Eberhard Blocher

Tanzania's presence at WSIS was quite impressive. One or two stands seemed to be empty, but otherwise, it sure was a big effort by everyone from Tanzania (Kenya, too). It was the first UN summit I ever attended, so I was quite shocked to find ever so many Swiss army officers, acting on behalf of the UN, body- searching everyone and X-raying handbags at the entrance. This nearly made me turn and head back home on the very first day. It sure does not create a cozy atmosphere to see soldiers and guns several times a day.

I spent most of my time at the ICT4D exhibition in hall four of WSIS. Great to meet people from

Tanzania, Kenya, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, SIDA, DFID, IICD - well, the lot. If you are interested in ICT4D you will be aware of the main actors. They were all present in Geneva. So basically, people were strolling through hall four all the time, shaking hands and meeting old acquaintances and making new friends. Contrary to what I wrote in the last paragraph, it was a somewhat homely atmosphere. Total attendance was unbelievably small if you compare it to big IT fairs like CeBIT. The only "major companies" present were Nokia,

Hewlett Packard, and Microsoft - although those were just "showing off" and not really presenting any serious product you might be interested in getting to know. But then, this was meant to be for NGOs, Governments, Civil Society.

So for example, I found myself chatting with Uma Chandrasekharan from Bangalore, India, which might be difficult to justify in the end, since we are mainly working with people in East Africa and I am therefore not really all that much interested in Asia. It might therefore prove difficult to put the experience gained here into good use. But anyway, this happens if you put people from all over the world into one big hall and "leave them there for three days to work it out" :-)

From what I gathered about the "Official Part of WSIS", well, what can I say. I did see Kofi Annan who walked past me on the way to one meeting, while I was heading in the other direction for another meeting, but I did get the impression that all this was very much frantic action yielding few results. Hundreds of official delegates from all over the world went

on talking for three days in the main plenary hall, so at twenty minutes per delegate this would make around seventy-five speeches (my guess). From what I could see, all 75 speeches were more or less the same. 75 times a repetition of the same commitments. Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Economic Minister Clement cancelled their scheduled attendance at WSIS at the last minute, just to give you an example. Instead, Germany was represented by Rezzo Schlauch, Member of Parliament, who is around number seven at the German Ministry of

Economics. This goes a long way in demonstrating the importance WSIS was attributed to by some governments. From what I gathered, most other European governments sent someone of equal "importance" to Geneva. There were some Prime Ministers and Presidents present,

e.g. from Bangladesh, Romania, and Uzbekistan.

To sum it up, it was great going to Geneva, since for me personally it meant meeting very many people who are all very much interested in the development of ICT in Africa. I learned a lot from those professionals and tremendously enjoyed talking to all of them.

Eberhard Blocher
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