|
Algeria
Angola
Benin
Botswana
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cameroon
Cape Verde
Central Afr. Rep.
Chad
Comoros
Congo (Brazzaville)
Congo (Kinshasa)
Côte d'Ivoire
Djibouti
Egypt
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Gabon
Gambia
Ghana
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Kenya
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Madagascar
Malawi
Mali
Mauritania
Mauritius
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Niger
Nigeria
Rwanda
São Tomé
Senegal
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Somalia
South Africa
South Sudan
Sudan
Swaziland
Tanzania
Togo
Tunisia
Uganda
Western Sahara
Zambia
Zimbabwe
|
Get AfricaFocus Bulletin by e-mail!
Print this page
|
Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published
by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC) from 1995 to 2001 and by Africa Action
from 2001 to 2003. APIC was merged into Africa Action in 2001. Please note that many outdated links in this archived
document may not work.
|
Africa: Internet Background Paper
Any links to other sites in this file from 1996 are not clickable,
given the difficulty in maintaining up-to-date links in old files.
However, we hope they may still provide leads for your research.
Africa: Internet Background Paper
Date Distributed (ymd): 960807
Africa Policy Information Center
Background Paper (Announcement & Excerpts)
APIC's latest background paper, "Africa on the Internet", is
now available. This posting contains excerpts from some
sections, together with a table of contents and information on
how to order the typeset printed version (by mail), how to
find it on the Web, and how to obtain a text-only copy of the
full paper by e-mail.
Out survey of recipients of this distribution list (full
report to be available later this month) showed that 85% of
the recipients have access to a Web browser. We are therefore
not distributing the full background paper text to the entire
list, but instead giving you several different options for
obtaining it. Please let us know if this procedure causes
difficulties for any of you.
(1) Typeset copies of this background paper (8 pages, 2
colors, graphics) are available at $2 ea., $1.60 each for 20
or more. Add 15% for postage and handling, and an additional
20% for overseas orders. Order from Africa Policy Information
Center (contact information below). Payment in U.S. dollars;
submit payment in advance or institutional purchase order.
Please consider ordering this particularly for those of your
friends, colleagues and students who are just beginning to use
the Internet, or are considering doing so.
(2) The full text, with graphics, is now on the Africa Policy
Web Site:
http://www.igc.org/apic/index.shtml
The table of contents for the background paper is at:
http://www.igc.org/apic/bp/inet.html
There are separate quickloading files containing each section
of the paper, as well as a combined (44K) file convenient for
printing or saving to disk:
http://www.igc.org/apic/bp/inetall.html
(3) To obtain the Web files by e-mail, you can follow the
instructions in the "Web by E-mail" section below.
(4) You may also obtain the document by e-mail, in two parts
(filesizes 18K and 21K) by sending a message to
apicdata@igc.org. The first line of your message should
read exactly:
send inet
------------------------------------------------------------
Partial Excerpts from Background Paper follow:
Africa on the Internet:
Starting Points for Policy Information
July, 1996
Electronic networks--and particularly the new tools of e-mail
and the World Wide Web--have great potential for enhancing
global democratic access to policy-making processes. But de
facto access to effective use of these technologies is biased
in all the predictable directions: by race, gender, economic
status, and location. Africa, to date the least connected
continent, is particularly disadvantaged. By cutting the costs
of long-distance communication, however, the information
revolution is also opening up new possibilities. How well
Africa and Africa's friends take advantage of these
opportunities will depend at least as much on our collective
capacity to learn as on the material resources available to
us.
The pace of change in information technology is breathtaking.
"Surfing the Internet" is in fact not very hard, once one has
the right connection. Making practical use of the technology,
without getting lost in trendy bypaths or costly repeated
upgrades, is admittedly more difficult. But communicating via
words and pictures over computer networks is probably as
fundamental an innovation as the printing press. Learning how
to use the new medium is inescapable for anyone needing to get
or send information at a distance.
The fundamental difference between words and images on
networks and on paper is that--after the initial investment in
a computer and the connection--the cost is dramatically less
than moving paper around the world, or making a direct
telephone connection through a fax. The cost trends are
consistently downwards--an average drop of as much as 50%
every 18 months. As individuals, we may decide how much we
need or want to keep up. For organizations and countries,
however, failure to make the Internet connection will be a
certain recipe for increasing marginalization as the new
century approaches.
