlessly, securely and sustainably, need to be put in place.

Those in power must have the political will to achieve peace and to share the information that can be used in peacebuilding and in meeting everyday life challenges. The politicians in Uganda have recognized the importance of ICT in curbing the rural-urban migration and gave it the attention it deserves. They believed that ICT will not only provide rural employment but will stem the urge to migrate into major towns by the youths. The Ugandan government has been very instrumental in setting up telecentres in rural areas under the Rural Communications Development Fund (RCDF). However, despite this effort, the rural communities are yet to benefit from this movement. There isn’t any Internet or call centres in the rural areas because of lack of electricity (Nabwowe 2008). This is a universal challenge in most of Africa and it is women who have suffered the worst ultimately because should technology reaches near them, it will be grabbed by their male counterparts who have craft competences and literacy to use the technology. Women have little exposure to education to find this technology of any use to them.

Supporting ICT in peacebuilding and conflict transformation is premised on its ability to facilitate ‘virtual collaboration’ (Hattotuwa, ud) or alternative public space for women. Women can meet and discuss issues and solutions collaboratively on the World Wide Web. ICT can augment this socio-political process that explore options for the interest based options despite the fact that virtualisation of peacebuilding is not the final panacea. Peacebuilding still exists within the emotions and problems of the real world, but problems discussed are problems half solved. Women are naturally disposed to discussing intimate issues with their confidantes. ICT can provide this option. Further, ICT for peacebuilding can address gaps in communication within and between multiple tiers of the fabric of society and polity that are party to the peacebuilding process (ibid.). To succeed, ICT should connect progressive elements of the socio-political fabric that under-gird sustainable peacebuilding including, but not limited to women, children, youth, grass-root communities and rural peace activists, at the same time marginalizing extremist and corrosive elements that are detrimental to peacebuilding and conflict transformation.

However, ICTs can only help in crisis management and peacebuilding if they are based on open standards and are interoperable, facilitating use even in difficult conditions and engendering staff by-ins (ICT4Peace Foundation 2008). The peacebuilding processes could be strengthened if organizations, people and regions connect ‘in effective multi-sectoral and peace building networks and provided with active and open knowledge banks – with instant access to effective peace building approaches and case studies’ (Hattotuwa, 2004). The public can participate in the process from the grassroots upwards. Women may be involved.

However, ICT revolution has left out many in Africa given the absence of basic infrastructure, high costs of ICT deployment, unfamiliarity with ICTs, dominance of the English language in Internet content and indeed – lack of demonstrated benefit from ICTs to address ground-level development challenges. Where ICT is provided it is heavily barricaded by masculinity in ways that I now seek to explain. These barriers pose even greater problems for women, who are more likely to: be illiterate; not know English; and lack opportunities for training in computer skills (Gurumurthy 2004). Masculinity is writ large when parents have to choose male children over females to send to school when resources are limited. Domestic responsibilities, cultural restrictions on mobility, lesser economic power as well as lack of relevance of content to their lives, further marginalise them from the information sector.

This paper argues that sharing information provides women with a platform to engender a culture of open information sharing, where the approach to conflict transformation is one that is holistic, inclusive and participatory. By supporting the creation of "shared spaces" the gendered ICT initiative will help the process of conflict transformation.

It’s Gender stupid!

Technology is something people can use, but not the same thing that can be used to influence society. As inanimate, technology has been viewed as gender and value neutral (Gurumurthy 2004) and having the ability to traverse human cultural barriers. Yet this is not always the case. Technology cannot be neutral at all. Skimming through feminist literature reflects that women have been ‘excluded from science, creation, design and use of technology’ (ibid: 4). Women are socialized toward non-technical careers (Huyer and Sikoska 2003). Along with that view it will be patently dangerous to accept that technology works everywhere and provides solutions to development challenges. Effectiveness of technology is dependent on culture under whose frames it was negotiated and can be transformed.

Women are cultural as well and have multiple identities that interact with gender to define their access to technology. To undo unequal gender relations depends largely on understanding the complex gender interactions and the will to transform them for the better. It is easy for a well to do sophisticated woman to have easy access to the Internet, but unthinkable for the feudal rural woman to have that access to the public telephone, yet they are all women who are driven by different socio-historical circumstances that dictate their daily factors of existence. Such realities are the heart of the gender and technology discourse. Gurumurthy (2004) reminds us that men and women from the same social context may not have equal access to technology. For instance, if household assets may have unequal ownership, what guarantees that ICTs can stand unaffected by gender? Simple technology like a radio may be fully masculine. I remember my father had a tiny radio in the 1970s that my mother had no leisure to listen or allowed to join to sit around as men did outside the house. When he left for the city he took it with him or it was safely tucked somewhere waiting for his eventual return. He joined the guerrilla movement for a long time and his radio waited for his long return. By hindsight, it made me think that radios, TVs and computers are male assets and microwaves and cookers are feminine. Yet technology must ease everyone’s life.

Technology has remained historically a male preserve suggesting that the appropriation of the technology by women is a political project that they must fight for with their blood and sweat. Over the decades it has been shown that without explicit attention to gender in policy, gender issues are not considered in implementation (Hafkin 2002:3). Governments argue that they already have gender policies in place and this should obviate the explicit mentioning of gender in every project. To the contrary, evidence shows that in the technological fields ‘policy making ignores the needs, requirements and aspirations of women and girls unless gender requirements are included’ (Marcelle 2002: 39). Without specific attention and action, women and girls are always left out (Hafkin, op cit).

The presence of gender issues rarely extends to information and communication technologies. Unlike fields such as health and education and in economic fields such as agriculture and rural development, where it is rare to find projects that fail to take into account gender issues, ICT sector is one of the last areas to open to a gender perspective. A recent study of hundreds of development projects, either ICT as the major sector or with substantial ICT components, showed that more than one-third of all projects had a high degree of awareness of gender issues, but that the gender-sensitivity carried over to the ICT components is only 10 percent of the projects (Ibid: 4).

Persistent gender specific structural inequalities constitute barriers to women’s access to technology. Such barriers are imbedded in education, tradition, economic inequalities, etc (Huyer and Sikoska 2003). In fact, ICTs are designed and created within the male dominated environments and therefore do not necessarily correspond to specific needs of women (ibid.). This is the “gender digital divide”.

Technological Barricades

ICT has become a potent force in transforming social, political and economic life globally. It is viewed as an ‘intrinsic part of nation building’ (Hattotuwa 2003). It has the potential to carry ‘the new global knowledge based economy’ (Huyer and Sikoska, op cit). ICTs ‘may reshape, reorganize, and restructure working methods’. It has ‘generic advantages of efficiency, information sharing, storage, faster knowledge accumulation, dissemination and can permit new and collaborative work methods’. Further ICT can improve ‘the quality of human life’ and can afford ‘new types of education modalities such as distance learning and online training’ (ibid.). ICT is a tool for transformatory empowerment of women.

Development strategists are encouraging the developing countries to embrace ICTs to avoid social and economic marginalisation (Ahmed et al, ud.). The uneven distribution of the use of information technologies across the societies is called the ‘digital divide’. It reflects a division between the information "haves" and "have-nots" structured along lines of race, ethnic group, class, age, region, and gender; between countries; and globally, between those who have access to abundant information resources and those who do not have this access.

Women within developing countries are in the deepest part of the divide. They are further removed from the information age than are the men whose poverty they share. The gender gap in the digital divide is of increasing concern; if access to and use of these technologies is directly linked to social and economic development, then it is imperative to ensure that women in developing countries understand the significance of these technologies and use them (ibid.). The lack of access to information and communication technologies becomes a significant factor in the further marginalization of women from the economic, social, and political mainstream of their countries and of the world. Without full participation in the use of information technology, women are left without the key to participation in the global world of the twenty-first century (ibid.). Due to these problems it is important to challenge the apparent lack of visibility of women on the ICT, industry and as users of ICT. The starting point is to pull down perceptions that ‘women are less suited to or interested in working with technology’ (Huyer and Sikoska 2003). The truth is that women’s lack of engagement is due to gender inequality than ‘women’s lack of compatibility with technology’.

Women in Africa are generally barricaded out technologically as already intimated. Bisnath (2005) attributes the barriers in the path of women to gender inequality and technological. These are resource endowments, infrastructure, telecommunication policies, skills and educational levels, socio-cultural norms, positions of men and women in production and reproduction, and digital preparedness of the country in question. Huyer and Sikoska (2003) reiterate the same problems always stand in the way of women’s progress: unequal educational access, glass ceilings in industry and research, lack of financial resources resulting from the women themselves or choices made by their families. Unless these barriers are pulled down ostensibly through the struggles of the women themselves, women will remain outside as technological second citizens.

ICT and Peacebuilding in divided societies

Countries coming out of a violent conflict, dilapidated institutions and systems do not have the capacity to manage the complex and disparate interests of multiple stakeholders and tiers. This is more difficult where politics is zero-sum and parochial. Social disconnect occurs due to fears and distrust in what the peace process may mean affecting the building of peace. Peacebuilding is a process beyond conflict viewed by Boutros-Ghali (1995) as ‘comprehensive efforts to identify and support structures which will consolidate peace and advance a sense of confidence and well being among people’. It is hard work demanding everyone’s contribution in disarming, repatriating refugees, restoring institutions, retraining security personnel, monitoring elections, reengineering political institutions for democratic governance, and protecting civil liberties and human rights. This does require more than men’s contribution. Women need to take part because they were involved actively in the conflict as combatants, victims or supporters. Leaving them out is an opportunity cost. Yet the structural stakes are too much against them in Africa, from the physical to social.

Peacebuilding must go beyond sorting ‘political and institutional deficits’ (Llamazares 2005) to healing lives made meaningless by protracted conflicts. Women and youth had their sense of self-respect and esteem violated by the conflict and left scattered across the rural areas as Internally Displaced People (IDPs) and in refugee camps. Cognizant of the geo-location of most women in Africa in rural settings, the use of ICT will enable them to be reached and participate in the peacebuilding without having to relocate them to urban areas. Women in post-conflict societies share common issues that they can creatively transform through ICT platforms. If ICT does not connect them, women remain separated by language, stereotypes, distance and mistrust even when they still share fears and hopes for peaceful futures. If ICT is neutral as suggested by some, then it can catalyse intra- and inter- communal dialogues, create powerful communal people-led foundations that can act as a bulwark against regression. Yet this is not the case when it comes to involving women in real issues of peace and nation building. ICT is an edge of a bayonet set against women where forces of gender are structured against the progress of women.

Peacebuilding has become profoundly multidimensional taking in humanitarian workers, Non Governmental Organisations, United Nations, governments, global financial institutions and from the bottom up, peace activists, women and children. This requires ‘multilevel approaches’ to increase inter-connectedness (Lederach 1997). It cannot assume this comprehensiveness without taking serious account of women. Pulling down of ancient structural forces working against women would make multidimensional peacebuilding possible. ICT can be used to reach out to all forces in peacebuilding including women. ICT can be embraced for its potential in advocacy and dissemination of information and policy alternatives. However, this potential in women can be seriously hampered by the usual litany of ‘lack of funding to purchase equipment or services, lack of skilled staff, little time and interest’ (Hattotuwa 2003:3). But despite the challenges, In Zambia, mobile phone networks are used to advocate women’s rights and in Douala the Internet is available to women entrepreneurs in textile industries. In Uganda ICT and mobile phone business are used as instruments of change by rural women, even professional women in Kenya are fast reaping the ICT benefits.

