Don Slater: When we actually did our 18 months or so of research, and what we’re finding was that in Ghana, in Accra for example, the capital city, there is an absolutely thriving internet culture even in the very poor area that we focused on. But most of those people, in fact 99% of them, had never ever visited a website or used it to access anything that a development agency or a government would deem information. Even though they might be using the Internet three or four days a week, three or four hours a day.

Antony Funnell: So how do people in places like Ghana, how do they use the Internet?

Don Slater: Well overwhelmingly, the internet users that we studied, and there were a lot of them, used the internet for chat. It was largely seen as a chat medium, a little bit of email, but largely MSN or Yahoo in order to access basically people in the north, foreigners. We used to talk about this as collecting foreigners, to develop a long list of northern chat partners, to discuss what things are like in the respective countries, or to basically try to get various kinds of goods, like invitations abroad, or help with visas and so on and so forth.

Antony then goes on to ask:

Antony Funnell: Well why is it that governments and development agencies simply don’t understand this? Why are they still pushing this idea that the Internet is a good platform for getting out information?

This really interests me because it assumes that the only way to ‘use’ the internet for positive social change is to engage passively as ‘receivers’ of a government ‘message’. The whole community/network/chat pattern of use is perceived as ‘worthless’.

It’s really, really worth reading that transcript (or, far more pleasingly, to listen to it and hear the enthusiasm in the speakers’ voices).

…my attention was caught when Don Slater notes that putting up posters in internet cafes telling people about websites would be useful. I love these sorts of lo-tec solutions because it reminds me of the fact that ‘keeping it simple, stupid’ is really important. As Subbiah Arunachalam says earlier, just because it’s flash tech, doesn’t mean it’s more useful than a pen and pencil, or as he actually says:

Subbiah Arunachalam: Yes. Our philosophy is it is not which technology which matters. What matters is how can it help the rural poor. If I need to use satellite technology, I will, but if I don’t need satellite technology, all I need is only the bulletin board, I will use that as well. So in our project we have a blending of old and new technologies. Whatever suits the local condition, we use, horses for courses as they say.

And this, of course, brings us to the point that the old school radio is one of the most powerful and important media in the developing world - it’s cheap, it’s simple, it doesn’t require literacy. It also encourages social or collaborative media use which has some interesting social ramifications. But of course, if you’ve read any of the stuff on development media, you know all this - sorry if that’s the case.

But just now as you are talking about internet cafes, I am remembering the little thrill I felt yesterday. A certain someone messaged me from an internet cafe in another country, saying how frustrated they were to desire me yet to have to tell me so from a public place.

Just a little story of the sort you are gesturing towards!