Journal of Community Informatics Southern Africa Special Issue: Editorial

1. Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Capetown, South Africa. Email: pathers@cput.ac.za
2. Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, South Africa. Email: jphahlamohlaka@csir.co.za

It is with great pleasure that we present the first Southern African special issue of The Journal of Community Informatics. This is the culmination of a long journey, which started with an initial discussion with the Editor-in-Chief, Dr Michael Gurstein, almost three years ago. After the initial call, in latter 2012, all submissions were subjected to an initial filtering in terms of alignment to the scope of the call. Thereafter all papers have been subjected to a double-blind peer review process, with some papers going through three iterations of review. As the editors of this special issue, we would like to thank all of the authors who responded to the call, and to the reviewers who have diligently cooperated with the editors throughout the process of review. Our heartfelt gratitude is extended also to the JoCI Editor in Chief for the unstinting support in ensuring the special edition has come together.

One of the objectives of the call for the special issue was to begin a process of building a consolidated Community Informatics (CI) body of knowledge which was rooted in the African continent. Africa represents a substantive portion of the developing world and over the past decade there has been heightened attention on the role of ICTs, especially that of broadband Internet, across the developing nations in terms of enabling much needed socio-economic growth.

Current statistics regarding Internet penetration are not encouraging. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) reported that in Africa, only 16% of people are using the Internet - only half the penetration rate of Asia and the Pacific (ITU, 2013). However governments, non-governmental organizations and telecommunication operators are hard at work in Africa to promote universal access to the Internet. Between 2009 and 2013, Internet penetration in households has grown fastest in Africa, with an annual growth of 27%, followed by 15% annual growth in Asia and the Pacific, the Arab States and the CIS (ITU, 2013). As the continued effort at increasing access across Africa continues, it is incumbent on ourselves as academic stakeholders to play a continued role in ensuring a suitable knowledge base to support the objective that the accelerated deployment of physical infrastructure should result in positive developmental outcomes for especially the marginalized and rural populations.

The role of ICTs as a catalyst for development is well documented in several studies. However, we still have some ways to go in terms of building a more robust and cohesive trans-disciplinary body of knowledge to support policy-makers, practitioners and grassroots communities to better understand the role of ICTs in fostering a wide range of expectations. Not least of this, is the Community Informatics perspective (Gurstein 2007) which concerns how bottom-up community-based ICT processes lead to real and sustainable social and economical change. The special issue is thus a first step by the JoCI to consolidate work done in Africa, with an initial Southern African focus. The building of a coherent body of knowledge in any field does require continuing debate, theory development, and frameworks for organizing an emerging and constantly growing body of research.

Given that we did not limit the call to a specific thematic area of research, the papers in this special issue focus on a broad range of issues. The role of mobile telephony continues to receive attention. Johnston and Bacishoga examine the impact of mobile phones in enhancing the integration of refugees in the South African context. This is a unique look at this group of users, whose plight as refugees across Africa is often not a priority and whose needs are usually relegated to the bottom of the pile of local priorities. Using an action research approach, Van Biljoen et al investigate mobile phone acceptance by the elderly in South Africa, with an initial focus on accessibility barriers. After investigating accessibility from the perspective of the older mobile phone user, they report on the usage of the phone, and observations made by student interviewers during the training of the elderly to do a new task on their mobile phone. Their goal in the study was to break down accessibility barriers and to encourage mutually beneficial inter-generational knowledge transfer. Van Belle et al argue for the use of mobile platforms in the provision of government services. They present survey data which also covers a wide range of services which again shows the span of potential services that government could provide to its citizens from a mobile platform. Their paper followed a very structured approach by firstly explaining the hypothesis using the literature, followed by a statistical approach to present the findings in an argumentative manner.

Attwood et al present their results from a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project on the role of telecentres in improving the lives of a local community. These findings are especially relevant, given that many countries continue to factor in public access centres within their universal access strategies. Unfortunately the debate on the success of such centres continues, and this study provides an argument as to how telecentre should be re-invented as active citizen development centres. Turpin et al also contribute to the discourse on telecentres by providing a systems thinking perspective for the evaluation of ICT for development (ICT4D) projects' contributions to the socio-economic development of the broader community. Their use of a social systems framework to understand development within the wider community provides a basis for further research into evaluation models and methodologies in this context.

The education theme also features in the special issue. Musiyandaka et al present the result of their study conducted in the Mashonaland West Province of Zimbabwe. The study offers unique insight and solutions to low levels of adoption within the schooling system. Using a framework based on Activity Theory, Mlitwa and Koranteng present the results of an empirical investigation into the status of ICT deployment; ICT integration, and ICT skills amongst educators in four underdeveloped schools in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. They do this in order to assess progress on the implementation of the e-Education Policy in South Africa which has been in place since 2003. Their findings indicate that the status of ICT deployment and its integration into school curricula is far from favourable in underdeveloped schools in the Western Cape. They recommend an increased investment in ICT skills training for educators. Their study shows the value of theory use in the analysis of Community Informatics studies.

