Kenyan Pundit

First speaker = Peter Schellschmidt (Head of Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s Media Project for Southern Africa)
- Future of state owned newspapers and news agencies in Africa has largely been neglected.
- Big issue is funding vis-a-vis editorial independence.
The rest of his talk was very dry.

Second speaker = Tawana Kupe (Head of the School of Literature, Languages and Media Studies at the University of Witwatersrand).
- Historically, Africa has never enjoyed public media.
- Public media is needed to promote sustainable democratization and socio-economic development.
- Public media often only media that can serve ALL.
- Public media nees independent governing boards.
- Private financing is the wrong way to go e.g. public media that relies on advertising - content will not be diverse and there is no accountability back to the citizen.
-challenge is falling between the state and the market and varying degrees of govt control and the struggle to give a voice to all.
SABC is a good example of the way to go but not the best example, they still have things to fix. Interestingly enough, Botswana which is considered to be a great example of democracy in Africa has totally state-controlled public media.
- The content tends to be voices and megaphones of govts, quality and independence of news, failure to address citizens need.
- What is to be done? He went to quickly and I couldn’t type fast enough - basically funding should be primarily public funding, more accountability to citizens, independent governance etc.

Third speaker = Arlindo Lopes, Secretary General designate of SABA - Southern African Broadcasting Association
This guy was the worst kind of conference speaker, the kind you find at U.N., AU, and NEPAD type meetings. He basically read a dry speech. Nothing worth blogging about.

Q&A Session:
1. What models should be used in thinking about public broadcasting?
Tawana: We should not look elsewhere e.g. BBC - Africans should be innovative.

2. Who should lead the agenda of public media?
Tawana: We are in an age of political laziness - citizens want rights, but we don’t want to do our part to keep democratic space open. Citizens /Civil Society should do their part to keep the democratic space open and drive the agenda, don’t cede power back to the State to drive the agenda.

The presentations that I have attended so far haven’t really been bloggable…here’s my first attempt to cover a workshop. The session is covering the status of the EASSY project. I expect the South Africa / Kenya tensions over the cable to come up in the discussion.

Dr Henry Chasia, the head of NEPAD’s E-Africa Commission was the main speaker. The highlights of his presentation focused on the background of the project:

- The cable is being developed in the context of NEPAD. 23 countries are involved.
- There are 3 components to the project: the development of the cable and the development of a broadband network first in East Africa then in West Africa.
- Network should be viewed as a public good and operate on a cost-recovery basis.
- Principles of the EASSY protocol:
1. Should be based on African ownership and leadership.
2. Should be based on African expertise.
3. Should reflect the partnership between African people.
4. Should reflect principles of regional cooperation.

- Benefits:
1. High capacity network to move traffic across the region.
2. Significant reduction in communication costs.

- Challenge: Achieving consensus on the policy framework.

Ben Akoh and Eric Osiakwan spoke on the challenges of regulation from the perspective of SAT3 users.
- Problem with the cable is that it was built by people interested in maintaining a monopoly structure. Primary beneficiary has been telcos.
- High costs of communciation: Ghana charges $3000 per MG/per second (on SaT3). Cameroon $15,000 per MG (on SaT3); South Africa $11,000 (on SAT 3).
- There’s very little media coverage on SaT3/EASSY and the infrastructure challenges around communication in Africa.
Eassy charges expected to be btwn $1000-$1500.
- Without infrastructure improvement - any talk about E-governement, e-service, e-commerce, outsourcing etc. can’t go far.
- Routing local web traffic internationally is consting the continent about $400 million a year. Costs for routing mobile calls between african countries is even higher. For more stats on connectivity within Africa, click here.
- Reducing Sat3 costs: Mauritus Case Study - declare that the cable is an “essential facility.” (Telkom SA is fighting that).
- How should EASSY be different: Separate ownership issues vs. access issues. Anyone should be able to invest in EASSY not just govt.
- KDN’s plans to build a competing cable is great - more competition, better prices.
- For more background on the status of fibre projects in Africa, click here.

From the Q&A Session:

- Are Kenya’s concerns about EASSY legitimate?
Dr. Chassia: Kenya has been part of the process, through out they should have raised their issues during the process e.g. with regards to the protocol they should have submitted their comments on the draft (4 countries did that) so far they’ve sent in nothing.

- A comment - enough is not being done to translate the implication of EASSY to the average person.

My take: So far, I’m pessimitic about the odds of a succesful outcome via the NEPAD process. Too many conflicting interests (and room for lots of conferences to resolve them). I hope I’m wrong. In the meantime, I think Kenya should go it alone and resell to interested parties at a competitive price.

So, I have just landed in Grahamstown for Highway Africa for the early part of the week and later in the week the “great-white-folk-
d0-gooder-conspiracy -to-do-God-knows-what-to-ultimately-throttle-the-African-blogosphere-or-something-like-that” (tongue firmly in cheek, and wake me up as soon as “true” Africans plan, fund, and organize, the “true” African blogging indab…um..meet-up).

So, I have just landed in Grahamstown for Highway Africa for the early part of the week and later in the week the “great-white-folk-d0-gooder-
conspiracy-to-do-God-knows-what-to-ultimately-throttle-the-African-blogosphere-or-something-like-that” (tongue firmly in cheek, and wake me up as soon as “true” Africans plan, fund, and organize, the “true” African blogging indab…um..meet-up).

First, I am a woman.

i.e. Ms. Ory Okolloh.

Kevin Kelley’s original article that was submitted to the Nation editors was gender-neutral, but the editors, in their wisdom, (wrongly) assumed that I was a man and stuck the Mr. label (perhaps influenced by gender stereotypes and the idea that the average Kenyan woman cannot be this interested in politics).

Second, welcome…poke around and please return (you can subscribe to receive updates by email, see the sidebar). Frequent blogging will resume next week, beginning with coverage of Africa’s first blogging conference.

If you are looking for the Mzalendo link, click here.

EDIT: My beef with being labeled a man, doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the publicity…as someone told me yesterday, there’s no such thing as bad publicity