"Information technology is not a magic formula that is going to solve all our problems. But it is a powerful force that can and must be harnessed to our global mission of peace and development."

-- Kofi Annan¹
7th Secretary-General of the United Nations
November 5, 2002

Information technology, or more accurately, information and communication technology (ICT) should not be confused with any all-encompassing solution to a nation's problems. It is not a "magic formula" by any stretch of the imagination, and anyone who thinks that is fooling themselves. But under the right conditions, the Internet can take hold firmly and be used as a real tool for development.

In the nations of the so-called "developing world", ICT isn't always a number one priority, and rightfully so. Political stability, economic development, hunger, disease, and even the end of war cannot be solved simply by a few networked computers. In fact, many developing nations must overcome these much more basic principles before they can begin to incorporate ICT into any future vision for their country. Any ICT strategy that has been implemented must be done so after certain conditions are met.

The case of ICT in Senegal is an interesting one, as these conditions have been met. While still low on the United Nations list of Human Development Index (154, whereas the United States is 6) and the Technology Achievement Index (0.158, whereas the United States is 0.733), it has done many things right. Since independence from France in 1960, Senegal has known no major political upheaval, no major internal or external armed conflict, has had peaceful transitions to local democracy. Almost half a century has passed since independence, and Senegal still has a great deal of untapped potential. As Mamadou Gaye, the director of CRESP (a Dakar-based Senegalese ICT-focused NGO) put it, "Senegal missed the first two Industrial Revolutions. It better not miss the Information Revolution." ²

Missing the Information Revolution would in fact, be devastating to Senegal, or any developing country. As the gap between rich and poor, have and have-nots, and the Digital Divide grows wider, the ideal solution is not to use ICT as its own end, but rather a means -- a force to be "harnessed", as Secretary-General Annan says, to increase social development.

"Two sometimes contradictory factors -- the urgency of finding lasting solutions to problems of education, health, and food self-sufficiency for the majority of the population; and the understandable desire to be part of global advances by investing in technologies that may be seen a useless, or even indecent luxury -- would appear to leave the African countries with a dilemma. Nevertheless, in weighing the pros and cons, there are those who believe that Africa should be connected and incorporate this technology in order to overcome the existing gap between the information-poor and the information-rich. While acknowledging that connecting to the information superhighway carries or increasing the inequalities between rich and poor countries, and, within countries, between rich and poor, it is believed that neglecting to do so would constitute a further obstacle to economic progress and social development." [Sagna, 16]

As Olivier Sagna, the leading Senegalese ICT academic, notes, it is important to overcome popular belief that ICT is irrelevant in Senegal, that it is merely a toy with no useful purpose. Of course, if the majority of people do not have access to this technology, because it is concentrated in one part of the country (which it is), or concentrated mostly amongst one demographic (which it is), or because it is expensive (becoming less and less true) -- a sudden influx of ICT infrastructure will do no good.

Many technology determinists, such as Marshall McLuhan, will argue that technology itself is a driving force in a society -- that the technology itself creates fundamental changes in the society.

"As far back as the early 1960s Marshall McLuhan was articulating a position which was predicated on the assumption that media technologies are the most significant determinants of social organisation and change. The foundation upon which the 'global village' is built is the instantaneous transmittability of information. McLuhan's insistence that information and communication technologies are specific catalysts and determinants of social re-organisation has been echoed by other important thinkers both radical and neo-conservative" ^2a

" Marshall McLuhan's work is full of the language of technological determinism (McLuhan 1962, 1964, 1969; McLuhan & Fiore 1967). McLuhan saw changes in the dominant medium of communication as the main determinant of major changes in society, culture and the individual. For instance, print created individualism, privacy, specialization, detachment, mass production, nationalism, militarism, the dissociation of sensibility (a split between head and heart), and so on." ^2b

Despite these assertions, technology cannot determine the future of Senegal, or any other nation. Technology, while a catalyst, should not be considered as the only catalyst for a developing nation. For technology's effectiveness to be realized, we need not only an academic perspective, but more importantly, a local argument from the people themselves -- the techno-savvy community of Senegal. The goal of this paper will be to provide an illustration as to the current status of the Internet in Senegal, to show how the beginnings of ICT can aid development, and also to provide a discussion of the present hurdles facing technology deployment in Senegal.

