Access
The internet is changing the ways in which people interact, trade, learn and communicate. For those who have got access to it, it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine life without it. It offers us all kinds of opportunities, including exercising our human rights both online and offline, as different United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council resolutions have established. The internet also holds the promise of being a great equaliser. On the internet, traditionally marginalised people a...
The African market is flooded with zero rating services such as Free Basics (Facebook’s zero rating scheme) and other subsidised data strategies. Do these schemes make internet more affordable and bring access to more people in Africa? The main plus for Free Basics has been that it provides free watered down internet access to those who don't usually have that kind of access, even to selected sites and to social media. In this column I will examine if this is seen as a major data saving str...
"I had this idea that being techie was a guy’s thing, so now I'm not sure if not being interested enough on classes as physics or chemistry was an election or a cultural imposition."Francesca Arrocha (Panamá) This is the final output resource produced by a community of participants in IGF best practice forum (BPF) on gender and access in 2016. This is also the second resource produ...
Bridging the gender digital divide to realise women’s human rights. Side event at the Human Rights Council’s 35th Session on Thursday, 15 June, 15:00-16:30 Room XXIV, Palais des Nations The internet can be harnessed as a powerful enabler of human rights, but only for those who have access to it. Today, in every region in the world, internet penetration rates remain higher for men than ...
The Stockholm Internet Forum (SIF), an international forum for discussions on how a free, open and secure internet promotes human rights and development worldwide, has started in Stockholm. Hosted by the the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), this space aims to bring together policy makers, civil society representatives, activists, business representatives...
Do you remember why you went online for the first time in your life? This is my favourite question that you may not have yet thought about – but it reflects the starting point in becoming a netizen. This is the second in the series of columns on Access and Beyond that chronicles the research conducted by Research ICT Africa in Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa and Nigeria. In this column ...
Guifi.net is, in the words of its members, a bottom-up, citizen-driven technological, social and economic project with the objective of creating a free, open and neutral telecommunications network. The Guifi.net project puts in practice a disruptive economic model based on the commons model and the collaborative economy, in which volunteers, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and pu...
Guifi.net (pronounced /’gIfI/) is a bottom-up, citizen-driven technological, social and economic project with the objective of creating a free, open and neutral telecommunications network. The Guifi.net project puts in practice a disruptive economic model based on the commons model and the collaborative economy, in which volunteers, SMEs and public administrations cooperate to build and oper...
Do you remember 1989? It was a year of political turning points in history: the first Brazilian presidential elections in 29 years, after the end of the military dictatorship in 1985; the beginning of the end for the apartheid regime in South Africa; the fall of the Eastern Bloc, with the opening of the Berlin Wall in November. And, as Wikipedia well states, 1989 was the year in which New Zeala...
A project registered as a cooperative, Zenzeleni means “do it yourselves” in isiXhosa, one of the official languages of South Africa. What led to this amazing community initiative? is the question featured on the project’s website. The short answer is prices, since compared to similar countries, South African communication costs are still very high. However, there is more to it than price...
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