Mooketsi shows how a locally relevant problem in Botswana could benefit from an existing information system, the Live Stock Identification and Track-back System (LITS) that is used by cattle farmers in Botswana for cattle tracking. The system has originally been developed in response to European Union requirements, but is currently also used for Botswana regulatory and governance requirements. The study exposes how lack of communication and coordination to meet stakeholders' needs is leading to an inefficient use of the system. It then contributes to Community Informatics by making recommendations of how the system could better be deployed to help local cattle owners.

Steyn et al report on a project in which they also used the PAR approach to undertake what they call a Participatory Entrepreneurship Development (PED) project. They pursued a relatively radical participatory approach to ICT services development within a marginalized community. The project aimed to develop ICT-based solutions to community problems by stimulating entrepreneurship amongst community members. The community nominated participants who, after receiving some training, created their own list of possible ICT services that could be deployed for the benefit of their community. Participants were exposed to participatory methods as well as to possible ICT solutions. They discovered in their study, a lack of understanding of and disconnection from the broader ICT techno-business ecosystem. To bridge this gap, they propose a longer-term exposure to the broader ICT and business ecosystem environment before appropriate, workable ideas can be generated. This is consistent with our experience from longitudinal studies on the Siyabuswa Educational Improvement and Development Trust (SEIDET) spanning more than two decades in the environment of Siyabuswa, a former township area in Mpumalanga State, South Africa.

The paper by Bagui and Bytheway uses Actor Network Theory (ANT) to explore the use of mobile, web and social media technologies in achieving eParticipation in the city of Cape Town. They point out that the use of mobile, web and social media technologies is widely expected to be an important feature of improving public participation in government in the city of Cape Town, but what they found was that the necessary transformation that would enable it is far from complete. The application of ANT using data gathered from literature and document review, in-depth interviews and focus group in Cape Town, reveals dynamics both favouring and impeding the achievement of eParticipation in the city. Their conclusion drawn from an ANT perspective is that the hopes and expectations of individual Actors are dashed by the limited extent and quality of the network that presently supports them.

Perhaps one of the most well documented cases of a sustained enquiry on how ICT could be used to support socio-economic development in South Africa, worthy of mention in this special issue, is the work done by researchers from the Department of Informatics at the University of Pretoria in partnership with the Siyabuswa community (Roode, 2008) (reviewed by M. Gurstein in this special issue). In his editorial commentaries on the academic research at the SEIDET including lessons learned and attempts to generalise from ICT related work, all undertaken over more than a decade, leading South African IT Professor Dewald Roode had this to say:

"Most of research on the use of ICT to further socio-economic development in developing countries has come up against a formidable barrier of complexity, and successes have been few and far between. Perhaps it is fair to conclude that the issue is not so much that of complexity, be that as important as it may, but rather the approach taken by the researchers. What is reported here shows that while intentions were always good, approaches taken were often misguided in that they attempted to introduce the "saviour" ICT from the developed world to a developing community. The humble researcher, striving to gain an understanding of the real needs of such a community, works with the community to discover how development could be promoted and attempts to support this process. His or her research agenda is, therefore, determined not by what would be "nice" to research, but by what the situation requires" (Roode, 2008, p. x, in Phahlamohlaka et al, 2008).

Here Roode was sharing his insights and those of several other researchers drawn from their involvement at and with SEIDET. The point he was making was that even after more than a decade of sustained Community Informatics work, progress remained slow - and that the slowness was echoing experiences from around the world. Referring to the same work at SEIDET and the experiences learned from it, Phahlamohlaka also shares some words of caution and advice to researchers from developing countries:

"ICT4D researchers from developing countries do not need to rush their research projects and programmes with the hope that they will catch up with the pace of the developed world. Instead, they must leverage the unique characteristics of the developing world, which has needs that if properly understood through well designed longitudinal research studies, could provide fertile grounds for scholarly work on how ICT could support socio-economic development goals" (Phahlamohlaka, 2012).

Finally, but not least, we dedicate this special issue to Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. On 5th December 2013, South Africa, the Southern African Community and indeed the rest of the world lost one of our most remarkable leaders, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. The late President Mandela, a Nobel Peace laureate, was a champion of the marginalized people. When he stood in the dock at the famous Rivonia Trial he said "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities."

In many ways the Community Informatics movement represents the struggle to ensure equality and justice for all. That the digital divide continues to perpetuate a system of class separatism is not acceptable. Thus in memory of our beloved Madiba, we call upon the entire CI fraternity to continue with the hard work with more gusto and speed, within the ambit of our fields of study, and even beyond, as we strive towards the achievement of the ideals that our great icon stood for. ~Hambe Kahle Madiba~

REFERENCES

Gurstein, M. (2007). What is community informatics? (and why does it matter?). Milan: Polimetrica.

ITU (2013). ICT facts and figures. Geneva: International Telecommunication Union.

Phahlamohlaka, J. (2012). Community - academia R&D collaboration in ICT4D: rivers crossed through the SEIDET Bridge and some roads to be made as they are walked. ICT4D Seminar, February 8, University of South Africa. http://www.unisa.ac.za/Default.asp?Cmd=ViewContent&contentID=27712

Roode, D. (2008). Academic research at SEIDET: lessons learned and attempts to generalize. In Phahlamohlaka, J. (Ed.)., Community driven projects: reflections on a success story, a case study of science education and information technology in South Africa. Pretoria: Van Schaik Publishers.