Huub Mudde, Coordinator Euforic

Listening and watching to the first world wide Jazz concert - with musicians in Geneva and Toronto - was for me a positive and relaxing end of a very inspiring but tiresome participation of the World Summit on the Information Society. The ICT for Development Platform was the place to be, with a large diversity of civil society organisations, countries and private companies presenting their programmes. This ICT4D Platform was a very dynamic, stimulating exhibition and networking market.

I participated in the WSIS in my capacity of Coordinator of Euforic (Europe's Forum on International Cooperation). Euforic provides a focal point on the Internet for organisations and communities involved in Europe's international co-operation. It promotes transparency in Europe's international co-operation by providing an independent platform for debate, building an organized Internet database of otherwise scattered resource on Europe's international cooperation, and by bringing people together for collective action.

The issue of the relation between ICTs and achieving the Millennium Development Goals was explicitly taken up. The importance of ICTs was put into the context of achieving the 8th goal, which stresses the importance of partnerships to be developed. It was stated that networking and partnerships are needed to ensure digital inclusion, and that ICTs are facilitating this process by enabling information sharing and communication. It is worthwhile noticing that only a few days after the summit, Ms. Herfkens, Executive Coordinator of the Millennium Development Campaign of the UN, was rather outspoken stating that education for all is a much higher priority than ICTs. At the Euforic Re-launch event on December 18, she stressed to be against competing issues in a situation of decreasing budgets, and was pleased that a new fund for ICT was not approved. For a report on this meeting, see http://www.euforic.org.

However, at the summit there was a wide shared understanding that ICTs - if properly used - are a key enabler for development, although certain parties tended to replace 'development' by 'the economy'. It is obvious that private sector played and is playing a dominant role in the fast developments in ICT, focusing on spreading new technology and applications aiming universal access. The most prominent phenomenon in this context is the fast increase of mobile phones which has been completely market driven. In Africa, five years after the introduction of the mobile phones, the number of mobile phone connections already outnumbered the number of fixed lines, the latter being the result of a development of hundred years. Globally, it has taken ten years to outnumber the number of fixed lines. Southern speakers emphasised the usability of mobile phones. In particular they stressed the time saved. For example, a woman selling vegetables on a regional market only needs to make one phone call to her home to ask for more stock, in stead of wasting two days to travel and get this by herself. The same is relevant for bringing messages across on death, birth or illness of friends and relatives. This advantage in combination with the low and user-variable costs, are the main success factors of the introduction of the mobile phones in the South. This brought a high level NOKIA spokesman to say that the ultimate goal of the summit should be to stimulate access for all, which is a rather private sector biased formulation, overlooking societal reality with the diversity of needs, visions and political strands.

An Indian high official made an interesting statement in which he made a plea for a change in mind sets by all actors, as well as patterns of behaviour and culture, to be able to get the results as needed for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. He stressed that if all would continue business as usual, the Goals could not be met. Hence, governments should take a more creative view in stead of basing actions on a sense of regulation and control. Private sector was challenged to take up social responsibility as integral part of their business models, whilst civil society should make a real contribution of mobilising social forces beyond their traditional critical advocacy role.

Euforic participated in the WSIS in order to establish alliances with like-minded organisations and to explore how the impact of European information initiatives like Euforic on policy development in the South could be increased. In this context, the ACP-EU CS Information Network project was brought to the attention, an Internet-based information sharing effort coordinated by Euforic (http://acp-eu.euforic.org/civsoc). As follow-up to the summit, Euforic would like to enter into an electronic discussion around three items:

. What are the needs of the South with regard to information required for policy debates?

. What information-sharing mechanisms are successful and what are the gaps in the existing approaches?

. What is the role of Northern actors and how can they improve the effectiveness of their initiatives at bridging the disparity in policy debates between the North and the South?

If you are interested, please visit our website or contact us via civsoc@euforic.org.

Huub Mudde, Coordinator Euforic
Europe's Forum on International Cooperation
http://www.euforic.org