This background paper is designed as a quick-start guide for
anyone interested in Africa who is seeking policy-related
information via electronic networks. It is not intended to
substitute for general guides to the Internet. It doesn't
provide comprehensive listings of Internet Africa resources,
or even of the "best" sites. It doesn't tell you how to get
on-line (that depends very much on where you are). What it
does do--like one of those "How do I find ?" leaflets
available at the entrance of any good library--is try to
answer the common question "Where do I start when there is so
much (too much) information available?"
Many details in this version will, inevitably, soon be
outdated. On-line, you can find the latest version, with live
links, at http://www.igc.org/apic/bp/inet.html. To receive
an ascii copy of the latest version by e-mail, send a message
to apicdata@igc.org, with "send inet" as the first line of
the message. Notifications of outdated links or other
corrections should also be sent to apicdata@igc.org.
Section 1: What is the "Internet"?
Increasingly, the "Internet" is best understood as a generic
term, like the postal system or the telephone system. If you
have a postal address anywhere in the world (and your local
postal service is working), you can receive mail. If you have
a telephone number, the same for telephone calls. If you have
a computer, a telephone, a device for connecting them
(generally a modem), the appropriate software, and a service
provider, you can get "on the Internet."
This means that you can make connections to all the computers
also connected, wherever they are in the world. ... A computer
with an Internet connection can be used to send a note to a
friend. It can also serve as the equivalent of a instant
printing press or an open-access library.
...
Section 2: Internet Communication Tools
**Since the Internet is a general medium for transferring
words and images between people, the ways it is used will be
just as varied as the multiple ways different individuals use
words and images printed on paper.** How you can and should
use the Internet depends on (1) what kind of access you have,
and (2) what your needs and preferences are.
The tools that are the most relevant for the ordinary user are
e-mail, bulletin boards (or conferences), and the World Wide
Web. Even if you have full access, it is your communications
and information needs that determine which tools are most
useful to you. Getting information by e-mail, as by a
subscription to a mailing list, is like subscribing to a
magazine or a newspaper. You will do it when the information
is important enough to you to want to receive it regularly.
Using the Web is like going to libraries, bookstores, or a
mall filled with hundreds of libraries and bookstores. Your
time spent doing it will depend on what information you want,
how quickly you can find it, and how much you like browsing.
[E-MAIL GRAPHIC]
The minimal level connection, available to any dial-up user to
any computer with an Internet link, is sending and receiving
*e-mail*. ...
[MAILING LIST GRAPHIC]
*Mailing lists*, or *electronic distribution lists*, are just
like subscriber or membership lists kept for sending mail
through the post office: lists of addresses all of which get
the same messages. ...
[BULLETIN BOARD GRAPHIC]
*Bulletin boards* or *conferences* may be available on the
system one is signed up with, or, in some cases, reachable
through the Internet for public free access. Electronic
conferences are collections of messages left for anyone with
access to read. ...
[WEB GRAPHIC]
The most popular and rapidly growing Internet tool is the
*World Wide Web*. ...
Section 3: The Web by E-mail
For persons with e-mail access only, it is possible to obtain
documents on the Web using one of a number of mail servers set
up for this purpose. You send a command by e-mail, such as
"get" or "send" followed by the URL of the Web page you want.
The server then retrieves the file from its location, and
sends it to you by return e-mail. This should in turn give you
URLs of other linked pages, which you can request next. The
process is slow compared to Web "browsing," and response times
may vary significantly depending on your location and network
traffic. Nevertheless these services, which in effect do your
browsing for you, are now being used regularly.
The major sites providing this service are currently
w3mail@gmd.de, agora@dna.affrc.go.jp,
agora@kamakura.mss.co.jp, webmail@www.ucc.ie, and
agora@info.lanic.utexas.edu. A "help" message to any of the
servers will bring you a file explaining the particular
commands it uses. ...
If you do have Web access, please be moderate in your use of
these servers, which are provided as a public service by
volunteers. Excessive traffic has caused the abandonment of at
least one such effort in the past. These servers are
experimental, and you may have to try several before you find
one which is currently working satisfactorily.