What's the big deal, anyway?

The biggest advantage of ICT is the power of quick extremely low-cost communcation. For example, a Senegalese woman calling New York from Dakar to correspond with her daughter living there will be charged 265 CFA ($0.44 US³) per minute (for calls after 8 pm) [Brun, 3]. This translates into 15,900 CFA ($26.76 US) per hour -- and if she were making this call even once a week for an hour each time, it would cost her a total of 63,600 CFA ($107.07 US) per month. Now, to spend that same hour writing an email to her daughter in a cybercafe, would cost her around 2000 CFA ($3.36 US) for the entire month -- a fraction of what it would cost to telephone. This simple personal communication can also be translated to intra and inter-business communication as well. One could imagine the entire gamut of communication, ranging from ordering new products, to communicating with internal employees spread out over a large geographic area.

In addition to increased communication between entities, the dissemination of information is also an important part that should not be overlooked. Indeed, it is the first component of the acronym ICT -- Information. The beauty (and also the horror) of the Internet, is that it allows anyone and everyone to publish whatever they want. While the Senegalese mainstream press has been releasing information that the government isn't letting on all that it knows about how many actually died in the capsizing of Le Joola, the Senegalese ferry that went down in September 2002, independent web-based media (such as www.indymedia.org) or blogs would be another way to counter the information monopoly that the government seems to have. (Indeed, on February 3, 2003, they revised their official death toll from 1,153 to 1,800.)

Some, though, have do not see the world through rose-colored glasses as the technophiles would have us believe. Many concerns have been presented in relation to connecting the developing world (South) to the developed world (North), some will argue that this will only add fuel to the fire of the Digital Divide. Such arguements have been presented as early as 1996, when, the online edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, a French weekly newspaper which focuses on international politics, had a forum on their website entitled Internet Nord-Sud. There, Internet users from around the world went back and forth on the problems with Internet deployment in the South, and what potential benefits and consequences it would have. Many there argued that as the Internet was being deployed in Africa for the first time, that it would do nothing but create further social problems, and would further enfranchise the established elite with simply another tool.

Even as early as 1989 the Senegalese government itself recognized the potential problems with deployment of ICT in a developing nation.

"...the progress of information technologies will most likely promote the dissemination of Western cultural models and values, and will thus hasten the decline of traditional values, primarily in urban settings and among young people (i.e., in the dominant urban culture)... But the risk is great that these technologies will benefit only a privileged minority (with access and skills), accentuating inequalities in a dual, splintered society with a privileged minority, while the masses are excluded from growth."⁴

While the arguments seem to have been acknowledged that the Internet could pose social problems to Senegal and other developing nations, no one has yet been able to show demonstratively that it has indeed had a detrimental effect. Indeed, the simple economic difference as a cheap and amazingly powerful communication tool is hard to overlook, and it is one that without it, would only do more to keep Senegal underdeveloped.

As recently as March 2003⁵, the US State Department, USAID, the Peace Corps, and others have come together to create the “Digital Freedom Initiative”, a joint private-public pilot program with the following three goals:

• Placing volunteers in small businesses to share business knowledge and technology expertise;
• Promoting pro-growth regulatory and legal structures to enhance business competitiveness; and
• Leveraging existing technology and communications infrastructure in new ways to help entrepreneurs and small businesses better compete in both the regional and global market place.

The American and Senegalese governments both recognize the sheer economic advantages of integrating ICT into an existing market. As the State Department's press release reads: “One third of the world could be left behind if more is not done to provide developing countries with the skills, knowledge, and access to markets necessary to compete.”⁶ It goes on to point out the fact that in the 1990s, developing countries, which experienced an explosion of ICT in their own countries, saw an across the board per capita income increase of five percent. During that same time period, developing countries saw a decrease of per capita income by one percent.

