Charter on African media and the Digital Divide

Omololu Falobi
Johannesburg, South Africa

The 6th Highway Africa conference on Journalism and New Media in Africa came to a close in Johannesburg, South Africa on Friday, with the adoption of a charter articulating key priorities for ensuring the role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the continent's development.

Attended by some 60 participants including journalists, media trainers, policy makers, information technolgy experts and allied professionals, the conference ran between August 21-23 2002 at the National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa. It was organised by Rhodes University's Department of Journalism, reputed to be perhaps the best journalism training school on the continent.

This year's Highway Africa Conference, with the theme 'Wiring journalism for Development', is an official parallel event of the World Summit on Sustainable Development starting in Johannesburg on Monday.

Titled the "Charter on African media and the Digital Divide", the document also aims to serve as an advocacy tool at international, regional and sub-regional level to promote the equitable development of ICTs in Africa.

Organisers also hoped that the charter (reproduced below) would be adopted as a working document by the World Summit.

For further information and news about the conference, visit: www.highwayafrica.org.za

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Charter on African media and the Digital Divide
Adopted by delegates to the 6th Highway Africa conference on Journalism and New Media in Africa
Johannesburg, South Africa 24 August 2002

We the participants of the 6th annual Highway Africa conference representing many of the continent's print and electronic media, journalism trainers, media researchers, media-focused NGOs and international colleagues, meeting in Johannesburg on 21-23 August 2002:

Cognisant of the growing digital divides between the developed and developing countries as well as within countries themselves along political, economic, geographic, gender, race and class lines;

Aware of the moves to strengthen and link good governance and socio-economic development in Africa through the African Union and NEPAD;

Recognising that access to the Internet and other forms of new media can empower African media to play a more meaningful role in promoting democracy, and in explicating and contextualising crucial issues of poverty, the environment and sustainable development;

Reflecting on the crucial role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in political, economic, social and cultural development in the age of globalisation and the information society, and on the need for Africa to participate fully in creating an equitable global information society;

Noting that freedom of expression is a two way process that includes the right to communicate and access to the means of communication;

Considering the various initiatives of the international community to assist in the development of the Internet in Africa, but

Noting that economic, political and legislative constraints still hinder the use of information technologies in Africa and that Africa has largely been marginalized from the telecommunication revolution;

Recalling the series of African documents addressing the need for African media to embrace and harness ICTs, including:
- The 1997 Dakar Declaration on the Internet and African media;
- The 2001 Yaoundé Declaration in which African ministers responsible for telecommunications adopted a joint strategy for bridging the digital divide that separates rural from urban areas;
- The 2001 African Charter on Broadcasting which called, inter alia, for the promotion of universal access and accelerated ICT training for journalists;
- The 2001 NEPAD Lusaka Declaration which called, inter alia, for the effective participation of African countries in global ICT policy-making;
- The 2002 media forum of the Bamako Conference which addressed, inter alia, the role of the media in the development of the information society; and
- The 2002 Accra Declaration of the Conference on Africa and the Development Challenges of the 21st Century, which expressed, inter alia, concern about the widely varying pace of democratisation in different parts of Africa, particularly concerning opportunities for citizen participation and expression;

Accordingly declare that:
ICTs can help to link Africa internally and globally and are a critical component in addressing Africa's problems. Africa's media are central to these processes;
And recommend that:

African governments should
Adopt ICT policies that promote respect for freedom of expression, diversity and the free flow of information and ideas, including affordable access to telephones, email, Internet and other telecommunications systems. These policies should be developed through an open and participatory process, utilising the media to publicise and promote public debate.

African governments and telecommunications regulators should
- support the use of technologies that increase availability, accessibility and affordability of Information and Communication Technologies, such as Voice Over Internet Protocol, local rate telephone access to Internet, and other low cost Internet usage;
- support the use of open source software to lower costs, promote local software innovation and reduce dependency on external suppliers;
- accelerate the formulation and implementation of policies and legal frameworks in order to facilitate the speedy transformation from analogue to digital technologies in all areas of electronic media;
- reduce or abolish import tariffs on ICT equipment to support ICTs for development;
- avoid contradictory policies and regulations that continue to entrench digital apartheid.

African media should
- recognise their social responsibility to accurately inform their audiences of local, regional and continental development issues, including the potential of ICTs therein;
- popularise, publicise and promote public debate on the development of national information and communications policies and infrastructure, locating ICT policies and strategies within broader regional and sub-regional policies and strategies that seek to address structural inequalities;
- raise standards of professionalism and to be creative in applying ICTs to showcase journalistic excellence and innovation, thereby promoting the knowledge capital of Africa's media workers;
- exploit the potential of ICTs as advocacy tools for freedom of expression and other human rights;
- promote the dissemination of African content in a wide range of African languages.

Community media should
- recognise the potential of ICTs to broaden access by communities to the media;
- utilise the opportunity to build community media in partnership with efforts to promote universal access to ICTs;
- recognise the unique role of community media as a tool to enable and promote community participation in their own development and enhance this role by building partnerships with relevant stakeholders such as civic movements, NGOs and local governments.

The African media and technology community should
- report and inform on the debate on the relative merits of proprietary and open source software for African online users;
- commit to developing and deploying flexible, scalable and powerful web tools to ensure affordable online access for African publishers;
- actively debate and advocate for the use of Open Source and free software in the development of African publishing online.

The international community should
- ensure active representation and a fair environment for the African media and technological community at international meetings and decision making bodies;
- provide financial, practical and logistical support for the African media and technology community in its efforts to develop infrastructure, capacity and opportunity for African publishing;
- facilitate ICT access and increase capacity building and training opportunities for African journalists to learn electronic research and communication skills, without which they will not be able to provide in-depth information and analysis;
- facilitate online publishing abroad when African governments silence critical media.

Research and training institutions should
- explore wireless and mobile solutions and other emerging technologies of relevance to Africa's media;
- develop online distance education programmes for journalists unable to be absent from the workplace for long periods;
- adopt a collaborative approach to research in areas critical to achieving continental objectives, including connectivity, ICT usage, online content, and policy.

Finally, we appeal to all the above stakeholders to:
- work together for the greater good of Africa and to forge a future African information society that openly address the hindrances to continental economic, social, political and environmental development;
- promote Africa's contribution to the world through the use of ICTs by African media;
- work together to promote an inclusive Information Society that promotes socio-economic justice, especially through the process of the World Summit on the Information Society.

Media organisations and civil society should use this Charter as a lobbying tool at international, regional and sub-regional level to promote the equitable development of ICTs in Africa.