In some cases the websites available are carelessly designed to be of little use to the rural women. Some lack the content that can capture the attention of these women and in most of the cases they are written in a language that is difficult to understand. A good site is the Centre for Women Research (CENWOR) of Sri Lanka www.cenwor.lk that serves as an information source for the Sri Lankan women. The site is interactive and provides critical information facing women, and action taken by the government and other agencies. It also provides a communication platform transcending all types of boundaries for women and women’s organizations striving to realize women’s rights (ibid.). This platform is effectively eroding the gender barriers pitted against women in the country.

The corpus of conflict resolution literature proffers that it is possible to transcend conflict if parties can be helped to analyse, explore, questions and then reframe their interests and positions (Hottotuwa 2004). ICT can energise the creative dynamics of societies to fully engage with paradigm shifts necessary for visioning a state without protracted conflicts. ICT fertilizes the process of peacebuilding itself (ibid.) by engendering subtle changes in the socio-political relations through interacting protagonists who may not be able to meet face to face in real world through the virtual spaces. INSTRAW virtual seminars demonstrate the potential of ICT in engaging women (Huyer and Sikoska 2003) in e-democracy.

Good ICT for peacebuilding should form the repository for documents, press releases and other information related to the peace process. Hattotuwa (2006) suggests ICT instruments that can be used to embrace all. He identifies community podcasting and Internet radios, Skypecasts, micro-grants for blogging, cheap digital cameras, oral histories, and establishing women, children and youth media houses as instruments that can be profitably used by rural women in Africa for peacebuilding. Community podcasting and internet radios are often required in conflict to capture the voices and hope of people in support of peace. Through ‘new media such as digital audio / video / mobile video / MMS, it is possible to link community driven production of media that addresses local issues. Community radio stations often find that they are prey to legislation that often restricts their freedom to broadcast issues seen as too sensitive by the incumbent government. Internet radio and websites by-pass these restrictions’ (ibid).

Internet radio for grassroots involves those who cannot read or write. Literacy is not a requirement for digital media production that seeks to capture the views of those who may not be able to read and write, but through their life experiences may have valuable insights into the transformation of the conflict and into issues such as reconciliation, transformative justice and co-existence. This technology is sustainable as long as the technology already in the hands of the people (mobile phones) is thoroughly exploited than creating a whole new technology for reaching out to the marginalised women and communities. The ICTs can help to revitalise stagnant dialogues and sustain difficult processes of peacebuilding by providing spaces for sustained dialogue even when Track One processses have run aground (Hattotuwa 2006). Through the internet and radio broadcasts, efforts of peacebuilders are augumented by enhanced channels, avenues and possibilities for communication, information and knowledge sharing, collaboration, empowerement and discussion in virtual spaces, even when physical, realworld meetings are impossible on account of geographical distance or political sensitivities.

The skypecasts allow a large audience to participate, using Skype as well as PSTN phones, in discussions that can be on any topic. The Skype is free, Skype to Skype calls are free and for Skype to work, all that is required is a decent ISDN connection. The rural women may only need to purchase the ISDN connection and the equipment for them to broadcast. Donors need to be motivated to support women’s projects that can enable their voices to be heard. In areas which are not on national electricity grid, solar energy driven with rechargable batteries need to be made available for easy access for women.

Women can exploit their access to these technologies to ‘create Skypecasts on peace from the grassroots itself’ – say a village meeting with a global audience including members from the diaspora chipping in. Such a series of recorded Skypecasts can be a useful way to capture community driven ideas for peace with international and regional voices in support of such ideas. Shared and borderless sources of ideas will not only improve the quantity and quality of information the women may have, but even their self-esteem. The moment women know that someone is listening to their arguments across the globe would empower and engender a new spirit in them.

There is need to provide women micro-credit for blogging. Blogging is an urban phenomenon and there is need to take to the rural areas where majority of women live. If blogging engenders democratic dialogue, it needs to go into places outside of the cities. Blogs that are based in the grassroots itself, and can promote voices of the community, can be a useful way of capturing voices in support of peace. The emphasis here should be on blogs that promote a multiplicity of voices, particularly that which ensures diversity and gender participation.

Women need to be also provided with digital cameras to capture the world around them as they see it along with their thoughts on the challenges of peacebuilding. CD-ROMs based on the lives of an activist in conflict zones, an activist in an urban centre, a web based activist and an activist in the diaspora may be produced as reference material for the people in bureaucratic decision levels to fall back on when crafting nation and peacebuilding policies. The Ugandan CD-ROM project based on the Nakaseke and Buwama telecentres explained by Mijumbi (2002) provides a good starting point for African women. The women who used the CD-ROM have become more confident, knowledgable, prepared to experiment with new approaches and more willing to compare situations for joint solutions (Huyer and Sikoska 2003). Further, women emerged not only with greater knowledge but also with enriched self-esteem.

Oral histories need to be recorded from the people who participated in making that history. However, conflicts often erase voices. Peace needs to preserve voices. However, when voices are captured, only voices of those with power are captured. Poor women’s voices, those who suffered the tragedies of the conflict are left out. Digital media offers unique ways through which voices that are important and most vulnerable, can be captured and promoted, so as to protect valuable ideas for social change even if their authors are killed. Simple recording devices can be given to communities (keeping in mind gender, age, ethnic, economic, class, caste, religious diversity) and capture their voices that support peace.

Women, youth and children need to be supported in setting up their own small media production houses. National regulations may need to be relaxed particularly in Africa where alternative sources of information are viewed by the governments with scepticism. With the help of donor financial support, acquisition of new technology would make setting up the houses pretty inexpensive. Women and youth media bring very different perspective to peace and conflict reporting as well as general programming. Children and youth have much more access to political leaders than do adults and can get away with asking some seemingly simple but precise questions that go to the heart of peacebuilding.

Innovative websites need to be created in vernacular languages to reach women who are often not educated in foreign languages like English and French. Since most women are impeded by lack of education to engage effectively with ICTs, there is need to ensure ‘soft access’ to less literate and educated by developing appropriate software applications and content. For example, Web 2.0 mash-ups that tell the narratives of those involved in peacebuilding through the use of Flick photos, audio / podcasts, GIS (Google Maps), blogs, mobile video, MMS or SMS (like myspace.com, but geared for peacebuilding) can be used. Projects such as www.witness.org use digital media to record human rights violations. When all these are made accessible to women great strides may be made in solid peacebuilding in Africa. There is no need to continually blame the victims by feeling ‘that women are reluctant to invest either their time in learning how to use the technology or financial resources needed for access’ (Huyer and Sikoska 2003). Women have been severely battered by the weight of masculinity to take further blame for their problems. They have been frequently diasdvantaged by culture and concomitantly by inequitable access to all kinds of resources.

There are challenges for ICT in peacebuilding in spite of its phenomenal potential to augment the interventions of individual women in many areas of peacebuilding process like rebuilding trust between communities, creating dialogues within and between ethnic groups, giving voice to the marginalized women and youth, and enabling grassroot participation in the dialogues related to peacebuilding. What discourages wide and regular use of ICT are the high capital and recurrent costs which most of the women and their organizations cannot meet. This dovetails into the problem of access. By elbowing women out of ICT through bad policies, this dis-empowers them from having a voice in the peacebuilding processes when in fact, ICT must be able to facilitate the building of social capital that can empower women and ‘local communities to grapple with conflicts in a non-violent way’ (Hattotuwa 2004).

The other challenge is the trust that people can conduct critical discussion in virtual spaces while being assured of confidentiality of shared content. This is important in countries where terror and violence is heavily embedded and people cannot afford to trust the next person. How would it be possible to trust a worldly technology that one does not control? Next is sustainability of the ICT in a world where equipment can be novel today and obsolete the next day. The question of compatibility is important as well. There are the issues of breakdowns and back up the problems? of viral invasions and proper software to clean may be discouraging challenges for women who are financially weak due to structural gender imperatives. Further challenges like vernacular content/interface/questions of accessibility, connectivity/infrastructure/ bandwidth, lack of IT knowledge and lack of finance to buy the hardware and software remain prominent. While some of the challenges may be addressed by donor funds, the question of sustainability needs more than donor support but the strengthened arm of the beneficiary.

Finally, the lack of technological ownership by women is a huge challenge to be overcome if women are going to mean much in peacebuilding. A sense of ownership is an important precondition for overcoming the barriers to women’s access to and use of ICTs. To achieve this fullness of ownership, ‘it is important that ICT tools are tailored to the specific needs of women’ (Huyer and Sikoska 2003) and this feat is overcome by serious advocacy by the women themselves for other women. Women need to curve inroads into the realm of policy making to influence the ICT policy making for a gender perspective.

References

Ahmed A, Islam D, Hasan A. R and Rahman JR (undated) Measuring The Impact Of ICT On Women In Bangladesh, unpublished.
Boutros-Ghali B (1995) Supplement to the Agenda for Peace: Position Paper to the Secretary General on the occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations; New York, United Nations
Central Statistical Office (2006) Census Report, Government Printers, Harare
Chamberlain L (2002) Considerations for Gender Advocacy vis-à-vis ICT Policy and Strategy, United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women Expert Group Meeting on “Information and Communication Technologies and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women” Seoul, Republic of Korea, 11-14 November 2002
Gurumurthy A (2004) Gender and ICT: Overview Report for Institute for Development Studies, September 2004
Hafkin N (2002) Gender Issues in ICT Policies in Developing Countries: An Overview United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women Expert Group Meeting on “Information and Communication Technologies and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women” Seoul, Republic of Korea, 11-14 November 2002
Hattotuwa S (ud) CSCW in the North-Eastern Province in Sri Lanka, University of Queensland
http://www.worldbank.org/gender/digitaldivide/worldbankpresentation.ppt
_________ (2004) ‘Untying the Gordon Knot: ICT for Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding’, Info-Share, Sri Lanka
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__________ (2003) Online Advocacy Principles and Case Studies Within the Context of ICT and Conflict Transformation Discussion Paper Written for One-World South Asia Partners Meeting, 3-4 February 2003, New Delhi
Huyer S and Sikoska T (2003) ‘Overcoming the Gender Digital Divide: Understanding the ICTs and their potential for the Empowerment of Women , Instraw Research Paper Series No. 1, located on www.un-instraw.org/en/research/gender_and_ict/virtual_seminars.html
ICT4Peace Foundation (2008) ‘Roundtable ICTs for Peacebuilding and Crisis Management’, Responsibility to the Future Conference, Mumbai, 26-28 June 2008
Lederach J.P (1997) Building Peace. Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies, Washington: US Institute of Peace Press.
Llamazares M (2005) Post-War Peacebuilding Reviewed: A Critical Exploration of Generic Approaches to Post-War Reconstruction, Centre for Conflict Resolution , Department of Peace Studies, Working Paper 14, February 2005
Marcelle, G (2002a). “Gender Equality & ICT Policy,” Presentation at World Bank Digital Divide Seminar Series, Washington, D.C, located at Nabwowe A (2008) MP roots for extension of ICT services to rural areas located http://www.ictfocus.info/2008/20080815HANA-MpsrootsUganda.html
_________ (2002b) “Information and communication technologies (ICT) and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women: Report from the online conference conducted by the Division for the Advancement of Women” located at http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/ict2002/reports/Report-online.PDF.
__________(2000) “Getting Gender into African ICT Policy: A Strategic View.” In Eva M. Rathgeber and Edith Ofwona Adera, Gender and the Information Revolution in Africa. Ottawa:IDRC located at http://www.idrc.ca/acb/showdetl.cfm?&DID=6&User_ID=468876&st=3548&st2=-2....
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KM & Governance

Preserving the Integrity of Folklore on Knowledge-based Service Platforms

storytelling — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:37:15 -0600

By: Mamello Thinyane, Alfredo Terzoli and Peter Clayton
Department of Computer Science, Rhodes University
P.O. Box 94, Grahamstown 6140, South Africa

Abstract:

Explorations of ICT as an enabler for community development are being undertaken by governments, non-governmental organizations and research institutions all across third-world nations. The pivotal role of ICT in development is acknowledged by all within the ICT4D domain and the effectiveness of well-situated interventions has been validated by the different ICT4D projects success stories. In our involvement with an ICT4D intervention (which spans the last three years) in Dwesa, South Africa, we developed and implemented eServices platforms with a focus on eCommerce, eGovernance and eHealth services. The undergirding layer in these platform has been the IK layer which allows for the integration of the local knowledge in manner that makes the deployed services relevant, allows the local communities to participate in the knowledge economy and activates, empowers, and positions the local communities within the global information and knowledge society.

