Criteria for the Global Development Gateway: Suggestions from the Fantsuam Foundation in Nigeria

Criteria for the Global Development Gateway: Suggestions from the Fantsuam Foundation in Nigeria

Date Posted: November 23 2000

Dear Global Knowledge Discussion (GKD) members,

I am Kazanka Comfort. I work with a grass roots organisation, Fantsuam Foundation, in Nigeria. I must say that we have found some of the discussion on the GKD hard to understand. Fortunately, there are enough contributors whose subsquent elaboration helps to make earlier difficult contributions more digestible. However, we are very concerned that if we as an organisation have this much hiccups in following an international discussion, what chance would the end users in our communities have using information that is developed for international audiences? Based on our experience, we would like to propose some criteria for evaluating the Global Development Gateway (GDG) and the country gateways.

In order to know if the GDG and country gateways are successful, we first need to know what needs they are intended to fill. We agree with other GKD members that pilot studies are needed to find out the information and knowledge needs of development community organizations and user groups. This will set some of the standards for evaluating the GDG.

One problem that we face on a daily basis in our rural IT programmes is ignorance, apathy and sometimes cynicism. These attitudes are as a result of several failed government initiatives. Thus, a rural organisation has to establish its credibility through close and transparent interaction with these communities and invest substantial time in its start-up and mobilisation. Since sustainability remains our watchword, we insist on carrying the majority of the community with us, with their roles and resource-contribution clearly spelt out.

Another evaluation standard should be the GDG and country gateways' sustainability, and their contribution to the sustainability of local IT programmes. Provision of information with relevant local content often requires the assistance of urban-based experts. The cost of such service escalates if an organisation in the West is providing funds for, or is in partnership with us for such service. Our way out of such an exploitative arrangement is for us to form partnerships with some of the universities which we know we would patronise. A department in one of such universities has just submitted a request to us for a computer. We would like to help with a request like this, but our whole project has only three computers and one laptop to serve a potential population of 5,000 users. So although we do come up with strategies to cope with the peculiar problems of our communities we often run into a wall since the need for funds always dodge our steps. Thus, two other evaluation criteria should be (1) whether the GDG helps universities and grassroots organisations obtain the equipment needed to access the gateway information and (2) whether the gateways help local organisations to partner together.

We also tried to solve the problem of information provision with the idea of recruiting Nigerians in the Diaspora to come home for 2 to 3 months each year to work on specific projects. We found people who are willing to come, but they have minimum financial requirements to meet their obligations before they can come home for such length of time - there you find the wall again, funds! At the moment, one of our members supports our activities by going to work for 9 months each year as a nurse in the UK as well as managing our UK office. He is a valued member of our team and we would desperately need his full-time attention and he would be glad to offer it if we could pay even half of what he gets in his UK job - but there's the wall again! So there are two other evaluation criteria for the GDG: (1) whether it helps to build networks between skilled and knowledgeable people in the Diaspora with those in Africa, and (2) whether it helps local organisations to build and keep staff who have IT skills.

Our work emphasises investment in women: whether it be financial, educational or health investment. Therefore our activities tend to revolve around our microcredit projects. Through this project we are able to offer loans for education as well for income generation. The strength of this project is the non-cash communal collateral it generates. We believe that IT programmes structured around such existing projects have better chances of sustainability and community empowerment. Another criterion for the GDG is whether it helps IT programmes link with other community needs and become sustainable.

But our women are also the most apprehensive of learning IT skills. We therefore came up with a strategy of a phased introduction, starting with radios. Health talks, and dramas performed by the women will precede talks about IT on the radios - then again we hit the wall. The most reliable option for radios are the clock wind radios of which we have only two at the moment. At a cost of GBP 50.00 they do not come cheap, and they cannot be a priority if a woman wants to apply for a loan for grains or children's school fees. The manufacturers of the clock wind radios were not interested in a small organisation like ours despite its potential of making these radios popular in our rural communities. How does an issue as basic as clock-wind radio fit into the GDG? Another criterion for evaluating the GDG should be whether it helps local organisations get the technologies it needs to spread information, even when these technologies are not "high tech".

Sometimes we feel very alienated from these international discussions, and do not want to interject our knowledge. It may be that the GDG will also make it hard for organisations like ours to feel comfortable providing information. It was a relief to hear a professor of information engineering from France also complaining that maybe the scope of the portal's frame of information is too broad and should be made simpler to accommodate the realities faced by groups like ours in developing countries. So another criterion of GDG should be how much information it provides from grassroots organisations.

These are the criteria we think should be used to evaluate the GDG (and other World Bank IT projects).

We would be pleased to work in partnership with the GDG to pilot local topic or community pages of the Gateway and identify the knowledge and information resources needed by our communities.

Thanks for your time.

Kazanka Comfort

Fantsuam Foundation

Nigeria