commonspace

Where to from here?

On a train to Ottawa, Benin – December 10, 2006: Benin is far away now. If I close my eyes, I can still smell the flip chart markers. See all the smiling faces. Feel the passion. But, eyes wide open, staring at this computer screen, I know that we need more than memories. We need action.

Sylvia will be writing up a report soon summarizing all the concrete ideas and actions that were proposed at Songhai. In the meantime, I thought I should write down some of my own A-TLF action points before they are forgotten. Three things WE need to do include:

• Follow up on the concrete project ideas that came out of the last two days of the event, especially ideas on social enterprise, training, wireless and content networks. The people championing these ideas should keep moving them forward and telecentre.org should put some modest resources behind at least a few of these ideas.
• Continue to support emerging network leaders in Africa. As I wrote in another post, the number of telecentre networks in Africa is growing. I am really hoping that the friendships that emerged in Benin will provide major fuel for the leaders of these networks to help each move further faster. On the telecentre.org side, we need to do everything we can to keep these folks in touch and to facilitate their collaboration. We can find ways to do this through shared projects and smaller events.
• Share the learning and (as Gunner would say) share the love. While the 80 people who cam to the Benin event are important leaders, they are only a tiny fraction of the overall African telecentre movement. Everyone who was there needs to take responsibility for sharing what they learned with dozens of others. We will do what we can on the IDRC to write up and share some of the best insights, but this only works if this is a collective task.

When I look at this list, it’s actually not that complex. We simply need to continue what we started at Songhai. We need to follow through and involve many others in this follow through. It can happen, if we all commit to doing just a little bit to take it forward. I can’t wait.

Partnership, from the ground up.

Porto Novo, Benin – November 27 – December 2, 2006. While the primary point of telecentre.org is promote grassroots networking, it is also a very interesting experiment in collaboration amongst social investors (aka ‘donors’). IDRC, SDC and Microsoft all take a slightly different angle on telecentres and community technology. Yet, we all believe that networks are key to the success of grassroots tech initiatives. We also think that other social investors should be thinking about networks, both as a way to increase the impact of their investments and to help to coordinate with their peers.

This kind of collaboration really comes to life an event like the Africa Telecentre Leaders Forum, offering a chance to work with both existing and emerging partners in a very hands on way. Some highlights from the Benin trip include:

• Getting to know Ntutule Tshenye, the Microsoft community affairs lead for sub-Saharan Africa. I was blown away by Ntutule’s sophistication and practical approach to the telecentre movement in Africa. The 10 years he has spent in this space shows.
• Working with SDC’s Veronika Roos, who fit in immediately as one of the telecentre.org team (which she is, really). Veronika was particularly amazing as a set of engaged eyes and ears, offering us real time feedback on where key groups of participants were headed.
• Hanging with Ian Pringle from UNESCO. Ian is a bit of a visionary, trying to bring together that large number of (often disconnected) community media and access initiatives spread far and wide within UNESCO. He also brings a tremendous commitment to networks and collaboration, and an amazing sense of fun.
• Meeting IICD’s Francois Laureys, who heads up their knowledge networking initiatives in West Africa. Francois provided both insight into the work of IICD partners and invaluable insights into the ICT4D terrain in the region. He also did an amazing job pushing forward key networking conversations during the Forum.

Spending time with these people not only helped build relationships, it also gave us the chance to discover and define new opportunities to work together. There is a great deal of synergy between our thinking and Ntutlue’s thinking on social enterprise. Francois has an interest in expanding networks in Burkina and other parts of West Africa. Ian wants to integrate networking and collaboration with outside initiatives into UNESCO’s community media work. All of this will lead to new and very concrete collaborative activities with these partners.

Content. Content. Content.

Porto Novo, Benin – November 27 – December 2, 2006. Content is one of those perennial issues. It’s important enough generate a great deal of conversation, and tough enough that these conversations rarely generate new ideas. Happily, this wasn’t the case at the Africa Telecentre Leaders Forum (although I was worried at certain point). A number of compelling networks + content ideas emerged from the discussion.

The idea that caught my attention most was using national networks (and networks of national networks) as a channel to help large international organizations who need to distribute development information. This includes orgs with health info, agricultural info, economic development, HIV info – orgs that basically have a tough time getting their message out to the grassroots. These international organizations would finance telecentre networks (and, indirectly, telecentres) to reach out with their information. This would help with telecentre and network sustainability, contribute to local information management capacity and, eventually, cross subsidize the production of local content. An interesting idea if you can get it to work, which may be possible with the right network players.

There was also a great deal of conversation on capacity building to help people with the production of local content. This is something that UNESCO may champion.

Feedback loops

Porto Novo, Benin – November 27 – December 2, 2006. It’s worth a small blog posting to note that last week’s Benin Forum included three sessions gathering feedback on the telecentre.org community web site. Led by Esther Nasikye from Ugabytes and Leonce Sessou from Songhai, these sessions let people know about the site and asked them how it could better meet their needs. Unsurprisingly, many people wanted to see more of a focus on e-mail and simple tools. There wasn’t much demand for fancy tools like podcasting, as far as I can tell. Esther and Leonce have now taken on roles as part time editors for the telecentre.org community. In these roles, they will be able to do something with the feedback they received … and also get other African telecentre leaders involved in bringing the online community to life. There seemed to be a fair bit of commitment and interest on this last count.

Networks scale sideways

Porto Novo, Benin – November 27 – December 2, 2006. We often talk about scaling up. Yet, in many cases, the thing we’re really looking for is scaling sideways: the process of good ideas and practices spreading from place to place. This is sideways scaling is exactly what we are seeing with the idea of telecentre networks in Africa.