In this paper we discuss our experiences from undertaking the project in Dwesa, and in particular we discuss the need for ethno-centricity and context sensitivity in the deployed IK based ICT solutions. This need for contextualization of ICT interventions is a result of the fact that the ICT solutions and technologies are developed within a specific worldview and context (in the case of knowledge based systems this in terms of the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of the knowledge, and the IKS dynamics that are specific to different communities) and therefore it is important that the technology is adapted to the specific community context. We discuss the OSCA knowledge matrix which highlights the nature of knowledge, that is typical in many of the third world communities, along the dimensions of ownership, social advantage, accessibility and confidentiality. For the different types of knowledge along the OSCA matrix, we discuss the different ICT mechanisms that ensure the integrity of the knowledge encapsulated in the developed IK service platform.

Introduction

ICT4D in general explores the ways in which ICT can be used in the context of community development. ICT is indeed providing the opportunities for dealing with rural poverty, inequality and exclusion and in many ways it is challenging the traditional paradigms of doing business, delivering services to citizens and running societal institutions [1]. But the key question at the center of all policy markers and governments is whether to invest in developing ICT capacities in the rural communities or rather to focus on the provision of other basic services (e.g. schools, hospitals, and government services). At the core of this question is really the need to understand the role that ICT can play in the development of a society and what the benefits and limitations can be expected from undertaking an ICT based approach to development.

Technology, in and of itself is not a panacea for the underdevelopment woes of communities, it is however a prerequisite for social development in this day and age [2]. Technology is neither a target towards community development and social well-being, but rather a tool for facilitating the achievement of desirable future for a society: well being, health, peace, and communality [3]. To a large extend, human activity depends on information and therefore a synergistic interaction of technology and information leads to a competitive advantage for societies [2]. ICT also increases information share-ability within communities and therefore can positively impact the provision of that information for commercial benefit, based on the differing valuation of the information to different people [4].

Knowledge Society Interventions

The current state of the art and the trends as far as knowledge networking technologies are concerned, presents numerous possibilities and benefits for human societies. The general context in which this research is undertaken is that of ICT4D. The specific research site for the project is a deep rural and marginalized community of Dwesa in South Africa. This community is characteristic of many third world rural realities in which ICT4D projects are undertaken. Situating the research in a specific area allows for an extensive and close study of the community and a situated determination of the direct needs and requirements of the community. The objective is still that the solutions developed and implemented in this specific context will be implementable in other similarly marginalized and rural communities.

The formal establishment of Dwesa as a research site for the ICT4D intervention came as a result of a link with previous research activities in the region by researchers from the Department of Anthropology at Rhodes University. The project undertaken in Dwesa, upon which this research is built, was initiated in 2005 with the preliminary discussions with the stakeholders in situ to assess its feasibility.

The initial objectives were to develop a prototype of an e-commerce platform for the arts and crafts entrepreneurs in the community, and also for the possible exploration of micro-tourism potential in the area. The introduction of the eCommerce aspect to the economic activities in Dwesa was aimed at activating the community towards greater involvement in economic activities in the region, but also at opening up the market base to incorporate wider international customers. The eCommerce portal was developed in direct interaction with the local arts and crafts entrepreneurs to integrate their specific needs and requirements into the platform.

The initial deployment of the services in Dwesa was centralized and predominantly web-based. Some of the above mentioned service portals are accessed primarily through a web interface to a server deployed in one of the schools. The successful deployment of the initial phase of the project paved the way to an alternative conceptualization and revision of the intervention in Dwesa. The initial phase of the project was centered around the eCommerce platform and the establishment of the associated infrastructure to support the effective utilization of the portal. The subsequent realization of the platform is to develop it as a multi-functional, multi-service, distributed communication platform for the local community. This integrates into the platform the flexibility to deploy a plethora of community based services in a manner that is distributed across the different points of access in the community. One of the key features of this new architecture and platform is that it is an inherently multi-service platform. The provision of eCommerce, eGovernment, eHealth and eJudiciary services would be built in an integrated manner on the platform as opposed to as independent service portals.

Ethno-centricity and context-sensitivity

One of the primary tenets of the discipline of ethnocomputing is the realization of the culture specific influences on computing and subsequently on the Internet [5]. Tedre et al also identify three levels of uniqueness in the human enterprise, depicted in Figure 1 [6].

At the lowest of the levels is the general human nature that is common to all human beings, the influences that emanate from this level are universal and are appreciated globally. The next level is the cultural level of uniqueness, which is encapsulates values, ideas, preferences that have been learned over time and that are part of an identity of a specific group or category of people. The topmost level, and the smallest, is the personality level. At this level, the variation is as large as there are people of earth, and it is the level at which the individuality of human being is expressed in terms of values, beliefs, and preferences.

In the consideration of ICT in development, the focus is at the level of a culture, the middle level in Figure 1. The aspects of computing that are universal and that are aligned with the general human nature, are easily transplanted from one community to another. Aspects that are cultural however, need to be considered, adapted and validated for adequacy within the environment where they are being implemented [7]. ICT4D should therefore take into consideration the ethnographic considerations and expressions of a community to avoid the technology determinism flaw that has plagued many ICT4D projects [8].

The realization of an ethnographic ICT for development intervention necessarily has to address the issues at the interface between technology and the culture of a community. More appropriately, it has to address the encoded cultural expressions in the technology and their interaction with the culture of the community in which the intervention is being undertaken. This intervention strategy is positioned within the premise that for rural communities to be active participants and peers in the global eSociety, the technology has to be relevant and contextualized to their environment.

OSCA Knowledge Matrix

Knowledge systems dynamics differ from one community to another based on numerous factors. Some of the factors that characterize different communities and that directly influence the usage and exchange of knowledge include: the levels of social stratification and the relationship between the different strata, the general power relation dynamics, and the extend of communal orientation within the community. These factors have a direct bearing on the realization of knowledge systems in communities and form part of the critical points of departure in the implementations of knowledge systems for different communities. For example, a knowledge system developed for a fairly egalitarian community where there is a cultural sense of openness and sharing would implement far less features around confidentiality and privacy than for a society with opposite cultural orientation.

This section therefore highlights the different factors and the associated dynamics that are specific to the Dwesa community, that have direct bearing of the realization of a knowledge platform for that community. These factors are characteristic of other similarly rural, marginalized, African communities.

In Nonaka's SECI framework of knowledge, he makes a distinction between two types of knowledge: tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Within the SECI framework, a process of externalization provides access to the internal tacit knowledge through explicit expression by the individual. In understanding the specific knowledge dynamics in Dwesa, the focus is on explicit knowledge as this is the knowledge that is accessible and codifiable.

The categorization of knowledge in this sections is based on a superficial aggregation of similar types of knowledge that exhibit similar characteristics, and not on any ontological or epistemological considerations. The differences in the categories of knowledge highlight specific requirements for the knowledge platform. The different categories of knowledge have been elucidated through discussions with the Dwesa community members, individuals from the Xhosa culture and other South African cultures. We present these different types of knowledge in a graph we have developed, called the OSCA knowledge matrix, which is based on the mapping of different knowledge types along the dimensions of Ownership, Social advantage, Confidentiality and Accessibility (Fig. 2):

Common knowledge - This is the knowledge that is common to every human being and not particular to any locality or a group of people. This knowledge once codified, is accessible in the public domain and every individual is entitled to access, use and benefit from it.
Shared-cultural knowledge - This is the knowledge that is specific to a cultural group. This knowledge is identifiable with the culture and can be assumed to be owned by that cultural group. Examples of this knowledge include folktales, stories, proverbs and riddles. This knowledge also includes arts and crafts patterns and artifacts. The issue of ownership of this kind of knowledge is a contentious one and at the core of it is the concern for the commercial exploitation that sometimes occurs. While this knowledge can be assumed to be owned by a specific ethnic and cultural group, it is however accessible to the public.
Specific group knowledge - Within the Xhosa culture (i.e. the culture of the people in Dwesa), and in fact within other South African cultures, there is knowledge that is associated with different groups. These groups form around age, gender, social status, or ethnicity. The kind of knowledge in this category is not only owned by the specific group, but it is also private and confidential (at varying levels) to that group. Examples of this kind of knowledge include, the secret knowledge of the amadoda (the men, vs the boys) in the Xhosa culture, or banna in the Sesotho culture. Access to this kind of knowledge is normally associated with an initiation process into the group, which in this particular case is through the initiation schools. This kind of knowledge is exchanged and communicated within the confines of the group. This knowledge is associated with key social and power dynamics and in a sense access to this knowledge (or membership to the group through the initiation process) gives an individual certain social advantages. An example from the Xhosa culture is that the males who have not been to the bush (the initiation school) have lesser roles to play in family ceremonies, are held at a lesser regard as amankwenkwe (the boys) within the community.
Specialist knowledge - An example of this type of knowledge is the medical knowledge of the amagqirha (the traditional healers) in the Xhosa culture. This knowledge is very confidential and secretive at best. It is owned by a specific individual or a close knit group of individuals. This knowledge gives the owners an advantage within their community or society. This social advantage can be in a form of the prestige that the person gets in the community, or the direct competitive advantage from the point of view of the commercial benefits of being the healer in the community. Access to this kind of knowledge is very strict and only a few people (e.g. a protege, an heir) have access to this knowledge.

Knowledge platform and related projects.

