Africaresource.com: Bridging the Digital Divide

What will be more important…is how future access to the "information superhighway" is maintained, and what will happen when (or if) marginalized communities come more firmly under the domination of the "owners" of gigabits of memory, satellite telecommunications, and undersea fiber optics cables strung around whole continents.

 

– Misty L. Bastien, "Nationalism in a Virtual Space: Immigrant Nigerians on the Internet."West Africa Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (1999), <http://www.westafricareview.com/war/vol1.1/bastian.html>.

I began this essay after an energizing meeting with a bright young scholar on starting a new journal for africaresource.com. The journal, we agreed, would address the knowledge concerns of politically conscious younger generation, engaged in transformatory critical scholarship. Its distinguishing feature would be its New Afrikan perspective that would offer radical readings of texts and pertinent African Diasporic experiences. Just as the discussion drew to a close the crucial question came: what exactly does africaresource.com stand for? The question seemed driven by past histories of subversions of progressive initiatives. If money is crucial to the launching of Internet ventures in 1999, then someone from a marginal community cannot start such ventures without funds. So who really is the owner and financial backer of this effort to bridge the digital divide? Misty Bastien clearly makes the point that marginalized communities (and their members, of course) cannot easily compete with "the "owners" of gigabits of memory, satellite telecommunications, and undersea fiber optics cables strung around whole continents." Their domination of resources means that questions about what africaresource.com stands for, are actually questions that go to the widening digital disparity between the rich and the poor and attempts to discern the political objectives of shadowy funders.

Although the emigration of highly educated Africans to the North has been bemoaned, we should remember that it is the product of a series of severe economic downturns in various African countries and the high unemployment numbers associated with a shrinking economy. It is fair to say that the "brain drain" also has had beneficent aspects. It provided the right skilled employment that was not readily available in different African countries. It placed Africans in important strategic positions around the world from which to more effectively advocate for, and influence policies for Africa. Without emigration to the North, it is arguable if we would not have seen the need or had the opportunity to establish an educational forum such as africaresource.com. In more ways than one, africaresource.com began as a response to the needs of quality academic content on Africa in the Internet. At one level, Many K-12 schools in different regions of the United States and in the different countries to which Africans had emigrated have very minimal resources on Africa. Busy struggling to hold the family together, parents too, do not have the time and resources to teach their cultural heritage to their children. As time passes they find themselves continually responding to the negative image of Africa their children are learning in schools. On occasions, they have been horrified to hear their children express shame about being Africans as they disclaim their heritage. A mother prodded her child and learned that in school they were being taught that Africans do not live in houses; that Africans are wretched and poor; that Africans have never created anything in their entire history; and that being African means lacking intellectual capacity and resources! When busy parents cannot help, kids sometimes surf the Internet for information to help counteract the object of shame. In 1998, the available online information was sorely inadequate. Reflecting on this problem has caused some frustrated parent to wonder how Africanists had taught Africa in universities and colleges that K-12 teachers cultivated grotesque ideas about life on the continent?

During the Internet search in the summer of 1998, my Sudanese intern complied a list of Africa-focused sites, notably: safari travelogues, "tribal/primitive" art and craft retail outfits, two web directories, and U.S. government information sites. Advanced search listed some country specific-sites, information portals, and cultural groups. Such searches are rarely performed because of the level of sophistication that it required. The average student does not have an evaluation of the academic content on such sites. But this is to be expected in the tech boom period in which commerce and commercialization ruled the development of websites. The general concern of most entrepreneurs was to make money. Internet projects with an Africa focus lacked profitability because of the poor state of most African economies. Forced to make money, some owners of sites cluttered their site with invasive banner ads, while others received funding from non-profit agencies and created sites that barely met the benchmark of what it means to be a content provider.

Frustrated by the stagnant condition of African economics, some have dismissed Internet initiatives as irrelevant to Africa’s economic development. In their view, if people have barely enough to eat and the telecommunications infrastructure is in shambles, there is no way we can justify spending money on initiatives that do not directly enhance the material well-being of Africans. Some have asked, how this political stance is solving the economic development problem of Africa exacerbated by the "brain drain" to the North? It is not clear to how having a website is a solution to the continent’s loss of its highly qualified professional.

