[Sigiii-l] Plaza

[Wenke Adam]

I am one of the relatively few professional documentation and 
information management specialists in one of the poorest countries 
in the world, and my professional life has indeed changed radically 
as a result of the globalization of the information society. 

On the positive side it has taken me out of professional isolation, 
allowing me instant access to an international forum of colleagues 
to exchange ideas with. It gives me access to state-of-the-art 
technical information, the possibility of downloading and trying out 
new specialized software which would never have been available on 
the local market.

These empowering instruments allow me to find new, smarter 
solutions to the local problems we face in our professional day to 
day work. This has been exciting and rewarding. 

On the negative side, the pace of technological change and the 
inbuilt obsolescence of the ICT market is a permanent source of 
frustration as it constantly outruns my capacity to absorb it. 

The ever repeating learning curve to master ever changing 
technology is a hard price to pay for people in poor countries, and 
makes little sense to us, because most of the new functionalities 
that are being built into the latest technology has little to do with 
the infrastructural reality we live in.

The international information science & technology community 
should pay more attention to the fact that in poor countries IT may 
be used to solve a different set of problems than in the rich 
countries. Quite often, my local colleagues and I come up with 
brilliant ideas to put IT to work in long neglected areas of very basic 
and crucial local information management needs, but the 
international consultants and advisors to the Government and the 
donor community simply don't get it, they don't get excited about 
the projects because it might be something that their own (rich) 
countries solved decades ago -- maybe even manually -- so they 
can't even imagine what it might be to live in a situation where 
those services don't exist...


Wenke Adam
P.O.Box 928
Maputo, Mozambique
+258-1-495262 office
+258-82-314633 cell
wenke at tropical.co.mz