The OSCA knowledge matrix has informed the development of a knowledge platform, called KnowNet, for the Dwesa community. The KnowNet platform underlies the eServices portals that are developed for the community. For example, the eHealth portal is developed to interface and to integrate with the local medical IK. The encapsulation of knowledge is preformed at two levels. At one level, the coding of the logic and the implementation of procedural functions represents the internal knowledge about the functioning of the platform. At the core of the platform, is another level at which knowledge is explicitly encapsulated in ontologies and folksonomies. This happens at the knowledge base layer. Ontologies provide the formal and explicit specification of conceptualization of knowledge. Ontologies are domain-specific and narrowly defined for the particular area of knowledge. On the other hand, folksonomies allow for a freely structured, widely distributed, bottom-up, categorization of knowledge entities. Folksonomies represent and reveal the wide spread conceptualization and the emergent structure of knowledge.

A number of ontologies have been developed, specifically contextualized to Dwesa. These ontologies represent the following key areas of targeted eServices deployment as part of the larger project undertaken with this community:

Health/Medicine – the knowledge encapsulated in this ontology is the traditional medical knowledge that is part of the every day life in Dwesa. This knowledge becomes crucial in the implementation of eHealth portals.
Agriculture – the community in Dwesa is predominantly subsistence farmers, and this is a central area of community life. The IK around agriculture is contained in this ontology, which allows for the development of services that support farming in the region.
Commerce – the potential for commercial activities in Dwesa is very high. This could be in terms of micro-tourism, arts and crafts entrepreneurship, and eco-tourism as a result of the availability of a nature reserve in the area. This ontology encapsulates the knowledge around these specific areas to enable to eCommerce customer to have an improved experience in the utilization of the portals.
Cultural knowledge - the cultural knowledge is an important aspect of any community, and the usage of this type of knowledge permeates a variety of community services. This ontology therefore encapsulates the history, the folklore and the practices of the specific community.

Related ICT machanisms

Folksonomies and ontologies represent two positions on the spectrum of KR. On one end is the structuring of knowledge in organic, bottom up folksonomies in which the structure of the underlying knowledge emerges as the users associate content with different semantic tags. On the other end is the formalized, top-down, structured ontologies in which the knowledge gets populated into the ontologies that have been design by the experts. These two approaches to knowledge management both have their advantages and disadvantages, which are applicable in the context of the knowledge platform.

The implementation of support for folksonomies within the platform is implemented in a manner that allows the users of the platform to define tags that are associated with the different IK that is added and available on the platform. The weighting of these tags results in an emergent classification of the knowledge in a manner that represents the users' understanding of the structure of the knowledge. This emergent structure as a result of tagging the knowledge items, can be utilized to inform the revision of the associated platform ontologies . The tags associated with content can also add a weighting on the index searches that are performed on the platform. The utilization of folksonomies within the platform therefore allows for KR that is contextualized, due to being informed by the users' ontological views.

Confidentiality

One of the culture sensitive aspects that have been taken into account in the development of KnowNet is the confidentiality considerations associated with the different types of knowledge in Dwesa (and generally in rural marginalized communities). We discussed the OSCA knowledge matrix, which highlights the different types of knowledge and the associated levels of confidentiality in the community. The knowledge platform provides permissions control mechanisms to enable the specifying of the different confidentiality requirements. These requirements are handled as follows:

For the specialist knowledge (type D in Fig. 2), there is highest requirement for confidentiality and this kind of knowledge is only shared between a few specific individuals. This is achieved in KnowNet through an option to allow the owner of the knowledge to share it with a specific person already on their list of friends (i.e. related by a dwesa:knows or sub-class thereof) and to limit access from the rest of the users of the platform (Fig. 3 (a) and (b)).

The specific group knowledge (type C in Fig. 1 is shared between a small group of individuals and the group membership is typically based on a relational association between the members. Within the platform, this is enabled through permissions that are associated with a relationship type (Fig. 3 (c)). For example, one can set the read flag only for the people within the same family (i.e. associated by the dwesa:isFamily predicate) or people within the same clan group.

A key consideration for the shared cultural knowledge is the establishment of the ownership of the knowledge. On the KnowNet platform this is achieved through the association of every unit of knowledge authored with a specific user, or a specific cultural group. The actual mechanisms of enforcing the protection of the knowledge (from exploitation and abuse) are within the legislative domain in terms of copyright laws and policies.

The common knowledge is accessible and available to every user of the platform and therefore such knowledge can be authored with the read and write permissions set On for the group everyone (Fig. 3).

KnowNet implements access and permission control mechanisms that offer flexibility to cater for the different relational groupings within the community of users. The implementation of these mechanisms is possible due to the functional separation of content (i.e. knowledge base tier) from the domain logic (i.e. interaction tier) and the integration of the relational dynamics (through the social networking tier) as articulated through the PIASK architecture [9]. The platform is therefore validated as adequate for the purpose of encapsulating different types of knowledge, from the point of view of implementing the necessary confidentiality and ownership requirements as per the OSCA knowledge matrix.

IK lifecycle

The realization of the platform has been with a direct focus on being situated within the context of rural, marginalized areas as typified by Dwesa. Some of the key differences with such contexts are associated with the social dynamics, the socio-technological constraints, and the infrastructural limitations. The notion of IK is predominantly (within literature) applied to these kind of rural contexts, although in reality every community and society has knowledge that is indigenous within that community. The processes associated with IK are therefore universal and apply equally in different contexts. The life cycle discussed by Woytek in [10], encapsulates the key processes that are associated with IK. Although the life cycle is discussed from the understanding of IK being a special, different type of knowledge (i.e. not universally available) and from an external perspective (i.e. from the perspective of someone studying the IK of a specific community), it still highlights the crucial factors in the utilization of IK.

These processes are handled within the knowledge platform as follows:

Recognition and identification - the first stage in the knowledge life cycle is the recognition and the identification of the knowledge sources that are available in a community. This process in a sense occurs within the externalization process in Nonaka's SECI framework (Section [par:Knowledge-in-society]). Externalization results in the knowledge being available in a codified form. This process is therefore facilitated in KnowNet by the ability to add new content on the platform in an explicit format (e.g. a recording of a folktale, or authoring a story).
Validation - Once the knowledge is available in an explicit form, the next process involves validating that knowledge along the dimensions of significance, relevance, and reliability. This process is intrinsically a community process, in that the significance, relevance and reliability can only be ascertained in the context of people accessing the knowledge and commenting on it. KnowNet provides a feature for the users of the platform to validate the different content that is available on the platform. The users are able to give a vote on the content, in terms of its reliability, relevance and accuracy. The accumulated voting for the content is then calculated and made available to inform the usage of the content. The validation weights from the users are also useful in ranking the search results on the platform. The net effect from this validation mechanism is that the content that is most reliable, relevant and accurate will hopefully get the highest weighting on the platform and increased availability, and the content that the users do not find reliable, relevant and accurate gets the low weightings.
Documentation - The process of documenting the IK primarily contributes to the externalization of the knowledge and therefore this is handled through the mechanism to add new knowledge on the platform.
Storage - The knowledge base layer is primarily responsible for the storage of the knowledge that is available on the platform.
Transfer and Dissemination - Intrinsic in the platform is the facilitation of the exchange of knowledge between different people and making the knowledge available. KnowNet provides features for the knowledge to be accessed via any of the channels (implemented via the Access layer agents) that are available on the platform, thus increasing the accessibility of the knowledge. For example, a user can call into the platform, browse the specific content and request that the associated file be emailed to them.

The support for the different processes in the IK lifecycle aligns the platform for effective integration into the communities as far as representing and encapsulating the local knowledge (i.e. IK) within that community.

Conclusion

The proliferation of ICT4D interventions is necessitating the exploration of mechanisms to position the undertaken projects within the context and environment of deployment. We have discussed an ICT4D project that we are undertaking in Dwesa, South Africa. Within that, we have highlighted the importance of integrating IK within the developed eServices platform. In order to formalize the dynamics associated with different types of IK, we have developed the OSCA knowledge matrix. We then highlighted the available ICT solutions towards meeting the requirements for the 4 different types of knowledge that have been identified in marginalized rural communities.

References

[1] - Bhatnagar, S., Information Technology and Development Foundation and Key Issues, Information and Communication Technology in Rural development: Case Studies from India. World Bank Institute, pp. 1--12, 2000

[2] - Castells, M., Information technology, globalization and social development, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1999

[3] - Hietanen, O., The Global Challenges of eDevelopment - From Digital Divides Towards Empowerment and Sustainable Global Information Society, in Seminar of global perspectives of development communication, University of Tampere, 2004

[4] - Singh, B., Information Technology for Rural Development in India, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2002

[5] - Tedre, M. and Sutinen, E. and Kahkonen, E. and Kommers, P., Ethnocomputing: ICT in cultural and social context, Communications of the ACM, vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 126--130, 2006

[6] - Tedre, M. and Sutinen, E. and Kahkonen, E. and Kommers, P., Appreciating the knowledge of students in computer science education in developing countries, Proceedings of International Conference on Information Technology Research and Education (ITRE2003), pp. 174--178, 2003

[7] - Thinyane, M. and Dalvit, L. and Terzoli, A. and Clayton, P., The Internet in rural communities: unrestricted and contextualized, in Proceedings of ICT Africa conference, 2008

[8] - Thinyane, M. and Terzoli, A. and Clayton, P., Transitions Towards a Knowledge Society: Aspectual pre-evaluation of a Culture-Sensitive Implementation Framework, in Learning to live in the knowledge society, Springer IFIP - Learning of live in the knowledge society, vol. 281, pp. 271-278, 2008

[9] - Thinyane, M. and Dalvit, L. and Terzoli, A. and Clayton, P., Towards a Model of an Ontology Based, Multi-Modal and Multimedia Knowledge Portal for Marginalized Rural Communities., in Proceedings of IEEE Information Communication Technologies International Symposium, Fez - Morocco, 3rd - 5th April, 2007

[10] - Woytek, R. and Gorjestani, N. and Africa Regional Office, Indigenous Knowledge for Development: A Framework for Action, World Bank, 1998

KM & Social Challenges

Knowledge Management in Fractured Societies: Women’s Initiatives

KMAadmin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:14:23 -0600

Author : Dr Michele Ruiters (DBSA, Research Unit)

Abstract

Post-conflict societies experience a breakdown in institutions and relations between citizens. Most conflicts in Africa have occurred due to identity politics or politicized ethnicities; resource conflicts; and struggles for political power and representation in formal institutions. Whatever the reason for the outbreak of the conflict, social and political conflicts disadvantage women and children the most. Institutions fail, social networks are torn and governments struggle to disseminate information about services and programmes aimed at repairing the society and the relationships therein. All communication and management of information becomes problematic. In periods characterized as post-conflict, a number of women’s groups have taken the initiative to address issues of knowledge management to ensure that women receive the necessary information they require to conduct their everyday lives, especially in relation to their interaction with the government and social welfare services. Women’s organizations have employed a range of methods to inform women of services and to empower women to work within their communities in effective ways that support social, political and economic initiatives. This paper will firstly provide a theoretical foundation on the politics of knowledge production and management. It also conducts internet research on three women’s organizations in three post-conflict countries that are at various stages of reconstruction, namely, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Liberia. The paper finally will evaluate the ICT structures and networks that these women’s organizations have created, evaluate their levels of success and determine whether there is a distinct model that could be generalized across the region.

