Towards a Sustainable Development View of Local Content using ICTs in South Africa: A Key Priority in the National Information Society

This 38-page paper, published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), explores the links between sustainable development and the South African information society (IS) and examines projects that create and disseminate local content with the support of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The paper proposes the need for a broader definition of local content in the IS strategy, one that is framed within sustainable development principles rather than the current context of arts, culture, and heritage.

The report explores the issue of local content, including its definition and importance globally and locally, its current prevalence in SA, and the reasons for associating it with arts, culture, and heritage. These include the fact that the arts and heritage have traditionally held an important role in South African society, and the increased recognition of the rights and values of indigenous people, practices and knowledge post-Apartheid. The paper goes on to examine three organisations that use ICTS to create and disseminate local content which provide examples of initiatives that support sustainable development principles and goals. These organisations are:

• Open Knowledge Network (OKN): OKN is an international initiative that supports local content creation in local languages with the supports of ICTs. According to the author, the organisation launched a mobile project in Kenya, OKN Mobile, which aims to provide timely, appropriate, and relevant information via text message. This includes job alerts, tips on pertinent health issues, an SMS2Email service that allows people to anonymously ask HIV/AIDS and breast cancer related questions, and a community news service.
• Mindset Network: This is a South African educational non-profit organisation that generates relevant, contextually-based, multimedia content. It has several channels that each offer content in video, web, and print format. Video content is broadcast in schools and clinics (depending on the subject matter) either via satellite or closed circuit, and content is available on the website.
• Centre for e-Innovation (CeI): This is the main e-government body in the Provincial Government of the Western Cape. It provides access to government information and services through a call centre, walk-in centre, and portal. It also provides ICT access and literacy training at rural sites.

The report contains several recommendations regarding local content and ICTs. It recommends that the government portray ICTs not as an end unto themselves, but rather as powerful tools that need to be managed and integrated into society along the principles of sustainable development. In order to help the national IS strategy couch the IS within sustainable development, the author recommends the IS should provide tangible benefits to using ICTs to achieve sustainable development goals, for example, demonstrate how ICTs help a girl leaving school to find employment. Finally, the report recommends that the national IS strategy should define local content as something bigger than arts, culture, and heritage. Because local content runs right through the other four priority areas — e-health, e-education, e-government and SMMEs — local content should rather become an underlying "pillar," or a sub-component of each of the other four areas. The author states that taking a broad view of local content, one that can work when applied to any sector, will help people to make the connection between their needs, their personal and wider community motivators, and how ICTs can meet these.