Bamako 2002 Spells Out Vision for African Information Society

4 June 2002
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United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Addis Ababa)
press release

Addis Ababa — As a key outcome of the Africa Regional Conference on the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held recently in Bamako, Mali, an African Regional Bureau has been established to work with the WSIS secretariat.

The Bureau will be chaired by Mali, with membership from Cameroon, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia. Civil society members include representatives from the Anais Network (Cameroon), the African Women's Development and Communications Network (FEMNET, Kenya) and the Arab Union of NGOs (Tunisia).

The African Enterprise Network and a private Senegalese information technology company, Next, represent the private sector with the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) acting as the interim secretariat for the Bureau.

The regional conference, known as Bamako 2002, which took place from 26 - 30 May, attracted representation from 51 African countries, drawn from governments, civil society, the media, public and private sectors as well as a cross-section of international development agencies.

Participants unanimously agreed on a set of principles and recommendations for developing a common African vision for an information society. In a conference communique, known as the Bamako Declaration, emphasis was placed on the need to ensure that every citizen has access to information as a basic human right calling for the removal of regulatory, political and financial obstacles to the development of communication facilities. This also included addressing the continent's linguistic specificities with the introduction of new technologies that ensures access for all.

The Conference acknowledged the fact that narrowing the digital divide should go hand in hand with the development of telecommunication infrastructure with calls on African governments to fully contribute to the preparations for both phases of the World Summit scheduled for Geneva 2003 and Tunis in 2005.

The meeting reiterated the need for NEPAD to benefit from concerted and coordinated mobilization of all development partners to provide funds to guarantee public service, universal access and content creation that addresses the essential needs of the people of Africa if the information society is to be attained. There was a recommendation for the immediate establishment of a training fund for sensitizing Africans on the information society before the second preparatory meeting of the Geneva Summit. In addition, the formation of a high level scientific committee to make recommendations on the challenges of the information society from an African perspective was called for.

The Bamako Declaration acknowledged the continent's rich cultural diversity and urged that it should be reflected in cyberspace with accompanying funds for digital archiving of traditional knowledge and heritage as Africa's contribution to the global information society.

The Africa Regional Conference organized by the Malian government in collaboration with ECA and ITU was funded by the Swiss Development Agency International Cooperation and (SDC) and the European Commission, with support from a number of national, regional and international agencies.

The meeting opened with a message from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan thanking the President, government and people of Mali for hosting the first regional conference of the WSIS process. The Secretary General's message also acknowledged the work carried out by ECA under the framework of the Africa Information Society Initiative (AISI) since its inception six years ago.

In his opening statement, President Alpha Oumar Konare reiterated the need for the continent to actively pursue the development of an information society, whilst President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal underscored the importance of the meeting, given that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) were a prime focus under the NEPAD framework. Other statements came from Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Boutros Boutros Ghali of the Agence internationale de la Francophonie, and representatives from UNESCO, the European Commission and the CEOs of Alcatel France and WorldSpace.

Thirteen pre-conference workshops and other activities took place as part of Bamako 2002, some organized by ECA and partners such as the Swiss Agency for Development and International Cooperation (SDC), UNDP, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and La Francophonie, Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP), UNESCO and UNIFEM focusing on African languages, policy, gender, media, business, the impact of ICT, and free software. A UNESCO-led civil society consultation was also held, as well as other meetings on local ICT initiatives on the continent, cultural diversity and knowledge ownership, including the law and the Web.

The objective of the World Summit on the Information Society is to formulate a common vision and understanding of the global information society. It is expected to adopt a Declaration of Principles and an Action Plan to facilitate the effective growth of the Information Society and to help bridge the Digital Divide.

To read the Bamako 2002 Declaration go to: http://www.geneva2003.org/bamako2002/ or http://www.uneca.org/aisi

For further details visit web: www.uneca.org

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