We the representatives of the world, assembled in Geneva from 10-12 December 2003 for the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, declare our common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life, premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.1

Introduction

The dictum ‘knowledge is power’ proves to be very apt when knowledge and gender intersect. In reference to this paper, access to and interaction with knowledge creates power. Despite international instruments that protect women’s access to the formal economy, political sphere and other public spaces, often the majority of women find themselves excluded from knowledge production processes because they either work from home; are employed in the informal market as self-employed traders; or are employed in low level jobs in the formal economy. Also, women are being left behind in the race for digital information. The gendered digital divide shows that more women than men have little or no access to information on the internet, world-wide web or through other electronic means. As globalisation connects everyone, women especially are being left behind as the digital divide increases between countries and people who have access to new media and technologies. Consequently, access to knowledge and information becomes a political issue especially since it involves exclusion from the public sphere.
This paper examines the concept of knowledge management through a gendered lens and traces the processes of creating and managing knowledge for women’s empowerment across three case studies from Zimbabwe, Uganda and Liberia respectively and assesses knowledge management tools in relation to their broad objective of empowering women. Most women’s organisations in Africa work on empowering women in their societies to become more engaged in development, political decision-making processes and to become economically self-sufficient. Their mandate is to communicate information that would contribute towards changes in women’s lived experiences and in so doing, change social practices to allow women to participate as equals. Information management and dissemination are therefore key strategies employed by these organisations in their attempts to inform their constituencies and to improve women’s socio-economic status. In post-conflict situations the social fabric of the country has been torn and networks destroyed. Women’s organisations in these fragile contexts then have to fight against hyper-sexism resulting in increased political, economic and physical insecurity for women. Women are empowered through receiving information that informs their decisions and involvement with larger social, political and economic processes.

Knowledge and Power

For decades, feminisms have argued for a particular standpoint grounded in women’s experiences; gender-defined roles cause women and men to view and experience the world differently. The concept ‘gender’ refers to both men and women, but for this discussion, this paper specifically looks at women’s experiences in relation to knowledge production and management. Knowledge production is affected by the concepts of race, class and nation; therefore, a woman’s position in terms of her race, her economic status and geographical location determines whether she has the ability to act as a political, social and economic being. Feminisms practiced by women of colour went further to argue that not all women are equal because of the racialised nature of society and the world economy2 and discourses that spoke about ‘Third World Women’ without their participation also maintain a power hierarchy through which those women are denied agency and re-colonised through knowledge production.3 It is therefore necessary to create spaces in which women can communicate their experiences and generate knowledge, manage that knowledge and pass it on as information to other communities generally and women specifically.

Public spaces are dominated by men and masculine voices who determine action and outcomes. The public space itself is complicated by the urban/rural divide that has a high incidence of poverty and a lack of resources. Historically women comprise the majority of the rural population because men migrated to cities for work, a trend that is evolving as an increasing number of women leave rural areas for potentially better lives in urban areas. However, their access to information and knowledge has not increased even if their location has changed. Political, social and economic marginalisation and the feminisation of poverty and labour maintain women in positions where they do not have the power to speak out, contribute to knowledge production or access information. The advent of new media has heeded the demand for an ‘[i]ncrease [in] the participation and access of women to expression and decision-making in and through the media and new technologies of communication’.4 Representatives at the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005) affirmed their commitment to mainstreaming a gender equality perspective by means of ICTs.5 These initiatives acknowledge that women are not part of mainstream developments in the ICT field and focus on targeting women and other marginal groups for inclusion and development.

Location

Location is important in many ways. The representer’s political location in relation to the subjects she studies is imbued with the politics of representation. The insider/outsider dichotomy presents a myriad of complications as knowledge producers grapple with how they represent their subjects and whether they can speak for the ‘other’. Gayatri Spivak asks ‘Can the subaltern speak’ and answers no because often they speak through others through what Leela Fernandes refers to as a ‘colonial process of “information gathering” from “informants”’.6 The strategies of representation and knowledge production of ‘the other’ are vitally important as it bounds information within particular discourses of subject/object, informer/informant and reproduces relations found within larger systems of power.

For feminists, knowledge production involves new discourses that ‘sensitize us to the interconnections between knowledge claims ... and power’.7 Knowledge is thus integrally connected to power. In a critique against postmodern feminisms, Philomina E. Okeke argues that ‘intent on defending subjugated voices, dominant voices do not seem conscious of the relations of power that position them as “gatekeepers”, defining the insider and outsider even as postmodernism appropriates the voices of the latter’.8 This raises the question about who can speak for whom and how because ‘how what is said gets heard depends on who says it, and who says it in turn affects the style and language in which it is stated, and will in turn affect its perceived significance’.9 In this regard, postmodern feminists argue that women should speak for themselves and that each woman’s experience can be aggregated into a shared experience that is used for advocacy and rights-based action. Consequently, knowledge about African women should therefore be produced by African women in collaboration with each other and in the interests of a movement that could bring about social change. However, feminist knowledge is also embedded in class debates about what constitutes knowledge and where and how that knowledge is disseminated. Okeke argues for feminist scholarship that ‘affirms, even as it contests, particular knowledge claims’.10 If this does not happen, women’s voices are then sublimated in a discourse about what is allowed into feminist scholarship rather than creating the space in which women can speak freely about their daily lives.11

International Instruments and Knowledge Production

It is generally assumed that if an individual has access to information, she is empowered to make informed decisions about her life. Political scientists refer to this as making a ‘rational choice’. However, women were not deemed ‘rational’ or ‘objective’ because due to them being ‘irrational’ and ‘emotional’ were not capable of making informed decisions. Women were thus kept out of the deliberations about society, the polity and the public sphere. Voice and representation continue to be mainly limited to men in power, be it in the family, society or government. Social norms and values maintain women as the ‘silent majority’ on whom laws and policies are enacted. Despite many international instruments that promote gender equality and access to the public sphere, to mention a few, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) provides international benchmarks for gender equality12; the Millennium Development Goals advocate for an intensified focus on increasing education levels of women and girls by 2015; and, the UN Resolution 1325 that has resulted in the inclusion of women in peacekeeping and peacebuilding initiatives in conflict-torn areas, women are still excluded.

On the continent, when the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (also known as the African Union’s Women’s Protocol) was ratified in November 2005, it committed signatories to protect and promote the rights of women in Africa. Each region on the continent has specific gender protocols, for example, the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) Protocol on Gender and Development13 and the Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance14. These provisions allow for programmes that target women’s development and also ensure that women are party to decision-making processes that influence the way they live their lives. In reality, despite all the instruments, women still continue to be excluded and, as a result, do not know about these milestone decisions that are taken at national and international levels because they do not have access to information or are not adequately informed.

Education has been targeted as an entry point for women’s development programmes because more women than men are un(der)educated. As Charlotte Bunch explains, reading and writing skills are vital to effect social and individual change:
First, [writing and reading] provide a means of conveying ideas and information that may not be readily available in the popular media. ... Second, reading and writing help develop an individual’s imagination and ability to think. ...Third, an individual’s access, through reading a variety of interpretations of reality, increases that person’s capacity to think for herself, to go against the norms of the culture, and to conceive of alternatives for society – all of which are fundamental to acting politically. Fourth, reading and writing aid each woman’s individual survival and success in the world, by increasing her ability to function in her chosen endeavours. And finally, the written world is still the cheapest and most accessible form of mass communication.15
Formal education is intricately linked with women’s empowerment as so many women are excluded from formal education programmes. In sub-Saharan Africa, the girl child and women are three-times more likely to be infected with HIV and AIDS than their male peers due to cultural and religious systems that prevent them from negotiating safer sex. Education and information have reduced the risk of infection by informing girls of their choices in intimate relationships; but, girls are still less likely than boys to finish formal schooling.16 Enrolment rates have increased since the adoption of the MDGs and National Action Plans that emphasise education as a tool for development, but in many cases, girls lag behind boys and, by implication, girls are most likely to be unemployed, silent and powerless in social and economic spheres.

It is widely assumed that knowledge gleaned through formal education would correlate with increased levels of agency among women. The 1988/9 World Bank Development Report regards knowledge as a necessary requirement for development to occur.17 As more women than men live in absolute poverty, especially in sub-Sahara Africa, more women need information and knowledge to be able to improve their socio-economic status in the region. By transferring information to women and closing the gendered knowledge gap, agencies and governments can involve more women in development work and in the public sphere and thereby contribute to more inclusive development outcomes. Organisations, movements and countries have to grapple with the ‘twin challenges of knowledge for development’, namely knowledge gaps and information problems.18 The WDR also talks about ‘beneficiary participation’ in the design and implementation of projects that would inform future World Bank operations.19 However, the concept of knowledge in the report engages with the production of indigenous knowledge through experience, but it does so inadequately without taking into account the power structures that are inherent in knowledge production: who produces knowledge; who has access; and how is it distributed.

Women and ICTs

For the reasons discussed above and the growth of new media, women’s movements around the world began to use Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) that they could access to create, manage and distribute knowledge. New ‘knowledge practices’20 began to evolve that were more representative of women’s lives. Janeway refers to the evolution of a new power as ‘the refusal to accept the definition of oneself that is put forward by the powerful’ while bell hooks later entreats women to ‘exercise the power of disbelief’ to create new realities.21 As mentioned above, knowledge production has occurred in places many women do not occupy: the academe, policy think-tanks and other public sphere organisations. In post-conflict states the public sphere is starkly devoid of women despite United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. Those who produce knowledge in universities, colleges and other formal institutions often raise their theoretical endeavours above those whose work is practical. The theory/practice dichotomy stems from a false distinction between intellectual and non-intellectual work that has plagued feminist scholarship for decades. What constitutes knowledge is determined by mainstream debates on what qualifies as knowledge; exclusive attributes that are defined by those who are involved in fields of knowledge production. Women engaging in ‘non-intellectual’ work therefore have to become the producers of knowledge that is defined in more inclusive ways.

In this regard, women in non-governmental organisations that target women’s empowerment have the opportunity to engage with issues and to produce knowledge for their members and themselves. The practice of knowledge production therefore changes as the nature of the re-presenter22, the mode of representation and the audience change. New media has provided women with new modes of representation and often without a mediator as one sees in the case studies below. Criticism could be meted against new media for being exclusive as many rural women do not have access to or time for the internet, television or other electronic forms of communication. A counter argument to that criticism is that knowledge dissemination comes in many forms and ICTs are only one mode that on-line organisations are using. Women’s movements have to ensure that knowledge practices encompass all forms of knowledge production, management and dissemination to reach all their constituencies. What is important is that women receive the information, through dialogues, pamphlets, ICTs and so forth, that will lead to their full participation in the production of knowledge and decision-making processes, especially in post-conflict contexts.

ICTs are only ‘one tool among many required to support efforts towards women’s equality’ but regard it as a ‘critical site of intervention’.23 Other tools include infrastructure development; the provision of social services; access to the formal economy; gender equality, and so forth. ICTs have to complement other integrated development approaches. Often development is piecemeal and women’s needs are considered as an addendum. If development is meant to be successful, gender needs are to be considered in all stages of programmes and projects; thus, ICTs should be integrated as a means to convey information and to build community voices around important issues in communities.

