Dear Colleagues, Happy New Year to you all.
Let me take opportunity of the discussion among Alan Levy, Patrick O'Beirne, John Lawrence and others (RFI: Email for Rural Africa) to inform you about my compilation and understanding of communications, knowledge and development. My book: 'Digital Bridges: Developing countries in the knowledge economy,' was published in November 2002 by Idea Group Inc., of Hershey PA. The electronic reference is at: http://www.idea-group.com/books/details.asp?id=506 Alternatively, if you go to www.idea-group.com and select Books and browse <By Category>, select <Emerging and Innovative Technologies>. You can read excerpts, including the Table of Contents and Preface. I realized from the details that there is an ebook number as well, but I am yet to verify that with the publishers. The continuing insecurities in Africa and the rest of the developing world, the advances in communications, and the growth of knowledge networks need to converge. It appears that the field is saturated as far as knowledge for development is concerned - everything possible is being done - but we are yet to see the watershed effect of learning and problem solving. There seems to be very little change from traditional development approaches. We need more knowledge, not less; we need a substantive presence of enterprises in knowledge, and this should be distinguished from ISPs - content is not necessarily the domain of ISPs. These enterprises, like the true business world, need to be of large, medium and small scale; partnerships cannot be forged without equlaizing capacities between the various actors. The equalization and performance evaluation should be based on the individual desk at the knowledge enterprise (that is probably a requirement to measure productivity levels of t! he variously sized organizations that are involved in the same industry. In economic terms: per unit, per capita, per head, per human-hour. The explosion of electronic panels and dialogue, and the emergence of several programs leading up to the end of the last century have abated. It also appears that the energy that was present on this List has waned. It could be that people have taken sufficient inputs from earlier activities and have gone to the field to test ideas after which they shall return and the entire household would be separating grain from chaff. This Listserv was a major resource centre for me; I read, wrote, and met people here who have influenced my aspirations. My book is my harvest and it is up for sifting. I would want the same power of commnunications for all places, the only requirement is for relevant content that would spur and sustain deployment. When Dr. Takeshi Utsumi wrote recently about 'imagineering,' it was another reminder of the imaginations required. We need more imagination, not parrots; we also need a good mesh to sift grain from chaff. Best regards, John Afele ************************************************ John Afele, PhD Director, International Program for Africa 509-851 Richmond Road Ottawa, Ontario Canada K2A 3X2 Tel: 613-222-0690 URL: http://www.waoe.org/africanknowledge/index.html Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************ ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
