Hello,
The e-lecture was held by Mr Matti Sinko from United Nations Economic Comission for Africa (UNECA) in Ethiopia. First Mr Sinko introduced the United Nations eight Millenium goals, which we already have learned earlier: fighting poverty & hunger, improving education, improving gender equality, decreasing children mortality, improving maternal health, fighting diseases, protecting the environment and creating global partnership for sustainable development.
Mr Sinko has lived and worked in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. The country was never colonized, so there are not traces of colonialism like in many other African countries.
Next, the term ICT was introduced. ICT means Information and Communication Technologies, like telecommunication, mobile technology, services and usage. ICT has became a subsytem of the economy and society. It can be integrated to for example education and health care. There are many interactions with other subsystems and the society.
In Africa, Governments plays a major role in controlling economy. Real markets are larger than the formal ones. Currently the mobile markets are starting to emerge. There are large unregulated areas in the e- economy. Governments are struggling to control the e- markets. There has been a real mobile revolution in the developing countries. Some countries, for example Somalia and Ethiopia have not started developing as fast as others.
The problem in Africa is the lack of infrastucture and educated work force. The development has to happen in all the levels of society: education, health, government and business. ICT development can be linked to the millenium development goals. High education needs more time than the other society levels to develop. UNESCO has ”Education for All” program , which is needed in achieving the MDGs and ICT goals. Education and science have to meet in order to get permanent results in Africa.
There was also two videos to watch. In the other video, ICT development in Uganda (if I remember right?) was introduced. The second video was made by World Bank and it told about the ICT revolution in Rwanda. The development in Rwanda has been really fast if you take into account the political instability in the country a while ago. I got the image that the video was a bit ”coloured” with the ideas of World Bank. The situation is maybe worse than it was showed on the video. I knew that the Chinese are doing a lot of commerce in Africa, and there was a Chinese ICT factory on the video. The Chinese representative was very happy that the factory doesn’t have to pay hardly any taxes. Chinese buying property in Africa and getting tax revenues and cheap labour seems like a second wave of colonialism to me. Is there a real benefit for the locals or is everything going to the pockets of World Bank or the Chinese?
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