Women around the world ‘face serious challenges – economic, social and cultural – that limit or prevent their access to, use of and benefits from ICTs.24 New technologies such as computers, the internet and established technologies like radio and television have a significant effect on who has access to information in a 21st century state. Cellular phones are yet to be used as mobilising tools in Africa but are very successfully used in global social movements. An international initiative known as the Know How community has assisted women leaders ‘to close the gendered digital gap, design social politics and produce information that can be transformed into knowledge by the appropriation of the ICTs’.25 ICTs work particularly well in post-conflict societies because they reach a greater mass of people than the conventional media, despite limited resources.
By and large, women are not involved in the decision-making processes of governments, companies and organisations. One notable exception, other than a marginal increase in the numbers of women in decision-making posts in these spheres, is in organisations that target women’s issues. These non-governmental organisations are run by women, led by women and for women, which makes them unique spaces in which women are fully engaged in all levels of decision-making. The apparent equality in women’s organisations does not remove the power dynamics that manifest in all organisations in general and women’s organisations specifically based on the position held, class, education levels, language, ethnic and other differences. Knowledge production and management therefore are affected by the culture and the philosophy of decision-making in the organisation.

Case Studies

Post-conflict countries provide a unique context in which gender relations are further skewed in favour of men. These three organisations are networks that have regional members or intra-country members that have experienced conflict in the last two decades. The three organisations each use ICTs to disseminate their information, but there are subtle differences that show a focus on regional versus national; rural versus urban; and sophisticated versus less sophisticated users. What follows is a brief synopsis of each organisation and final concluding remarks.

The Isis Women’s International Cross-Cultural Exchange (Isis WICCE) is now based in Uganda but was founded in 1974 in Geneva, Switzerland as an ‘action oriented women’s resource centre to meet the need for information by women from various regions of the world’.26 Its three programmes are in the areas of exchange, information and documentation and publications. Isis is the Egyptian goddess of knowledge. Isis WICCE moved to Kampala, Uganda in 1993 with the ‘objective of tapping African women’s ideas, views and problems and share the information with women at the international level’ and ‘contributes to the strengthening of Uganda and Africa’s women’s movement’ through the dissemination of information.27

Isis WICCE has various publications that cover an array of writing styles from reports, pictorial posters and flyers to audio visuals and on-line media. It also has an on-site Internet Café, a resource centre and hosts exhibitions. It provides access to information on many subjects that pertain to women’s empowerment in Africa and further afield. Their Exchange Programme Institute offers annual cross-cultural skills building programmes. The women who attend these courses come from all over the world and ‘use the space to learn from one another, share information, exchange ideas and acquire cross-cultural strategies and solidarity actions for addressing a diverse range of women’s issues, from the human rights perspective’.28 The Institute relies on a snowball effect of training a number of women in their programmes who then go out and train and inform others. Isis WICCE uses a range of tools that include dialogues, training programmes and ICTs.

The website has used sophisticated technology that limits access by those who are not ICT conversant. The information is viewed through hyperlinks on their Knowledge Exchange and Information Sharing website. The history of the organisation is also broken up into episodes of information that are opened by clicking on a ‘Prev’ or ‘Next’ button. Technology has been used optimally to display Isis-WICCE’s objectives, programmes and outcomes, but it is dominated by the assumption that its readers are ICT-literate and have access to the internet. Dralega critiques a project in Uganda that used ICTs and a CD-ROM to facilitate the learning and sharing of lessons of women in micro businesses for ‘derail[ing] from ascribed notions of African feminism; notably due to its top-down proponents’. 29 The risk is that nature of ICTs and their empowerment programmes could make women passive recipients of information rather than producers and managers of information.

The Mano River Women’s Peace Network (MARWOPNET), founded in 2000 in the Mano River Basin, incorporates women’s organisations from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. MARWOPNET’s mission is to ensure the participation of women and youth in ‘the prevention, management and resolution of conflict in the Mano River sub-region, throughout Africa and the world, to serve as a catalyst through which sustainable peace, human security and justice can be attained by ensuring gender responsive policies and building women’s/girls’ capacity for socio-economic, political empowerment and human development for all’.30 MARWOPNET is a network involved in regional peace and development issues. It is concerned with awareness-raising through the media; ensuring women’s participation in decision-making fora; providing training programmes; and arranging meetings with development partners, youth and other social networks.

MARWOPNET was instrumental in creating dialogue between the three governments of the Mano River basin, a process that led to a Heads of State Summit in Rabat in 2002. The Network also signed the Liberian Peace Accords in Accra in 2003 and was given observer status at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in December 2001. This Network mainly operates through meetings and dialogues rather than as an information hub. It does, however, have an on-line journal entitled ‘Voices of Peace’ that aims to ‘give voice to a diverse range of voices, particularly those of women, on peace- and conflict-related issues’ and ‘welcomes feedback from members, partners or other interested parties who would like to share their opinions, stories, letters, photos, or other materials for publication in the newsletter’.31 The testimonies, poems and drawings are first-person accounts of the horrors of conflict in the region.

‘Voices of Peace’ is an example of knowledge production and dissemination through an ICT medium. The information found on this website is a re-packaging of information as the individual’s words are placed in relation to other testimonies and poems. Layout of information also draws the reader’s eyes to particular information and photographs and drawings often attract more attention than a paragraph of words. MARWOPNET has managed to operate at the state level in the region and at the level of ordinary Mano Basin residents, which makes it an accessible organisation to a wide range of people in the region. Knowledge production’s power relations are therefore relatively reduced as two very disparate communities are brought together through the work of a single organisation. It appears that MARWOPNET is defunct as the website is no longer being updated and emails to the last-listed chairperson have not been answered.

The Zimbabwean Women’s Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN) is a Harare-based ‘women’s information organisation with a focus on collection, analysis, processing and dissemination of information on gender and development. The organisation’s strategic interventions aim to empower women, strengthen inter-organisational networking of gender and development agencies and promote the women’s movement in Zimbabwe’.32 The ZWRCN was founded in 1990 by a group of Zimbabwean women whose aim was to ‘empower women through the provision of information’ through key objectives to collect and disseminate information; repackage existing information ‘in forms appropriate to users’; and fill information gaps.33 ZWRCN has a Gender and Information Programme that provides information from its programmes and other sources to its members and on the internet to a wider audience. E-discussions and Gender and Development (GAD) talks are held at regular intervals to bring women together to discuss issues that are pertinent to their development and empowerment. The GAD talks are held in a ‘free space’ in a ‘Secret Garden’ which could be analysed as a women-friendly space in which women can air their thoughts about their location in Zimbabwean society, their politics in a fractured (but hopefully healing) state and their dreams for empowering themselves and their families within a broader global context.

One special programme that ZWRCN runs is the stories of women told in their own words. In email correspondence with me, the Executive Director said the following:

I would describe ZWRCN as a knowledge and information producer. We manage knowledge in the sense that we make decisions through input from women about the knowledge that they require and we disseminate it according to needs. I would describe our work as definitely empowerment focussed because our information is used for women to make better decisions about their political, social and economic aspects of their lives. Different information/knowledge products use women's input. The stories that we publish are called 'I' stories and they have up to now [been] generated from research (of the experiences of women in their communities) and converted into a publication.34

This provides ‘ordinary’ women with the tools to produce knowledge from their own experiences; to manage that knowledge in a story and disseminate that knowledge through a medium that re-packages it and sends it out as information. The re-packaging of knowledge also constitutes a form of knowledge production as in inserting an ethical ‘witness’ who is implicated in the telling and retelling of the story that ‘breaks through the traditional hierarchies and relationships of power that governs how we see’.35

Conclusion

These three post-conflict contexts, in which ZWRCN, MARWOPNET and Isis WICCE provide women with information and the spaces to create knowledge, are not unique. Their models of knowledge production, management and dissemination can be transposed onto other contexts provided they are inclusive at every stage of the knowledge practice. The organisations provide interconnections between women and women’s organisations to share information and practices that are achieved through different modes of transfer, for example, pamphlets; meetings; e-chats; organisational websites; conferences; radio and television; and programme-related documents. There are African success stories where ICTs have had a significant impact on women and their development and these organisations have shown that impact on their websites. This paper argues that it is necessary to change the power relationships within communities, organisations and between people to ensure that gender equality is achieved and the ways through which we do that would determine whether or not that happens. ICTs could contribute to women’s empowerment but should only be one tool in a toolbox of approaches that ensure a holistic and integrated development programme. ICTs have to power to include as well as exclude and care should be taken to avoid exclusion. Structural and cultural changes would ensure that women gain equal access to the public sphere where most ICTs are located in Africa as many women live in the rural areas and are homebound. Finally, as Elizabeth Kiondo argues, ‘there is a need to strategically work towards eliminating the barriers and obstacles while exploiting the opportunities to make ICTs effective tools for women empowerment and the promotion of gender equality’.36

Footnotes & Bibliography

World Summit on the Information Society, Geneva 2003 – Tunis 2005. ‘Declaration of Principles: Building the Information Society: A Global challenge in the new Millennium’, paragraph 1. http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-s/md/03/wsis/doc/S03-WSIS-DOC-0004!!PDF-E.pdf
The racialised nature of the world economy has been termed ‘global apartheid’ in reference to the racial apartheid (segregation) that existed in South Africa prior to 1994. For more debate on global apartheid, see Charles Mutasa, 2004, ‘Global Apartheid Continues to Haunt Global Democracy’, Pambazuka News, September 9. http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/develop/debt/2004/0909globalaparthei...
See Chandra Mohanty, 1991. ‘Under Western Eyes’ in Chandra Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres, eds. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp.51-80.
United Nations, 1995. United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women – Action for Equality, Development and Peace: the Beijing Platform for Action. Strategic Objective J.1. ‘Women and the Media Diagnosis’. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/media.htm
See World Summit on the Information Society Geneva 2003- Tunis 2005 for the ‘Declaration of Principles’ and the ‘Plan of Action’ http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-s/md/03/wsis/doc/S03-WSIS-DOC-0004!!PDF-E.pdf and the ‘Tunis Commitment’ http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/7.pdf
Leela Fernandes, 2003. Transforming Feminist Practice, San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, p.81.
Jane Flax, 1990. ‘Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory’, in Linda J. Nicholson, ed., Feminism/Postmodernism, New York: Routledge, p.48.
Philomina E. Okeke, 1996. ‘Postmodern Feminism and Knowledge Production: the African context’ in Africa Today, 1 July, p.2 of 7.
Linda Alcoff, 1994. ‘The Problem of Speaking for Others’, in Susan Ostrov Weissner and Jennifer Fleischner, eds. Feminist Nightmares: Women at Odds: Feminism and the Problem of Sisterhood’, New York: New York University Press, p. 292.
Okeke, 1996, p4 of 7.
One example that is not without controversy is the research work on a Mexican woman’s experience of her life as an informal trader by Ruth Behar (1993) in Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story, Boston: Beacon Press.
United Nations, The Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm
United Nations, The Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm
http://www.iss.co.za/af/regorg/unity_to_union/pdfs/ecowas/12ProtDemocGoo...
Charlotte Bunch, 1979. ‘Feminism and Education: Not by Degrees’, Quest, vol. V, No. 1 (Summer), pp.1-7.’ cited in bell hooks, 2000, pp.108-109.
A Factsheet from DfID on ‘Girls Education’ shows that ‘[o]ut of the 44 million girls out of school, at least 20 million live in sub-Saharan Africa’ p.1. January 2007. There are anomalies like in South Africa where girls’ primary and secondary enrollment in school is outflanking that of boys.
World Bank, 1998. ‘World Development Report 1998/9: Knowledge for Development ’, p.1. Washington DC. The summary document was used in this paper
WDR 1998/99, 1998, p. 6.
Ibid., p.13.
Fernandes, 2003, pg. 79
Elizabeth Janeway, 1981. Powers of the Weak, New York: Morrow Quill cited in bell hooks (2000), Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (second edition), Cambridge, MA: South End Press, p. 92-93.
I consciously use this term to denote the difference between the subject (the presenter) and the person representing the subject (the re-presenter).
Janine Moolman, Natasha Primo and Sally-Jean Shackleton, 2007. ‘Taking a byte of technology: Women and ICTs’ in ICTs – Women Take a Byte – Agenda 71, pp.4-14.
Ibid., p5.
Know How, 2006. ‘The Mexico 2006 Know How Declaration – Weaving the Information Society; A Gender and Multicultural Perspective’, hosted by Programa Universitario de Estudios de Género (PUEG) and UNAM, in cooperation with the Know How Secretariat, August 23-25, p. 2. http://www.gert.ngo-bg.org/IMG/pdf/Mexico_Declaration.pdf
http://www.isis.or.ug/about-us/brief-history
http://www.isis.or.ug/about-us/brief-history
Ibid.
Carol Dralega, 2007. ‘Rural women’s ICT use in Uganda: Collective action for development’, Agenda 71, 2007, p.46.
http://www.marwopnet.org/vision_en.htm
http://www.marwopnet.org/voicesofpeace.htm
ZWRCN website, http://www.zwrcn.org.zw
Ibid., http://www.zwrcn.org.zw/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Ite...
Personal email correspondence, with Dorothy Adebanjo, 24 March 2009.
Fernandes, 2003, pp.83-84
Elizabeth Kiondo, 2007. ‘Millennium Development Goals: Challenges and opportunities for using ICTs to promote gender equality in Africa’, Agenda 71, p. 25.

