Noah
Samara
"Information Should Be relevant And Timely"
Mr. Noah Samara,
Chairman and CEO of WorldSpace Corporation was among the top leaders
of the corporate world that attended the African Regional Preparatory
Meeting for the World Summit on the Information Society. The Editor-in-Chief
of ICT Focus who was there to participate in the proceedings of
the Conference had the chance to interview Mr. Noah Samara to share
us his views of the African Information Society. ICT Focus expresses
its deep felt gratitude for sparing his valuable time.
ICT Focus:
How can African Societies benefit from the emerging ICT?
Noah Samara:
We have to realize that the most important thing is not technology.
The essential thing for us is rather relevance than technology.
That's what I would like to communicate. If you talk about relevance
the most important thing is education. Who builds Mercedes, Boeing
Aircraft, ATT etc. It's people! The difference is not intelligence
but the information that one person has versus another, unless you
have the belief that God is unfair on brain power that he distributed.
Education or providing information is the most critical thing that
a government can do to advance its civilization. An Information
Society is a society that has made it very easy for its members
to access information that is relevant to them and is timely.
If I were to
provide information to an Ethiopian about snow plowing, it is not
relevant. If I give information about how to access water as you
are dying of thirst it is not timely. What makes an Information
Society is its ability to create an infrastructure that enables
to provide relevant and timely information.
ICT Focus:
Does ICT has significance to solve Africa's economic problems?
Noah Samara: As I said the essential thing is relevance.
What is a relevant information? There are problems that are of crisis
proportion : 80 million children (more than the Ethiopian population)
throughout Africa are out of school. The Aids virus is chopping
up people left and right. What I am trying to communicate are urgent
needs, immediate needs. These needs should drive the design and
the vision of what an Information Society is for Africa. Every country
should have its own vision. Of course certain people may have different
visions.
What comes to
the priority of the continent is 80 million children out of school.
It is a serious embodiment for the continent. The future are the
children. If you are not taking care of the children you are condemning
the future.
An Information
Society, for me, should address this issue. All children in school
are not getting good education. If good teachers are not available,
kids in school and out of school are not getting good information.
The second priority
is related to the fact that a good majority of the students are
not getting the kind of education that will be competitive with
the world market of education. If African markets are to compete
with the world market, they need to make sure that their human resources
are trained to compete with the world market. You have to make sure
that your education system is competitive with the world market.
If a large number of teachers are not certified it will create problem
to achieve this goal.
Another priority
of relevance looks towards enabling the education system to be competitive
in providing information to the student. If 15 million teachers
are not certified to give education to meet the needs of the Africans
today, tomorrow and after tomorrow, the quality of education would
suffer. Therefore the design of IT should be driven by Africa's
needs to bring its teachers up-to-date with standards that are commensurate
with the education being provided.
The fourth priority
in Africa is providing continuing education to the adult population
in general and to women in particular. A good information would
provide relevant and up-to-date information to its health professionals,
to its farmers, and to all other constituencies of the society.
Furthermore, the builders of a nation are nothing other than its
people, and in this regard in much of Africa the female population
is often not engaged in the economic process of the continent. It's
like having ten people to do a job and allowing only five of them
only. It's not good for the people who are doing the job and for
those who are not. But mostly, it's not good for the job. You have
a much better chance to unleash creativity and energy to the task
that is at hand. So if I were to summarize the vision of an African
Information Society it will focus on providing education and literacy
to the 80 million children of the continent; secondly, ensuring
that the syllabus a government intends to deliver to its children,
to its youth is actually delivered by using IT and finally reaching
the adult population with continuing education through vocational
training.
If the countries
in Africa did this and nothing else there would be a wider magnitude
of change in a record of time. If on the other hand, we don't deliver
education on a massive scale to the peoples of Africa, whatever
resource the continent might get from developing countries, it will
be wasted. That's why this conference is so important; it defines
what Africa's vision of an Information Society would be and my argument
is that information should be relevant and timely.
ICT Focus:
Can you cite an example of success in this regard?
Noah Samara:
I can give you an example of timely and relevant project that we
are implementing in Kenya and other African countries. In partnership
with the government we are placing WorldSpace receivers in every
schools. The receivers are used to achieve three things. First,
to provide continuing education to teachers; second, to provide
education directly to students enrolled in the schools; and third,
during off hours, to provide education to the rural population such
as health information to health professionals; agricultural extension
program to farmers; training in micro finance to women; and literacy
to anyone who needs it. Governments are able to adopt this program
for literally a few cents per year per students. If any of your
readers asks if African governments can not afford the cost of educating
their population, I can argue ignorance would be most costly.
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