New Blog

Please note that A13I has a new blog, available at http://www.11-55.org/a13iblog/.

Halfway through

Once again times goes by so quickly we're already more than halfway through the second phase of the A13I. Is it Einstein who said time could be dilated?

Whatever the case be, Rafigui has got it going on here in Bobo-Dioulasso. They have been training 19 people (4 women) from 11 grassroots community associations. Some of them were literaly starting from scratch and are now able to build a website and do graphics design.

I am proud of Rafigui's performance in doing this exercice. I am finding that they have gained a lot of independence in manipulating the software since last year; they have assimilated the material well enough to be able to adequately teach it to others.

We are putting together a CD with the executable files for installing the OSS onto Windows, as well as a collection of resources for learning these software (of course including the A13I guide book!). I am lucky enough to have six months remaining in Burkina Faso, so doing a follow-up on the training will be much more convenient than it was last year. This achievement is in sync with the work I started in the summer.

What I am hearing about the situation in N'Djaména is comforting me in that the executive office of the Rafigui Newspaper is switching around soon, but they have assured their succession (unlike many African presidents, one would say!) by training the rookies in journalism and computing.

Having a few Chadian men around 24/7 is an interesting cultural experience for me, and I am finding it funny to wander about with these "tourists" while I am the one knowing the city, the people, the language, etc. Listening to them, one can obsverb cultural differences in the way of teaching; I am finding the African way more classical, less spontaneous than the North-American style I am used to. It reminds me of my courses in Hong Kong in a way! I am starting to collect pedagogical experiences and am gaining insights for the best way to convey messages to audiences in other contexts.

At the CAI we are using the Ubuntu distribution of Linux, which is based on Debian. Ubuntu is funded by a South-African millionaire and is mostly developed on the continent. Wojciech and I hesistated for a while as to whether to use Fedora Core or Ubuntu as a teaching distribution, and we finally opted for the former. I am nevertheless finding the Rafigui volunteers very enthusiastic about the idea of installing Ubuntu on their computers back home. They are advised by a professional here at the CAI that recommends this as well. It is said that tastes can not be discussed, even when speaking of Linux!

Ironically enough, we are caught this time again with a political stability problem. When we decided to set the current training in Burkina Faso rather than in Chad, it was mostly to escape an imminent coup d'état in that country. Strangely, when the Rafigui people were already on the road for coming here, there has been repeated unrest and military strifes in the capital city, Ouagadougou, that have extended to other cities (Bobo included) since then. Just like last year, there has been shootings on the night of December 31st and it is not advised that participants go back home late, which causes a problem since some of our workshops are scheduled until 22h. So far, there has been no civilian casualties in Bobo, but there are reasons to worry since the military recently freed up over 300 prisonners from the country's central prison, most of them were notorious for pillages and road blocks. People in Bobo are terrified; you can see almost no one at night, and when a military convoy passes on the road, many shop holders will hurry up to close and lock themselves up. Whereas the Chadians trainers find the situation rather funny since they are used to seeing tanks everywhere, from my part I am wondering if and how can a development project like ours affect peace, and whether it is sustainable in the case of a war outbreak.

A few points to raise:

• How to balance genders? This is the question I am keeping from Chad. Women in ICTs in general seem to be an issue.
  
• We still have the problem of Internet access; in order to download packages, one needs a connection, and although the price for an hour online in the average café in Burkina four times cheaper than in Chad, it is still largely unaffordable. Although the French Ubuntu forum is complete and user-friendly, there is a lack of offline resources for French speaking Africans to be able to properly work with Linux.
  

In the field again

Almost a year day-to-day after Wojciech and I left for Chad, a sample of Rafigui members are taking the car across Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger to reach me in Burkina Faso for the second phase of the A13I's work with them.

After spending the summer working part time on developing the French language resources for teaching OSS to media-oriented associations, FMM thought it was time to see if its training in N'Djaména had an impact on its stakeholders.