KM & Social Challenges

Knowledge diffusion based on an ICT framework

KMAadmin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:14:23 -0600

By:Hendra van Zyl and Nolwazi Mbananga

The South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) is one of the institutions in South Africa that is conducting and promoting health and medical research. Its vision is to develop a healthy nation through research. It is a known fact that the conduct of research as a process of creating knowledge is not directly linked to changing people’s lives. The change can only occur if the created knowledge is transformed into a number of products, projects and programmes. One of the methods of linking health research to promotion of health is research translation. Research translation takes different approaches some of which are not part of this paper. This paper focuses on research translation which is based on the theory and principles of Consumer Health Informatics (CHI). This approach identifies the information needs of consumers and provides the necessary information via Information and Communication Technology (ICTs). In the process of translating research into applied information and knowledge for the public and decision makers, MRC piloted a model with sub-models. These models have been piloted over time in an endeavour to translate and diffuse health and medical research information and knowledge for use by the public and decision makers.

This paper, presents principles and sub-models that have been used by the MRC in translating research into useable information and knowledge to targeted consumers. The literature review that follows, gives a brief explanation of Consumer Health Informatics. The rest of the paper focuses on one of these sub-models to demonstrate how principles where used in diffusing knowledge supported by an ICT framework and lessons learned.

Consumer Health Informatics (CHI), mentioned earlier in the paper, is the branch of medical informatics that analyses consumers’ needs for information; studies and implements methods of making information accessible to consumers. CHI models integrate consumers’ preference into medical information systems. It stands at the crossroads of other disciplines, such as nursing informatics, public health, health promotion, health education, library science, and communication science, and is perhaps the most challenging and rapidly expanding field in medical informatics; it is paving the way for healthcare in the information age.

According to Dr Peter Drucker, author of The Effective Executive and Management Challenges for the 21st Century: “Knowledge is information that changes something or somebody - either by becoming grounds for actions or by making an individual (or an institution) capable of different or more effective action.

When combining knowledge management and information technology in a medical environment, reference has to be made to another area of medicine that is increasingly making its presence felt in the health arena, namely e-Health. The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines e-Health “as the cost-effective and secure use of information and communication technology in support of health and health related fields, including healthcare services, health surveillance, health literature, health education, knowledge and research.

Eysenbach and Diepgen remarked that the exponential growth of Web sites on the Internet opened up a new source of health information that led to the evolution of the “information age in medicine”. They report that health Web sites are the most visited sites on the Internet.

These statements are further supported through research conducted by Lewis et aliv on Consumer Health Needs that healthcare consumers are actively involved in seeking health information and in using the information they are finding to make decisions about their health. People primarily seek healthcare information on the Internet and thereafter from a variety of sources, which include print and electronic resources, healthcare providers, other consumers, their families and friends including traditional healers. In an eEurope 2002 report: Quality Criteria for Health related Web sitesv, an implementation plan was developed and was accepted by the European Union (EU). The report indicates that Internet users would be actively educated to become acquainted with Codes and Quality labels such as HON. Further education of users should explain that these codes stand for the quality of health content on the Internet. Campaigns were cited as means to achieve this. Of importance in using the Internet is the ability of users to rate Web sites. A plan is needed to assist users in rating Web sites and tools should be made available to consumers, e.g. OMNIvi or MEDCERTAINvii. Both Web site providers and consumers of health information should also be educated about processes and good practices that a Web site should demonstrate. This would involve specific marks to indicate types of information such as DISCERNviii – for treatment choices or QUICKix – for children or HON and NETSCORINGx that would ask consumers to tick off types of information as they find them, e.g. statement of aim, explicit statement of source information.

Overall aim

Against this background, the Web & Media Technologies Division (WMTD) of the SAMRC uses a convergence of ICTs to develop various sub-models for knowledge transfer under the umbrella of consumer health informatics. The purpose of these sub-models is to effectively diffuse knowledge to specific audiences.

Knowledge Diffusion Model

The knowledge diffusion model used by the MRC is divided into four sub models as presented below:

Peer to peer: This sub-model was developed during the establishment of knowledge centres for HIV prevention programmes at rural South African universities where students are equipped and mobilised to participate and lead the process of HIV awareness building among their peers. This model is currently being compared to a similar model and will be subjected for testing in order to reach a best practice model.
Experts to students: This is a knowledge transfer sub-model that mobilises South African top scientists to act as ambassadors to elucidate science and provide career guidance to students where ICTs focus on the capturing of tacit knowledge and transfer thereof to the audiences. This model is undergoing further refinement by application to different projects.
Radio to public: A knowledge transfer sub-model is based on the convergence of prepackaged health content, live panel discussions that are broadcasted via community radio stations to deep rural areas as well as in the form of Web casts from health Web sites.
Web to public: In this sub-model, knowledge transfer happens from a Web/portal presence to audiences on the World Wide Web. Health content is compiled at the hand of specific principles and then another set of principles is applied for the transforming of the health content into appropriate technologies to ensure effective and reliable knowledge diffusion.

Principles of the Knowledge Diffusion Model

In the provision of information using mass media of any kind the following principles need to be considered and applied for effective communication and use of the information provided. This applies to both content and Web site management.

Know targeted audience: It includes the psycho-social understanding of the audience to bridge the gap between understanding and interpretation. This would include the social status, language and cultural background of the audience. Examples that are used in explaining knowledge should fall within a framework of understanding of that audience.
Engage typical members of the audience: This is a process to assess assimilation and acceptability of transferred knowledge by specific audiences. Assimilation involves the capacity and ability by the audience for the uptake and processing of knowledge, e.g. ascertaining if knowledge is appropriate for the audience in that it is not too specialized or too simple. Acceptability refers to whether knowledge falls within standards, norms and culture of the audience in order to accept it, the knowledge one wants to transfer might for instance not be acceptable for discussion by your audience.
Knowledge level index: Consider the audience’s level of knowledge to prevent redundancy by classifying content in different levels of complexity or by leading visitors via questions to knowledge they do not know. This will ensure that the health literacy of the target audience is respected, allowing them to select the level of knowledge they require.
Integrate new knowledge into everyday situations: Show relevance of knowledge to specific audiences so that they can understand how to use and apply knowledge in their environment.
Avoid information overload: The audience can become confused and no learning takes place when there is too much knowledge to absorb.
Striving for utilization: Knowledge may be relevant and appropriate but it should also be utilized otherwise it is of no value.
Address pertinent issues: Knowledge should be relevant and address issues that are real to the audience and that they need assistance with.
Never induce fear: Fear is not a successful driver to get the audience to utilize knowledge as people eventually overcome their fear. One then loses the opportunity to influence the audience. Rather use a persuasive approach in knowledge sharing by showing the audience that they will become healthier or feel better when using the knowledge.
No model fits all: A model that fits a specific audience will not necessarily be appropriate for another audience. One should investigate the needs of different audiences and adapt the model by using these principles.

After content has been compiled based on the above KD Principles, another set of guidelines have been developed by WMTD according to which content is transformed into technology for the Web to public sub-model.

