The web and democracy in Africa

ABUJA, NIGERIA -- Kalu Otisi clicked a mouse for the first time in his life last week. He opened a browser and a whole new world.

The veteran Nigerian TV newscaster and journalist has survived military coups, dictatorships and civil wars. Now he took his first tentative steps in cyberspace.

Like many in the newsroom of NTA, the state broadcasting corporation, Otisi had heard a lot about the Web but had never actually seen it.

Corruption is a way of life in Nigeria and it did not take long to find Web stories about the millions of dollars plundered by the former military dictator, General Sani Abacha, who ruled the country with an iron fist and very greasy fingers.

Otisi and his colleagues huddled around the one computer in the room with Web access, eager for a chance to explore this strange, new universe of hot links and bookmarks.

They gasp as they find a detailed news report which says that Luxembourg authorities had just frozen the bulging bank accounts of the former dictator, totalling a whopping $600 million.

"There are many challenges for an emerging democracy like Nigeria and the Web now gives us access to what is happening in other countries, " Otisi said.

 

You would think the last thing people need in poor countries emerging from military rule or civil war is Internet training. But that was my assignment, as part of a two-week course in investigative journalism sponsored by the World Bank Institute , the Commonwealth Broadcasters Association and the Canadian International Development Association.

It was a humbling experience. In North America, we take fast, cheap access to the Web for granted. Children play on it, consumers surf for bargains, businesses make millions.

But in Africa, journalists are hungry to use the Web as a tool for democracy despite the daunting obstacles.

In Nigeria, Africa's largest and most populous country, the Internet was effectively banned in 1996 under the former military regime for reasons of "national security."

Now, the Web is poised to become a central weapon in the fight to preserve and expand press freedom.

One newspaper even used the Net to stay alive. The editor of The News, Babafemi Ojudu, says in a 1997 crackdown, the government seized the newspaper's telephone lines, but Ojudu managed to stay in touch with his reporters by hooking up his laptop to friends' phones and used the Web to obtain vital information.

 

Nigeria's new, democratically-elected president Olusegun Obasanjo is no longer jailing or shooting journalists who dare to speak out. But the government is still trying to control the flow of information.

"There is a lot that we are not aware of, that the government is not giving out," says Viola Ombu, a senior news producer.

She cites the travels abroad of President Obasanjo (who has just ended a four-day visit to Canada) where he has given interviews to foreign media that are more explicit than those for domestic consumption.

"With the Web, we can compare and contrast what is being said around the world about our country, " says Ombu.

Still, the TV reporters in Nigeria face a slow trek into the brave new world of cyber news. The phone service is so unreliable in Nigeria, modem connections hover around a glacially-slow 9600 kps - and that's when the phone line works at all. Typewriters, not computer screens, dot the newsroom.

In the capital city of Abuja, the largest TV network still has only one functioning Internet connection.

CHALLENGES IN GHANA

In neighbouring Ghana, another country emerging from the shadow of military rule, the challenges are equally daunting.

 

Consider the task facing Rayborn Bulley, a business reporter for the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation.

His country's currency is in freefall. The 20 million people in this still shaky democracy in West Africa go to the polls next fall for only the second time in decades. Under military rule, the press was effectively silenced.

Now Bulley wants to cover the economic crisis - and he needs the Web to do his job. "The Web puts African journalists on a more level playing field with any other journalist in the developed world," says Bulley. "You can easily access and search for background information in a way we never could before. I can check on companies that are investing here."

He uses the Web to break stories about local companies that are in trouble abroad. He accesses international reports and analysis of Ghana's economic crisis.

But a new computer costs about seven million Cedis (the local currency), more than an average journalist earns in a year. There are only three computers with access to the Web in the TV and radio newsrooms of Ghana's national broadcasting corporation. Only two of the four printers work because ink cartridges cost 400,000 Cedis, about one month's wages.

Cost is not the only barrier. There are fewer phones in all of Africa than in the city of Tokyo. No surprise that only 0.2 per cent of Africa's 800 million people use the Web, two-thirds of them from South Africa.

 

Still, there is evidence of a Web explosion all over Ghana. Internet cafes have tripled in the past year to 15. Last year 15,000 Ghanaians went online - a fivefold leap from 1998.

And it didn't take long for journalists at Ghana Television to figure out ways to use the Web creatively.

For example, in the wake of student protests against education cutbacks, they hunted for statistics on literacy and school enrollment in Ghana . They found several revealing reports from UNICEF and other agencies.

International monitoring agencies also helped journalists track corruption in Ghana: it ranks in the top third of corrupt nations according to one reliable report on the web (http:www.transparency.de)

"Before I had to follow one source for information and if they wanted to slant it, it was hard for me to tell," said John Ayena, the foreign news editor for Ghana Television. "Now I see what the world is saying"

Back in Nigeria, what the world is saying is still enthralling the journalists taking their first cyber footsteps.

"I see the Internet giving us more choices - it's a library to help us understand the issues better," concluded Ayinde Soaga, a business reporter. "You are emboldened."

In other words, the windows that are opening in the newsrooms of Africa are not just on computer screens. And who knows what Africa's newly-emboldened Web journalists will find as they begin to click their way to freedom.

(This article first appeared on the CBC Online News site.)

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