Strengthening the pan African movement for social justice

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Strengthening the pan African movement for social
justice

• Challenges of using ICTs

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• Fahamu has a vision of the world where people
  organize to emancipate themselves from all forms
  of oppression, recognize their social
  responsibilities, respect each others
  differences, and realize their full potential.

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Reputation

• Reputation for being a technology organisation
• We are not!
• We only use technologies as tool for what we want
  to achieve

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Themes

• Strengthening capacity in human rights and
  advocacy
• Pambazuka News Platform for debate, analysis and
  action for freedom and justice
• Reaching wider communities
• Experiences in mobile phone technologies
• Pambazuka PressFrom digital to print (and back
  again)
• Blogs, social networking, twitter, etc building
  Pambazuka 2.0 platform

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Strengthening capacity in human rights and
advocacy

• Learning for change program

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Origins

• Thought ICTs could help human rights training
• Research on gt100 organizationsin eight African
  countries (1998)
• Organizational needs and capacities
• Priorities and preoccupations
• Training needs and capacities
• Information and communications capacities

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Context

• Widespread violations of human rights
• Volatile, and sometimes hostile, political
  environment

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Context

• Capable individuals but fragile organisations
• Heavy case loads and stressful work
• Unable to release staff for training
• Dichotomy of values

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Information and communications infrastructure

• Computers with CDROM capability
• Low specification machines (Win98)
• Email ubiquitous
• Low bandwidth
• WWW expensive, slow, frustrating
• Poor telephone connections

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Conventional courses

• Difficulty in releasing staff for extended
  periods
• Fragility of organizations
• Cost
• Non-returners
• Relevance to ongoing operations

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Workshops advantages

• Face to face human interface
• Interactive
• Exchange of experiences
• Short absences from work
• Networking
• Cost

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Workshops disadvantages

• Heterogeneity of knowledge and experience
• Little or no preparation by participants
• Limited depth and breadth
• Unknown long-term impact
• No post-workshop support

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Challenges for design

• How to ensure substantive training without long
  absences from work?
• How to overcome limits of workshop based
  learning?
• How do we ensure that training results in
  strengthening of organization and not just of
  individual?

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Learning for change model
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Learning for change model
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Learning for change model
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Choice of method

• Ease of editing and updating
• Faster production
• Enables search
• Automatic sitemap/ToC
• Bookmarking
• Incorporation of Flash

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CDROM features

• Fully interactive
• Feedback to user for exercises
• Stand-alone learning
• Reusable content
• Extensive resource centre of documents and other
  resources

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CDROM features

• Strong designs
• Emphasis on aesthetics
• Simplicity
• Usability
• Focus on learning/content
• Can be used as course or reference
• Cross-platform Windows 98 MacOS9

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Stand-alone learning
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Institutions with whom we have developed courses
University of Oxford
Office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
UN University for Peace
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Institutions with whom we have developed courses
UN Systems Staff College
Association for the Prevention of Torture
Article 19
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Challenges

• Universal preference for print - no computers at
  home, internet café problems at night, fieldwork
  etc
• Only minority of relatively well-endowed
  organisations have access
• Great demand from grassroots CBOs cant be met
  through this approach

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In the end

• Decided not to develop CDROM materials further,
  but instead focus on producing printed materials
  for learning
• and at some future date, when bandwidth
  availability improves, maybe go to web-based
  access

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Pambazuka News

• Platform for debate, analysis and action for
  freedom and justice
• www.pambazuka.org

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Origins

• Origins in response to demand
• Debate, discussion, analysis, commentary
• Tool for advocacy, lobbying, and campaigning for
  social justice
• Platform for diverse views within framework of
  struggle for social justice
• Origins as newsletter only. After 4 years,
  website set up!

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Results

• Readership
• Subscribers
• Use by other media
• Awards
• Text based email
• Low bandwidth website

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Example of use in advocacy

• AU Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa
• Speed of ratification
• Lobbying at AU Summits by SOAWR
• Distribution of printed special issues
• Red, yellow and green cards
• Online petition
• Use of text messaging / SMS

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Success

• Due to direct face-to-face
• Internet great for disseminating to activists,
  and raising public profile of campaign
• Print more important for key audiences

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Widening the reach

• Podcasts and video
• Documentary films
• Radio programmes
• Soap operas

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Challenges

• lt7 Africans have access to internet
• Predominantly in urban areas
• Nowhere near a mass phenomenon
• 80 subscribers say they print out Pambazuka News
  for reading

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Pressures

• To produce printed magazine / newspaper
• To make printed copies of thematic articles
  available
• To publish books
• And
• To make use of new media, social networking and
  further use of ICTs

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Experiences of using mobile phone technologies

• Texting for womens rights
• Online petition, signing using SMS
• Contribution of text messaging - minimal of 5000
  signatories, 454 from mobile phones (lt10)
• Yet impact huge owing to novelty value - sexy
  thing to do
• But why so few text messages?

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Experiences of using mobile phone technologies

• SMS for farmer support
• Short experiment
• Very limited use of text messaging
• Lots of messages sent out by project, but very
  few responses from farmers
• Why?

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Experiences of using mobile phone technologies

• Campaign on domestic violence - KZN
• 30 prevalence
• Minimal reporting of cases
• Collaboration with paralegal network
• BulkSMS system set up and paid for
• 83 households said they had mobile phones
• 80 knew how to send/receive SMS

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Campaign on domestic violence - KZN

• After one year, doubling in number of cases
  reported to paralegal offices
• Celebrations that project was successful
• But women sent less than 100 messages throughout
  the whole year!
• Why?
• Evidence suggests it was the 12 workshops that
  made the difference not the mobile phones

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Mobile phones constraints

• Cost of text messaging .20 -.50 per message cf
  1-2 / day income
• Poor pay more per unit than rich because poor use
  pay-as-you-go. Inequity of user charges - cf
  Water, Electricity etc
• Ownership of phones in rural areas predominantly
  men, even though women use them too

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Experiences of others in Africa

• Ushahidi - Election violence
• Election monitoring
• Organising protests etc
• Rallying voters
• Work because there is pre-existing network of
  activists.

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Mobile phone - the great solution?

• Penetration rate claimed to be 30 according to
  mobile phone companies
• But because multiple networks in most countries
  with premium charges across networks, tendency
  for middle classes to have at least 2, if not 4
  phones
• Actual penetration rates may be about 10
• Could be transformative if charges dropped to
  reflect actual costs (effectively zero)

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From digital to print

• From accidental publisher of books to becoming a
  formal publisher of progressive pan African books
• Pambazuka Press www.pambazukapress.org

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and back again

• ebooks
• Print on demand technologies

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Concluding remarks

• Technology as a complement, not substitute for
  social interaction
• Tendency for technologies to amplify and
  exacerbate social differentiation
• Technology is not neutral it reflects the power
  of those who use it - not always for good
• ICTs powerful those with economic power are
  rendered more powerful because of their access
  conversely, those without access rendered more
  powerless

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Concluding remarks

• Tendency for us to fetishize ICTs - i.e. imbue
  inanimate objects with power and abilities.
• Need to recognise social nature of technology
  technology not a thing but an expression of a
  social relation

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Concluding remarks

• Greatest power of ICTs lies in ability of people
  to give voice to their own experiences and to
  play a more sigificant role in determining their
  own destiny.
• By allowing technology to amplify social
  differentiation, those with access increasingly
  determine the destiny of the majority who dont
  have access.

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Concluding remarks

• In a sense, ICTs have strong anti-democratic
  tendencies that need to be consciously militated
  against.
• Otherwise those with power will end up more
  powerful

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