Web Content Guidelines

Push and pull concept: Health knowledge is mostly delivered via the World Wide Web and often combinations of ICTs are used. In the typical push and pull concept, push technologies such as listservs (e-mail discussions lists) and e-Newsletter services are used to push knowledge to “subscribers” which the audiences have joined to be kept up to date with topics of interest. Pull technology examples are discussion forums, news syndication or a section with relevant information on a Web site to which audiences go to browse resources for the acquisition of specific knowledge. Often these technologies are converged to effectively make knowledge available in a holistic way. Depending on the nature of the Web presence, implementing these technologies could play a role to capture tacit knowledge of experts that participate.
Package content with cultural understanding: If packaging of content is arranged for different language or cultural groups, the home page should clearly display links to content in other languages. Once commitment has been made about expanding a Web presence into other languages, content should be kept up to date in all the languages.
Addressing different audiences: Consider sub-dividing a complete Web presence into different sections for clearly distinguishable audiences so that they know where to find information or use unique symbols to identify content for specific audiences.
Accessibility: The Internet has opened up a world of opportunities, also for those with hearing or visual impairmentxi. When converting content into Web format, accessibility for these groups should be kept in mind. This means that graphics should have alternative text describing what it represents; tables and figures provided with headings; video/audio files should have transcripts; the use of colour should not be the only method for navigation or guidance to specific content; and clearly indicate links to pdfs/Word/slideshows files. These are just a few simple additions that should be incorporated to make Web content accessible to health information seekers.
Convergence of ICTs: Consider incorporation of other technologies to complement a Web presence. Examples are where knowledge is packaged for a specific audience, yet based on CHI principles, e-Surveys could be conducted to establish if the information needs and preferences of users are met; and what their preferred format for knowledge is. Another option is to complement health content with live or scheduled Web casts of audio documentaries where after focus group discussions of pertinent issues can be continued in discussion forums on the Web site.
Engaging audience: Conducting e-Surveys to establish the needs of an audience is acceptable and suitable for this model – especially if there are members that register to the site. Ethical issues should be kept in mind as well and general guidelines for e-Surveys as provided by Eysenbachxii. Some general items are listed below:
Consent: An introductory page should clearly explain the purpose with contact details for additional enquiries. Insert a logo of where the Web site is hosted (i.e. organisational logo) to show that it is not merely a market research survey. For health related questionnaires, provide radio buttons for the participant to accept voluntary participation or not before acceptance displays a new screen and consider whether the survey should be anonymous or not. Preferably password-protect these e-Surveys.
Questions: Preferably number questions for backward tracking if reference is needed or skipping of questions is mandatory.
Question types: Radio buttons are more suitable for yes/no answers; drop-down lists are suitable for selection of one option from a list; check boxes are suitable when more than one option could be selected. Text boxes can be for open-ended questions – except no formatting can be done in a text box.
Thanking participant: Remember to thank participants before and after the survey.
Check that the e-Survey works properly.
Pre-contact: A higher participation rate is achieved when potential participants are contacted before the survey. Remember that the best incentive for participation remains the promise of feedback – and giving it.
Methodologies for measuring knowledge levels: Once audiences have been identified then content should be classified according to levels of complexity and presented clearly so that the sophisticated visitor does not have to wade through redundant information.
Information overload: When there is a lot of knowledge that is to be made available to a target audience, information should be categorised into sub-sections or broken down into shorter pages. This will prevent overwhelming an audience or leaving them to wait for a long page to download and then wade through lists.
Navigation to content: An important element of a Web presence is how easy it is for visitors to find the information they are interested in. Clear navigation is important using common Web terminology rather than words or definitions that are not easily understood. Navigating one’s site could further be simplified when sub-sections can be accessed without having to click the browser’s Back button. Achieve this for instance by listing main menu items in a left column and sub-items in a right column.
Quality assurance: Measures should be implemented to show users that health content is reliable and accurate. This has also been emphasized in the Principles for Content as developed by AMA Web sitesxiii. It can further be achieved with the implementation of an editorial board of experts on the topic of the Web site with the role to review articles for scientific accuracy before publishing it on the Web site. Credibility could further be achieved with compliance to ethical standards for health content such as provided by the Health On the Net Foundation. When the Web presence has been reviewed for compliance, a seal of approval is carried on the home page to indicate reliability of health content for visitors. By publishing the date when a document was last updated, visitors can determine how up to date content is. Ethical principles as used by the HON codexiv include reliability of content; how private and confidential information is handled; source of health content and Webmaster’s contact details; scientific proof when medical advise or side-effects of drugs are provided; full contact details of owners; funding source; advertising policy and accessibility of content by visually/hearing impaired visitors.
Interactivity: Interactive ICTs such as search engines can be implemented, often with the ability to import taxonomies that would enhance a basic search with additional related articles. Links to health search engines can further improve interactivity and reliability of content. If a requirement exists for user interaction, discussion forums, listservs (e-mail discussion lists) or blogs can be considered.
Explanations, assistance and terms of reference: When Internet users visit a site or are invited to register as members, they should be informed through privacy policies or terms of reference who the owners of the site is, how private information will be treated, confidentiality and contact details provided. Applications such as online databases or e-Learning applications should be accompanied by explanations or help systems that assist the visitor.
Basic components for a health Web presence: Navigation or menu items should be clear and use common Web terminology. Sub-menus or items listing sub-sections should be visible and accessible without the necessity of back clicks. If health content forms the basis of the Web presence, the site should be developed according to the HON Code of Conduct or a similar quality assurance methodology. If more than 10 pages, a Web site should have a search engine or site map. Terms of reference/privacy policy should be visible, preferably on every page. The home page or About section should clearly show who the owners and contributors of the Web site is with contact details. Graphics should be used with discretion so that it will not affect the download time of the home page. If possible, monitor access to documents so that it can be established which pages are less often accessed and attention be given to it. Clearly display multi-language access and funders/partner information.

Results

The models have been piloted over a period of two years. Explanatory results are presented below with one example showing how principles and guidelines have been applied.

The Web to public sub-model has been tested against AfroAIDSinfo, the MRC’s AIDS information portal for southern Africa at www.afroaidsinfo.org and is in its third version of refinement. In the table below, it has been indicated how the discussed principles of the KD framework has been applied.

KD Principles As applied in AfroAIDSinfo

Know the target audience and their knowledge level index - This principle is applied as in the case of AfroAIDSinfo, an international workshop was conducted where it was decided upon who the AIDS portal would target. The consumer groups included scientists, health professionals, policy makers, educators and the public – those who were interested in information on HIV and AIDS. Content was then developed based on the knowledge level index of each consumer group.
Engage typical members of target audience - The workshop mentioned above consisted of representatives from all the identified consumer groups. Initial discussions took place to develop a pattern for content development.
Integrate new knowledge into everyday situations - In this process, the initial pilot group provided guidance which was later enriched and modified during e-Surveys among the AfroAIDSinfo consumer groups. In the public category, a community outreach section was developed where content is based on real life experiences and “offline” activities.
Address pertinent issues - The AfroAIDSinfo editors and content developer constantly scans the environment, with specific emphasis on southern Africa to ensure that current issues are addressed. This process is taken further during the implementation during e-Surveys to establish consumer needs and preferences.
Avoid information overload - Categories are based on the consumer groups and sub-categories with content specifically for a consumer group prevents the impression of an information overload.
Striving for utilization - Constant engagement with the various consumer groups ensures that information is provided according to needs and feedback requested on how it is used.
Never induce fear - Objectivity is maintained as part of the editorial policy and inducing fear carefully steered from, especially in the education section.

Following the application of the above principles, the Web Content Guidelines were followed.

Web content guidelines - As applied in AfroAIDSinfo

Push and pull concept and interactivity - A sophisticated search engine allows registered users to find and view articles quickly as content is stored in a content management system. This search engine further allows visitors who regularly view specific information, to automatically be identified in communities of practice allowing them to share information and ideas.
Packaging of content with cultural understanding - Articles guiding visitors on the basic facts of HIV/AIDS that resides in the Public category has been translated into isiXhosa and Afrikaans (South African indigenous languages) to accommodate for the cultural and language nuances.
Addressing different audiences - All content in the portal has been categorized according to its five audiences: scientists, health professionals, educators, policy makers and the general public. This has been done based on the original feedback as defined during the applicable KD principle. It guides visitors to information that would address their specific needs. Visitors are invited to register to view the bulk of the content that again is clearly sub-divided according to the five consumer groups. Since the audiences are clearly defined, articles are also written according to their knowledge level index.
Convergence of ICTs - Registered users get access to a discussion forum and receive monthly e-Newsletters that inform them of new additions to the portal and other news items.
Engaging with audiences - Regular e-Surveys are conducted to determine whether the needs of users are met and adjustments are made accordingly. Articles in the Science category for instance regularly respond to requests from users, current incidents or publications of major impact. Much emphasis is put in the Education category to address the age group 11-18 with collaborative e-Learning studies and other initiatives to implement HIV prevention strategies.
Methodologies for measuring knowledge levels - As users are clearly divided in consumer groups, content is written on the level of each audience. New users are requested to indicate in which group they would classify themselves during registration. When logging into the AfroAIDSinfo portal, they land in that category, although they are able to view content in any of the other categories.
Information overload - Content for each category is further classified into sub-sections and based on the portal’s functionality, the user can browse through lists of articles without having to use Back buttons. Portlets have been used in the Policy section for policy makers in South Africa to lead them from provincial levels to municipality districts from where they can access resources specific to that area for their response to HIV.
Explanations, policies, TOR - A privacy policy has been instituted where the position of AfroAIDSinfo in terms of the HON principles are explained – funding source; status on medical information; disclosure of content providers and editors; contact details of owners and Webmaster and advertising policy.
Visitors are invited to register as users and a policy and explanation on how personal information will be handled is included.
Quality assurance - An editorial board of experts in various fields of HIV/AIDS screens all articles before they appear in the portal and HON accreditation has been achieved and these principles are adhered to.
Basic components and navigation - The AfroAIDSinfo is developed in portal technology that allows sections of information to be arranged in portlets. This also prevents the illusion of an information overload. A navigation bar with sub-items is displayed at the top of the page and terminology conforms to that used on the World Wide Web. A sophisticated search engine is available for registered users when logged in. A footer displays on every page and contains contact details and site owner information.

Although there are challenges, the lesson learnt in applying these KD principles and Web Content Guidelines have enabled the WMTD to successfully implement its Web to public model for AfroAIDSinfo. Benefits are now being reaped with an AIDS information portal that is in touch with the requirements and needs of its consumer groups. Good relationships, developed over time, ensure regular feedback and participation by the consumer groups in e-Surveys, especially as they can see that their participation and feedback is acted upon.

A Web to public model was found to be a practical way to ensure health content, based on a code of conduct, is appropriate for your target audience. For it to function, a two-way communication process, maintained with the target audience is an integral foundation. As part of this conclusion challenges and lessons learned are presented below.

Challenges

Resources: In applying KD principles and guidelines, funding is required for development, ongoing technology upgrades, editorial functions and content development, conducting of e-Surveys, community projects and strategies. Acquiring funding remains one of the biggest challenges.
Human resources: Huge demands on time and efforts are put to a very small project team.
Editorial board: Experts on various aspects of HIV and AIDS are invited to participate as editorial board members for AfroAIDSinfo. Some respond to documents submitted for review and others do not. This leads to certain individuals having to do most of the screening. Previous studies indicated that incentives should be given for editorial board participation.
Content development: The environment and media should be scanned continuously to ensure that articles are always relevant and addressing current topics – and what your audience needs as well as the selection of suitable themes for articles.
Community involvement???One of the challenges is to maintain good relationships with communities where HIV prevention and education programmes are run. Relationships should be nurtured, especially with regards to the KD Principle to make information available to integrate new knowledge into everyday situations and that of striving for utilisation.

Lessons learnt

Collaborations: Forming collaborations and partnerships have proved to expand the vision, focus and reach as well as to source funding and human resources.
CHI studies: Regular surveys on the appropriateness and effectiveness of applications and content has helped to develop a relationship between the project team and users. Users are continuously becoming more willing to participate in surveys because they see that the project team responds to their needs. This openness has been proven in their participation in the focus group discussions that were conducted in a private environment.
Development of sub-models for knowledge transfer: In southern Africa an Internet presence is not enough to reach all communities. Community-based projects have been initiated since the onset of AfroAIDSinfo to reach Internet under-serviced communities and through time, various sub-models have been developed for effective knowledge transfer, as referred to at the beginning of the paper. These models have been refinement over time.
Quality assurance: The initial editorial policy has been expanded with the institution of an editorial board, a clear Terms of Reference document regarding their role and achievement of HON accreditation. Participation of the editorial board has been improved by displaying with each document who reviewed it as well as the introduction of a page where the editorial board is listed, accompanied with their fields of expertise.
Implementation of community involvement section: In this section in the Public category, the AfroAIDSinfo community outreach activities are published as it occurs. These resources are also available to collaborators in other African countries who regularly download it for their outreach efforts in rural areas. It is also a channel through which it can be ensured that the KD Principle of “Striving for utilization” is achieved.

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