Nairobi — The second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) concluded in Tunis last week. Thousands of participants descended on Tunis from around the world - to the confusion of airline and baggage handling companies and the delight of local hotels and restaurants.

After the flurry of last minute negotiations by lower-level diplomats and ministerial staff to finalise the outcome document, presidents and prime ministers droned - sorry, waxed eloquent Ñ about the achievements of their states in achieving the information society in the intergovernmental session.

In the exhibition area, countries, regions and municipalities showcased their connectivity achievements. Kenya's stand featured a telemedicine project. Tanzania took a lighter approach - highlighting the evolution of communication technologies in Africa through a Kiswahili love affair conducted through horns and drums through to messaging on Yahoo. South Africa, of course, outdid everyone by having that most necessary of networking tools - a bar - on top of its stand. Transnational computing and telecommunications companies demonstrated their latest wares.

And development agencies showed a range of "appropriate" technologies to bridge the digital divide. The highlight was a wind-up laptop retailing at $100. Governments of the South fought for a share of the benefits of Internet governance - the system currently run by the International Council for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit company set up by the American government at the Internet's inception. The struggle over Internet governance overshadowed what was meant to be the second focus of the WSIS Ñ financing. With hindsight, this may not have been an entirely bad thing.

The Digital Solidarity Fund established two years ago at the WSIS could never have met the resourcing needs of the South and was at best diversionary. What the South needs is public/private partnerships to meet universal access goals, rather than the foreign direct investment approach that too often enables massive and quick profits to be made on infrastructure rollout, with relatively minor social investments being made at the investors' discretion.

One of the ironies of the WSIS was the underlying assumption about the benefits the information society will bring to the South. Knowledge is power, but "knowledge societies" make money not from knowledge and information as such, but from the development and ownership of all the technologies supporting the movement of knowledge and information.

Knowledge societies are rich because they control knowledge systems. Thus the battle over Internet governance was fundamentally a battle for the pie that is ICANN. But whiles some South governments showed support for the free, open-software movement, in reality, few, like Venezuela, have put their money where their mouth is when it comes to moving away from transnational dominance.

A second irony of the WSIS was that knowledge societies are necessarily open societies. As the delegates met at the official site, freedom of expression campaigners in Tunisia were being kept out; they were also prevented from holding their counter-summit anywhere else in Tunis. Both local and foreign journalists were harassed.

Riot police were ever present. In short, the Tunisian government's behaviour outside of the official site made a mockery of its hosting of the WSIS. What will the WSIS mean to our lives? Not a hell of a lot unless basic freedoms and rights are respected.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is the Executive Director of the African Womens Development and Communication Network (FEMNET)