The first thing to acknowledge is that solution to Africa’s present economic situation cannot lie in halting immigration and in setting up refurbished "back to Africa" movements. Africans are global people. Recognizing this means seeing that Africa is not just a geographical location surround by both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The large constituency of Africans in America and Europe, should not be how to send them back to their various countries, but how can their skills be tapped for the educational benefits of both students in Africa and around the world. Wherever they are Africans, Africa is also to be found there. Immigrants are constantly hankering for information and serious reading about their cultures, but they are reshaping their new social milieu in ways that they new communities are striving to learn about them. Africaresource.com fills this need by tapping into the tremendous pool of educational expertise on Africa possessed by scholars. The Internet becomes a convenient tool for disseminating the analytical and interpretive essays as well as the critical reviews generated on a wide range of topics on Africa. Anyone who has Internet connection can tap into this resource, and obtain teaching materials that are using for understanding salient aspects of cultural life in Africa. African immigration to Western Europe, Canada and the U.S. must be seen in the context of global migration trends. A meaningful response cannot be obtained by presenting it as a phenomenon peculiar to Africa. The migration of intellectuals derives from their poor state of employment. There is no indication that they would even be employed, or as intellectually productive as they are now if they were residing in their respective countries. Faced with present economic reality the objective should be to stigmatize professionals but to explore the possibilities of utilizing their intellectual productivity wherever they are. In so far as no restructuring done, we must see the numerous ways in which emigration is beneficial rather than completely peculiar to countries in Africa. We must begin to explore the ways interests of Africa can be served by having natural constituencies of advocates in diverse parts of the globe.

"I teach in a Comparative Literature dept. in an Indian University, and have worked on African literatures in English. For the last four years, I’ve also been teaching it to very enthusiastic students, many of whom are women and are fascinated by the gender ideologies of the different African nationalities. We have followed WAR, especially the gender issue, and used it in our work, and I actively recommend Jenda as well."

-- Ipshita Chanda, (2002).

To seriously challenge the prevalent construal of Africa as a game reserve, we must rid ourselves of the mind-set of impoverishment, and where occasion demands, flaunt our achievements without losing sight that we must keep on achieving. All our skills must not narrowly be deployed to tackling nutritional problems, or we risk trapping ourselves in seeing only our inadequacies and believing that we are undeserving. If we are to limit ourselves exclusively to issues of poverty and hunger, who will feed the mind with conceptual "food"? Where do we learn the best strategies to resolve the problem? In this age of globalization, when perception defines how nations and people are treated, it is imperative that Africans become active participants in the various economies and in different economic centers of the world. It is shortsighted to insist that Africans who can should turn their backs on using the information highway and providing content for those who have access.

The act of becoming a content provider in the Internet was an act of serendipity. During my graduate student days at the University at Ottawa, I had learned the script language so as to use the computers. This was before the days of the PCs when computing was done on mainframes and almost everyone in the humanities were allergic to them. (I need not detain you here with the account manager’s reaction when barely seven days after getting of the plane from Nigeria I showed up in his office to demand a computer account. I couldn’t even type!) I discovered that html script is basically derived from as well as built on the logic of the mainframe script language with which I was familiar. That discovery made the learning of the basics of websites development very easy.

With minimal funds, africaresource.com was set up with the fairly ambitious long-term goal of revolutionizing knowledge to produce evidence-based knowledge on Africa. At its inception I 1999 more modest goals was selected; over the years these have expanded considerably. Yet the main objective of working for intellectual engagement with African concepts and categories and of encouraging theoretical attentiveness to cultural specificity and sociocultural realities remains unshaken. The Internet has become an effective tool for disseminating this intellectual work through the networks of both the old and new African diasporas as well as institutions on the continent. The goal of africaresource.com is to become an arena where scholarly discussions and academic research on Africa by Africans, peoples of African descent, and non-Africans can easily be obtained. The challenge is to ensure that university and secondary/high school teachers have the requisite tools to expand their teaching on Africa and to adequately prepare their students to respond effectively to the local and regional challenges of a globalized world.