When we did our first telecentre.org consultations in Ghana back in 2005, there was maybe one formal network on the continent. Now, there are three countries with solidly established networks (Mali, Mozamnique and Uganda) and at least seven countries with emerging networks (Burkina Faso, Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Tanzania). Collaboration and cooperation amongst telecentres in Africa is clearly an idea that has legs. But where do these legs take us?

We have started to see early signs of success with the African networks that telecentre.org has supported financially. Ugabytes has set up an online help desk service. Afrilinks is offering training. CIEUM has a tech support hotline set up. Still, progress is slow and even these organizations struggle with challenges of building a real network where all stakeholders are truly engaged in the network.

The challenges will be even greater for the emerging networks. Resources will be scarce, with telecentre.org doing what it can to avoid spreading things too thin in Africa and with few other funders interested in networks. Also, many new networks are located in small countries, or countries with a small number of telecentres. This makes it tough to get critical mass.

Of course, where there is passion (and utility), there is also great hope. Telecentre leaders attending the Benin Forum brainstormed, sketched ideas and talked well into the night thinking through ways to move their networks ahead. Unsurprisingly, one of the most common (and powerful) ideas was concrete collaboration amongst networks: established networks helping newer ones;  networks fundraising together; collaborative content / enterprise / connectivity projects involving multiple networks. The concept of small network projects involving multiple funders was also floated (IICD and telecentre.org will likely do something along these lines in Burkina). Finally, the idea of telecentre.org and national governments co-funding networks came up as one possible way forward. Rwanda and South Africa are places where this might work.

There is no question: African telecentre networks face challenges ahead. But there is also a great deal of passion, ingenuity and sharing within the movement. With this, anything is possible!

Social enterprise: ready to go

Porto Novo, Benin – November 27 – December 1, 2006: The Benin workshop marked a departure point: ‘social enterprise’ became a central part of the conversation on sustaining the work of telecentres in Africa. The younger crowd in particular – people like Hilton Theunissen, Gbenga Sesan and Esther Nasikye – championed the idea. They were arguing that the way forward for African telecentres was a commitment to social change combined with an entrepreneurial spirit.

On the second day of the workshop, a small group formed to talk about social enterprise issues. They came out with a number of diagrams aimed at helping other participants understand their way of thinking:

 

This small group attacked the question of sustainability head on, saying that both social impact and financial sustainability were important. They pointed to the potential of offering services like education, health care and e-government that communities need but would also pay for.

On days three and four of the Forum, this social enterprise group got down to brass tacks to design practical projects to work on together. They came up with a number of ideas including a social enterprise training institute for African telecentres and the development of new services that African telecentres could offer to communities. The idea of creating a ‘social franchise’ that offered social enterprise packages was also floated. This group agreed to follow up quickly after Benin to put some of these ideas into motion.

Note to Hilton or Gbenga: tell me where your social enterprise think paper is so that I can link to it from this blog. I've seen it circulating in mailing lists but not on the web.

Emergent leadership

Porto Novo, Benin – November 28, 2006: Leadership is not about being in charge: it’s about inspiring, supporting and serving those you have the privilege to lead. Luckily, the African telecentre movement is filled with people who understand this. These are people like Aminata Maiga Fofana who is heading up the development of a telecentre network in Mali and Ndaula Sulah who leads Ugabytes in Uganda. And, also, people who are newer on the telecentre networking scene: Telecentre Times editor Esther Nasikye; Afrilinks’ Mohamed Acharom; Silvie Niombo from Congo Brazzavile; Nayer Wanas from Egypt; and Paul Barera from Rwanda. All of these people have a talent for leadership, and a passion for the telecentre movement. 

Just before the Telecentre Leaders Forum, these people came together for a one day facilitation training session. In the morning, the session focused heavily on facilitation skills, network development and promoting equal participation at workshops. The afternoon included hands on planning and prep exercises for the main Forum. The session was led by my good friend Allen Gunn, but much of the best content and learning came from the leaders sharing and interacting with each other.

This session also very much about team building. The 10 telecentre leaders who participated became key facilitators in the main event. They helped others articulate their ideas, built links, encouraged participation. And, they did it by working closely with both Gunner and each other. In the end, these are the people who made the Telecentre Leaders Forum a success. I am both impressed and grateful to them as community leaders.

Telecentre ecology 101

Porto Novo, Benin – November 26, 2006: Rich was right: Centre Songhai in Porto Novo was the perfect place to hold last week’s African Telecentre Leaders Forum.

Of course, I’d heard about Songhai before. Yet it was only when Father Nzamujo walked us around his sixteen acre demonstration farm that I really got the picture. I saw a fish farm. A turkey farm. A chicken farm. Plants for export. Fruit for eating. A bio-gas facility. Solar power. A restaurant. A store. And, of course, a thriving telecentre. Nazmujo has built this and three larger farms to show that ecosystem thinking is essential if we want to make a leap forward for development. We must accept that everything connects to everything else.

As 80 telecentre leaders from 25 African countries arrived at Songhai last Monday, their eyes lit up. They saw a model of development that embraced computers and the Internet, but only as a part of a larger whole. They also saw an inspiring social enterprise that is at once provides significant social benefit and finances most of its efforts independently. There is no doubt that the Songhai experience provided tremendous fuel for a week where discussions where interconnectedness, social impact and social enterprise came up again and again.

The only sad bit from this very intense week was that there was no time to blog, at least for me. I will spend the next couple of days catching up and reflecting.