A clear view
It’s just as well we are seated looking away from the mountain view which gives the Mountain Inn its name. Even the view, pictured on the left, couldn’t quite compete with the discussion on gender and ICT’s.
I am at the first day of the Sangonet Swaziland THETA and my presentation is on Access to Knowledge and Open Licences.
The tension between traditional views of gender; ‘women are afraid of technology’ and the strong desire for development, especially ITC development, is a feature of the accelerated change African countries are going through in a short space of time, as compared to the many developed countries which experienced this change over decades or even centuries. The discussion is surprisingly amiable perhaps due to the realization that everyone faces these changes together.
One strength of African society’s facing the challenge of extreme technology changes, is a powerful sense of community.
If everyone is truly in this together then it makes sense to empower as many people in a society as possible. A vital way of doing this is by making information as freely available as possible. A ‘quick win’ (to lapse into NPO-speak) way to make information available is to use open licences whenever appropriate.
Thanks to David Barnard from SANGONET for the photograph. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license.