Very early on journals were identified as a critical starting point for development. Because of a large community of African in the North, their high rate of productivity, and the wealth of Africa-focused materials they produced, the journals serve as a publication of record and facilitate productive exchanges among scholars in diverse regions of the world. The death of many journals in Africa, the limited circulation of the few surviving, the limited number of international journals on Africa, and the publication perspective and politics of these international journals, all converge against the timely publication of numerous studies and research articles on Africa by Africans. Sensitive to the professional needs of untenured junior scholars, africaresource.com was committed from the onset to meet the same exacting scholarly requirement that traditional journals do. All the journals are peer-reviewed and academic-focused. In more important ways, the review process of africaresource.com journals are much more exacting. Not only is someone from the field reviewing the submission, in most cases reviewers have fairly extensive knowledge of the cultural phenomena and of the historical, political and social issues informing the argument. Additionally, because they are committed to excellence in scholarship on Africa, they do reject articles that do not strive for the same level of seriousness, knowledge and attention to detail that must characterize academic research on Africa.

In opting to produce electronic journals, africaresource.com seriously considered the long-term technical problems of online academic publishing and set about to overcome them. Optimum consideration was given to all the arcane technical issues of electronic longevity. Two critical issues were identified—permanence and accessibility. Electronic permanence is attainable once journals a) have made provisions for archival records. But we needed to guarantee continuity of access and longevity. We did this through affiliation with the International Consortium for Alternative Academic Publishing [ICAAP], a Canadian university initiative dedicated to the development of international alternative academic production. This relationship provided us with additional institutional infrastructure that guarantees permanence. The journals are backed up and archived on two separate servers, in two separate sites, and in two separate countries. This dual archival process ensures the availability of the journals should we experience any technical difficulty with our own server.

Furthermore, to meet the stringent requirements of library archival compliance, africaresource.com ensures that its journals are marked up in compliance with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation on interoperability. IXML, the eXtended Markup Language developed by ICAAP to extend the HTML markup language is basically SGML, the Standard Generalized Mark Up Language used specifically for scholarly journals. Once articles are marked up in IXML, data storage and information longevity is simplifies because multiple document formats—HTML, and DHTML (with graphic pop-ups, etc.), and PDF—can be created from a single source file.

I worked on anglophone African drama (Ama Ata Aidoo was one of the dramatists I considered, the others being Soyinka and Ngugi) and decided early on that there were very few non-African critics of African literatures whom I could stomach. From then on I have developed the firm if rather extreme idea that we need to be in touch with African scholars more than state-of-the-art western theorists about our cultures, however famous the latter are in world academia. That was why I was thrilled with West Africa Review, Jenda, and Ijele."

-- Indian scholar teaching in an university in India (April 17, 2002).

The website and the journals suddenly made the world seem smaller in significant ways. As voices of Africans are heard on all sorts of relevant issues, the clarity of the voices have attracted scholars from Germany, Denmark, India, Brazil, Australia, and Mexico who want to enter into meaningful conversations with them. Collaborations are becoming possible and many of these are outside the traditional axes of Africa-Europe and Africa-North America. African studies students and teachers from the larger African Diasporic world are now reading African scholars, and we invite them to send their own critical responses, reviews, new research, or fresh interpretations.

West African Review (http://www.westafricareview.com), a journal devoted to serious scholarly and academic issues on West Africa. It came online after over twelve publishers turned down the proposal to publish it. The fact that the journal had been conceived to remedy the glaring inadequacies in substantive cultural knowledge and research pertaining to West African studies was a persuasive sell. It is providing a much-needed forum for original work and works of synthesis being done by scholars of West Africa in and outside of the region. The second issue was a forum for critical response to Wonders of the African World, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. documentary on Africa. That issue garnered tremendous visibility for the journal. Shortly after Ijele: Art eJournal of the African World (http://www.ijele.com) came online. Focused on contemporary art and architecture, art history and criticism, it examines the visual creative expressions of African and African Diaspora artists as well as the work of non-African artists who are using iconography and symbolism derived from any of the artistic traditions of Africa. Ijele: Art eJournal provides a forum for deliberative articles that are devoted to the advancement of African art studies in universities all over the world.

Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (http://www.jendajournal.com) followed soon after. Like the two earlier journals, it creating "a global forum for African women scholars, analysts and activists to participate on an equal footing with their contemporaries worldwide in debates, exchanges of ideas, and the creation and documentation of knowledge." Though the journals were designed to take advantage of the bibliographical resources on the site. The integrated layout employ search functionality. At the left-hand side of the table of content page of each journal are links to the section containing a fairly deep Africa-focused bibliography, organized by topic.

Following their debut the journals finally gathered accolades. Swedish librarian, Jan Szczepanski of Goteborgs universitetsbibliotek Centralbiblioteket (10/24/2000) described Ijele as "one of the finest e-journal" while making a list of important e-journals. Akinwale Onipede assert that it "has opened my eyes to a lot of hidden facts especially on Ben Enwonwu" (United Kingdom, 3/13/2002). Kenyan doctoral student, Muthoni Kimani (University of Cape Town, 3/28/2002) states that "I have benefited a lot from your journal. What encourages me is to see a journal for and about women artists in Africa written and critiqued by African women, it warms my heart…I appreciate all your articles because they are always very informative."

Jenda created quite a stir: seventy downloads in five days! Ndubisi Obiorah "stumbled upon [I] by accident while using a search engine. I was transfixed and spent the next few hours reading the excellent articles in your e-journal. I most strongly commend your efforts in providing an independent platform for Africana women scholars to communicate their research and perspectives" (Harvard University Law School, 9/15/2001). Echoing that sentiment Chidimma Offoh states: "As an African woman and a graduate student interested in research in the area of educating African women, I am delighted to see a web-site dedicated to the scholarly discussion of this issue" (UC-Santa Barbara, 3/15/2001). Some such as Lidwien Kapteijns "particularly admire the journal’s outspokenness" (Wellesley College 3/8/2001). Kwabena Akurang-Parry found: "the first issue…to be scholarly, informative, and engaging" (Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, 4/22/2001). Others such as Prosper Godonoo underscored the importance of taking Africa seriously: "You need to be commended for…ensuring that issues pertinent to the serious and critical examination of Africa are given deserved reflection in the academy" (Rutgers University, 4/3/2000). Lastly, the Scout Report, a publication of the Internet Scout Project for Research and Education of the Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison describes it as "offering a large selection of interesting and engaging essays and other content, much more than comparable print or online journals." (Michael de Nie, Former Editor of the Scout Report, now an Emeritus Editor of Scout Report, March 3, 2001).

West Africa Review: For Amin Alhassan, "The reproduction is Kobina Sekyi’s 1917 paper is very timely at a time when it is becoming fashionable to theorize without the benefit of history! More of such back to basics, please!" (7/2/2001). Ipshita Chanda (2/18/2002) states: " I am part of a Department that runs the only full course on Literatures of Africa in our country, India - though we are constrained by having only literatures in European languages at present. We are exploring the possibility of setting up a centre for African Studies affiliated to the Faculty of Humanities (we call it Arts), and the enthusiasm of our students, who take the course despite the lack of lures like funding, and the diificult-to-access materails, has prompted us to explore possibilities of wider networking,

especially the forging of direct links without western mediation, based on the commonalities in our situations . In this regard, we have found the WAR especially useful for access to current state of scholarship, and would enthusiastically welcome closer links with the Africa Resource Centre.

We realize that the convenience of the Internet contributes to the success of the journals and other materials on the site. Its convenient 7/24access that is not possible in the medium of print explains the high content download. The Scout Report described africareosurce.com as offering "a wealth of Africa resources, including several additional ejournals, databases, bibliographies, an online art gallery, and more" Users such as Jillian, "love this Web-Site so much. You don't know how many times I come here a day" (4/5/2002) and Camille Gooodison talks of "literally spent hours going through all the goodies you have here. I especially like the poetry and other arts related materials. Wonderful!" (2/24/2002).

Users too have come from different parts of the world including Africa (see Table 4), proving the power of modern technology in disseminating information and the convenience of 24/7 access and instant download from any computer in the world. We are especially pleased with our African visitors given the all negative assessment about Internet connectivity and access in Africa. Although there is tremendous room for Internet growth in Africa, we are happy at the access and remain optimistic that it will grow.