Example: To get the file http://www-
sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/elecnet.html, as a text
file, including URLs of linked sites, write an e-mail message
to agora@dna.affrc.go.jp with the following text in the body
of the message:
send http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/
africa/elecnet.html
To get the file from w3mail@gmd.de, the message should instead
be:
get -t -u -a http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/
africa/elecnet.html
...
Section 4: Internet Glossary
Section 5: Africa and the Internet
The continuing growth of the Global Information Society, as it
is being termed, will have profound implications for African
countries. Some fear that it will only accelerate the
marginalization of Africa, as the pace of growth accelerates
even more and the gap between those who are linked up and
those who are not grows larger. Africa's disadvantage is a
function of its underdevelopment in general, and of the low
density of telephone connections in particular--as South
African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki remarked in 1995, there
are more telephones in Manhattan than in all Sub-Saharan
Africa.
These dangers should not be underestimated, but lamenting them
will not stop the rushing train of information technology. And
rapidly dropping costs offer the potential for leapfrogging
some development obstacles, and for Africa's civil society,
governments, and entrepreneurs to take advantage of new
technologies. If the minimum infrastructure is put in place,
that presents those on the global "periphery" and even in
remote rural areas with new opportunities for participation.
...
Section 6: Africa Policy Information on the Web
You may find the information you need in likely or unlikely
places on the Web. Or it may not be there at all, but even in
that case you might find a useful clue (phone number or e-mail
address) to someone who might be able to put you on the right
track. There is, unfortunately, no one right search strategy.
Among the best starting points: (1) going to a site with a lot
of Africa information and/or links to other relevant sites;
(2) going to a site of a governmental, non-governmental, or
media organization you know or guess to be involved on the
specific issue or country; or (3) using one of the Web search
engines.
General Africa Sites ...
South African Resources ...
Organizational Sites ...
Search Engines ...
Section 7: Africa Policy Information in Conferences and
Newsgroups
Conferences, bulletin boards, or newsgroups, as indicated by
the different terms used to refer to them, are less
standardized than the Web. What is available to you depends
primarily on your service provider, which maintains separate
areas accessible by software called a "newsreader" or by an
interface specific to the particular system. These are
essentially places where messages are grouped together on a
"bulletin board" you can browse rather than put in a private
mailbox. ... The quality of the information you find depends
entirely on what set of people have access to and decide to
post messages on the particular conference. ...
The largest set of such conferences are the Usenet
"newsgroups," which are echoed around the world from computer
to computer, with no central location, but with standard
names, such as comp.infosystems.www.anounce or
soc.culture.zimbabwe. On many technical subjects, particularly
computer software issues, the Usenet newsgroups are one of the
most important means of keeping up with current developments.
Unfortunately many newsgroups, including most Africa-related
ones, have a very low proportion of useful information, and
are filled with random chatter and even significant doses of
racist invective. ...
Section 8: Africa Policy Information in your Mailbox
When you join a mailing list, you receive all the messages
sent out to everyone on the list. As with newsgroups or
conferences, what you get depends entirely on who has
permission to "post" material to the list and what they select
to post. Some lists are "read-only," the equivalent of
magazines put out by one publisher. Others receive and
automatically redistribute to the entire list messages
submitted by any subscriber, or even echo all the discussions
on one of the Usenet newsgroups. Low-volume lists may send out
only one posting, perhaps the on-line version of a newsletter
or magazine, once a month; others may send out hundreds of
messages a day. Discussion lists are essentially like on-going
conversations; their use to you will fundamentally depend on
what conversations you want to listen in on or participate in.
...
There are e-mail mailing lists, either for discussion or for
distribution of news and publications, for almost every
African country or region. Many are mentioned under the
appropriate topics at the Pennsylvania or Stanford sites
(mentioned in section 5). An extensive listing of
Africa-related mailing lists is also available at the Web site
of Central Connecticut State University
(http://library.ccsu.ctstateu.edu/~history/world_history/
archives/bedell.html). ...
************************************************************
This material is produced and distributed by the
Africa Policy Information Center (APIC), the educational
affiliate of the Washington Office on Africa. APIC's primary
objective is to widen the policy debate in the United States
around African issues and the U.S. role in Africa, by
providing accessible policy-relevant information and analysis
usable by a wide range of groups and individuals.
************************************************************
|
