Information Access in Africa: Problems with Every Channel

: Every information channel within Africa is restricted. Limited budgets cause televison stations to produce few shows of their own and to fill airtime with cheap American imports -- imports that are often at odds with local cultural values. Book production is complicated by high production costs. The computer database industry is miniscule by US standards. The World Wide Web opens a new forum for information access, but is complicated by high phone charges. Two numbers converge in Africa. The first -- phone lines. Africa has twelve percent of the world’s population, but just two percent of its phone lines. That number is fairly well known. Here is the second, converging number -- Africa has twelve percent of the world’s population but publishes just two percent of the world’s book titles. It is the second set of numbers that may be the most troubling because they hint at larger problems on the continent -- barriers to the creation and dissemination of information. To fully under...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 1998
• Where: TIS
• Authors: William Wresch
• Keywords: Africa, Phone Lines, TIS 1998, World Wide Web