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South Africa and the Information Society
From: University of Michigan
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Derrick L. Cogburn |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The tremendous changes that have swept through South Africa in the past decade have allowed that country to move faster than most of its neighbors to take advantage of the benefits of communications technology. Professor Derrick L. Cogburn, a specialist in globalization and the Information Society, has worked with the government, businesses and organizations in South Africa to help its leaders plot a course. In this interview with Fathom, Professor Cogburn outlines some of the South Africa's successes and describes some challenges faced by African nations. |
Fathom: Do you see yourself as an advocate of globalization? |
Cogburn: I don't have a utopian view of where globalization is going, so I am not a complete advocate, but on the other hand I don't have a dystopian view and I try not to be reactionary. I see myself as more in the middle--an analyst or a strategist about globalization. I've spent a lot of time working with international organizations and countries to help develop strategies to exploit the opportunities, while confronting the challenges. |
Cogburn explains why he resists defining globalization in purely economic terms and instead recommends a broader view.
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Fathom: How do you define "Information Society"? |
Cogburn: The idea of an Information Society is a very broadly defined concept that basically means a fundamental global transformation of how human society is able to live, work and play through the exploitation of information and communication technologies. |
This transformation is being driven by a number of factors including the following: technological changes--digitization and a global information infrastructure; organizational changes--emergent network organizational forms; and a wide variety of applications, including electronic commerce, geographically distributed work and learning, electronic government, telemedicine and other forms of digital and distributed entertainment. |
The transformation brings with it both significant opportunities and tremendous challenges for governments, organizations and individuals in all societies. |
Cogburn describes how South Africa's leadership returned from years in exile with innovative ideas, social networks and ambitious plans to overcome the disparities generated by apartheid.
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Fathom: How does a country begin to take advantage of some of the benefits of an Information Society? What needs to be in place? |
Cogburn: Well, I see three or four areas of a national strategy, each working in concert with the other. These areas are infrastructure, applications, human capacity and a legal and regulatory framework. The primary component of a national strategy has to be the development of an appropriate National Information Infrastructure (NII), which is interoperable with the Global Information Infrastructure (GII). |
The NII and GII consist of networks of networks, including the Internet and World Wide Web, that link consumers with producers, with organizations, with institutions and with each other. These networks are based on the telecommunications infrastructure, and are increasingly relying on fiber-optic communications technologies, along with satellite, radio, cellular and other forms of mobile computing and communications infrastructure. |
However, the technologies in this area are moving so fast--and so many countries have so far to go--that the investment required in this area goes beyond the capacity of any government to be able to meet the demand in its own. This is one of the reasons that the global movement towards liberalization and privatization of telephone sectors around the world has gained such ground. |
The second critical area in a national strategy, applications, is like the water that flows through the "pipes" discussed above. The pipes--information infrastructure--alone are a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to develop an Information Society. The information, content and applications that flow through the pipes brings life and development from an Information Society. |
While the potential applications of the Information Society are numerous, and many are yet to be developed, some of the leading applications are telemedicine, electronic government services, electronic commerce, and geographically distributed science, learning and work. Countries have to develop the mechanisms to both take advantage of these applications and to contribute to their development. |
Human capacity development is the third critical component of a national strategy. In most countries around the world, there are currently insufficient numbers of skilled workers to keep up with the demand. National states must develop coherent strategies for increasing human capacity development, including the increased use of technology-enhanced learning and geographically distributed research, teaching and learning. |
Without a knowledgeable citizenry, the potential of the Information Society will be stalled in both developed and developing countries. This is one of the reasons that in my research program, we spend so much time trying to understand the optimal mechanisms to promote human capacity development in the developing world through the use of complex, cross-national virtual teams and geographically distributed collaborative learning approaches. |
Finally, in order to bring all of these elements together, it is important to have a policy and regulatory environment that supports this approach. In most cases, the legal framework of countries is years behind the current practices and potential of the Information Society. Legal and regulatory frameworks must be updated to include an emphasis on allowing the global trade in services, electronic payment systems, digital signatures, intellectual property protection for information goods and a range of other issues. |
Cogburn describes how South Africa's changes in telecommunications infrastructure and the nation's establishment of new regulatory commissions have laid the groundwork to improve access for its citizens.
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Cogburn theorizes that the devastation of the work force in African nations by AIDS and HIV may be the single biggest challenge for the African continent in the coming years.
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Fathom: What other challenges will Africa face as its nations try to capitalize on the opportunities of the Information Society? |
Cogburn: One of the primary limiting factors is going to be infrastructure. The telecommunications infrastructure is extremely limited in Africa. Estimates from the World Bank, Worldtel and other sources indicate that there is an investment deficit in African telecommunications of about $50 billion US dollars a year. |
However, there has been tremendous progress in the past few years. For example, most African countries are connected to the Internet now, and that was not true five years ago. Some of the access has moved beyond just the capital cities and out into subsidiary cities. |
Also, we see tremendous potential opportunities with some of the wireless systems and satellite systems for communications. So, although there's been progress with infrastructure, I think that's still going to be a challenge. |
Another challenge is creating an appropriate legal and regulatory environment.
In this area, an issue that is particularly vexing is intellectual property rights. Many places in the developing world look at the United States as having developed with a monopoly telecom environment and not respecting intellectual property rights. And they say that, now that the US has developed, it's promoting an environment that says that developing countries have to liberalize and privatize their telecommunications market and they have to respect intellectual property rights. So many countries are saying that's unfair. Now, that's a very complicated question because this historical period is not that historical period. Because we are focusing on an information economy and information goods that can be easily reproduced, the questions of intellectual property become really important. So, if a country is not protecting intellectual property, it's not going to be able to take advantage of knowledge economy services and goods. |
One of the other areas that I am most concerned about is finding ways to ensure that developing countries' perspectives and voices are heard sufficiently at a global level in terms of global information policy formulation. Very often, within quarters like the World Trade Organization, for example, you have many developing countries that have representation, but do they really have effective access to these seats of power? They're there--they have access--but do they don't necessarily have effective access because they don't have sufficient resources to be able to field a team of experts who can leave their own capital cities to come to Geneva to do the background studies and serve on these various committees and so forth. The human capacity is just so limited. |
Human capacity is a problem worldwide for being able to take advantage of the Information Society. There are an insufficient number of highly trained communications technology workers even in the United States and Europe. We're trying to get those workers from parts of the developing world, such as Malaysia, India, Singapore and South Africa. That leaves those nations struggling with not having the human resources themselves. So there's a really significant vicious cycle around human capacity. That's why part of my work focuses on how to create human capacity for the Information Society. |
Cogburn explains how his research and teaching on geographically distributed collaborative learning has important implications for development between developed and developing countries.
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