The Rafigui members will be spending two weeks in Bobo-Dioulasso for monitoring and evaluation purposes. They will offer a restitution of the OSS training to local members of HIV AIDS associations. This will take place at the Centre d'Accès à l'Information (CAI) of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, who generously let us use their material. This will consist in three four-hours session , two four-hour sessions in each of OpenOffice Writer, GIMP and Scribus. They will also benefit from the expertise of the CAI to strenghten their abilities in Linux as well as an introduction to NVU for Web development. In addition, a four day trip in a neighbouring village is planned to conduct focus groups with a women's rotating savings and credit group, continue the shooting of a promotional video on the association's activities as well as to spend the Tabaski and New Year's Day "Burkina-style" with balafon music!

This is a preview. I think any training need some follow-up to ensure it has been well understood and appropriated. This is especially true in the case of new technologies of information and communications in Africa. There is an enormous need in community associations to be using such technology in an efficient way. I am grateful to the OS OA and Professor Leslie Chan for giving me the chance to do this work. I will be posting updates as time permits. Thanks for your interest.

Going Strong

After several months of silence, the Article 13 Initiative is going back to life. With new additions to our team and interesting partnerships in perspectives, there will surely be a lot more to blog about! Stay tuned!

Back... For Now

It's been a week since we returned to Canada, and I am writing this to thank everyone for their support. The trip went extremely well, and we will be wrapping up and debriefing for the next few weeks, so there won't be much news for a while.

In general, I'm extremely hopeful for the future, especially after seeing open source software and cell phones in action. Such technologies have huge potential in developing nations, especially ones having trouble with freedom of expression. Over this past week, Nepal has been in the news a great deal, and I'd just like to mention that the government has shut down the cell phone networks there. There's a good reason for this -- with phones being so prevalent, it's easy for people to use them to organize politically. It's a threat to governments that do not respect human rights. I'm happy to say that Five Minutes to Midnight is now gaining the expertise to use such technologies to help organizations and groups make media and promote human rights.

This was the first of hopefully many international trips for Five Minutes to Midnight, and we will be updating everyone as time goes on. To keep updated, subscribe to the FMM newsletter.

Going strong

Hi all. I am currently writing from Addis Ababa to give a last account of the A13I events on the field (at least for now!).

I just compiled the results of a survey I gave to the Rafigui members, and I am glad to announce that they all felt as good as we did about the training FMM provided. We are also proud (and bewildered) to announce that we went beyond our expectations by giving more than 40 hours of workshop, writing a 20 page French guide about open source software and leaving Rafigui with 5 computers, a digital camera, a USB key and a printer. I am also glad to announce (!! I am out of vocabulary) that a new issue of Rafigui is on the market starting today! 250 F cfa anyone interested!

Our last week is N Djamena was of the most colourful and the most puzzling. I had the best time just observing people around me and discovering new parts of town. We were splitting our time between hard work and cultural and social events with the Rafigui people, which are amazing folks; they are moved by an uncommon drive.

After talking to several people from the media and hitting the newspapers myself, we became more and more aware of how the conflict is evolving with Sudan. It was so live to witness big political summits going on in the city about that and hearing that the police was making raids at night for sending young unemployed people to war. In a sense, we were shielded in the most quiet neighbourhood of the city and talking about technology that most Chadians will never come close to know, unfortunately... We were not really affected by the events (besides the fact that by 7 pm everybody wanted to go home!), but still. It brought us to reflexion.

Yesterday we had a press conference in which we exchanged attestations, gifts and goodbyes. I was very sad (obviously...) but I was cheered up by the enthusiasm that everybody had to continue being involved with us in the future. In fact, Rafigui will be providing training to other youth newspapers on ICT and the media, and since they are really excited about the open source technology (you would be thrilled to see how everything they do is team and discussion oriented - much more democratic than in Canada!), I am confident that it will take them somewhere unexpected.

We have good threads for the research, and we are looking forwards to look into the future possibilities for open source and the media, a combination that can make terrific positive change.

Internet Woes

I don't know how the Internet here works, but it's all a bit shadey... Every second time I'm at the cyber cafe here, it's using a proxy server. It doesn't matter when I go to use the computers, either. This is a big problem right now: this "proxy server" makes it difficult, if not impossible, to access FTP, GMail, and other services... Ahh!