Coupled with the American technological aid, Senegal is in a prime spot to not only invest in ICT itself, but computer training and economic incentives. With a small investment in a relatively cheap technology which is as vibrant and dynamic as ICT, the private sector can easily take advantage of these new markets.

Just as the North countries privately and publicly invested in ICT during the 1980s and 1990s, and saw a resulting economic boom, it has become clear that the effects of ICT cannot be ignored.

In fact, it is the coupling of ICT and other additional factors -- and not ICT alone -- that will bear real progress. As stated in "The Development Divide in a Digital Age"⁷ "Although broadening access to new information and communications technologies is often a necessary step in improving the climate for progress in Third World settings, it is almost never a sufficient one." (de Alcantara, 18)

As Mamadou Gaye asserts, "[The Internet] is not a tool of luxury, it is a tool of work.", and that "Africa needs its tools" to advance in the world.

Telecom History in Senegal

International telecommunications history in Senegal begins in the mid 19th century, when the first Senegalese telegraph line was laid between the then colonial capital, Saint-Louis, and the town of Gandiole, 10 miles away. In 1862, the Saint-Louis - Gorée (former slave-trading island off the coast of Dakar) line was complete, and joined with the telegraph network to France via Saint-Louis and Spain. This primitive form of data transfer was, in its day, the fastest way to move a message across the continent, let alone across Senegal. By the 1920s, this wired telegraph system had been replaced with a wireless (via radio) system to transfer messages between France, its colonial outposts, military bases, administrative centers, and offshore ships. [Sagna, 9]

The first true data packet line though, did not come until over 60 years later, in 1988, when the first node of the RIO network hit Senegal, and the second, in the same year at the NGO Enda Tiers-Monde. The Internet, still in its infancy, and limited to pre-Web functions, purely text-based email, telnet, file transfer protocol (FTP) et cetera. By 1992, the ".sn" top-level domain (TLD) name went live, managed by OSTROM (now called IRD, or Institute of Research for Development), and the ENSUT (Ecole Nationale Superieure Universitaire de Technologie, later renamed the Ecole Superieure Polytechnique).

Being relegated to only a small internal network, and then with a few connections to the outer Internet piggybacked off of a local X25 network connection, Senegal got its big break in 1996, when it finally connected to a "backbone" of the Internet via an MCI 64 Kbps (kilobits per second) connection to the United States. One year later, this was tripled, and included two similar connections to Canada. Six months later the Canadian connections were upped to one Mbps (megabit per second) and finally to two in 1999. [Sagna, 16]

By 2000, Senegal was linked to the underwater Atlantis II cable, which allowed a connection of 34 Mbps (megabits per second), creating a combined national bandwidth of 36 Mbps, making it the fastest connection in West Africa.⁸

In 1993, something happened which would change the scene of telecommunications in Senegal forever. Sonatel (Societé Nationale des Télécommunications), the Senegalese telecom company, allowed private “telecenters” to be opened. As most people in Senegal do not have a phone in their home, they must use public facilities – a small room, where for a fee, phone calls can be made and received. Prior to 1993, this had been run exclusively by Sonatel.

Opening up what had been only run by a public entity to the private sector had a stunning effect nationwide. By 2000, teledensity had jumped nearly 400%, from 6 telephones per 1,000 people to 24 per 1,000 people⁹. By 2000, nearly 65% of the national population could now access a telephone¹⁰. This explosion of increased telephony required more labor as well -- creating nearly 17,000 jobs between 1993 and 2000 [Le Sud Quotidien 15 January 2001] Since the liberalization of the market, the calling fares themselves have dropped almost 30%, on average. When telecenters first opened in 1993, the per unit (units are defined differently according to the destination of the call) the cost for the consumer was around 100 CFA ($0.16 US). Since then, most telecenters have dropped their prices to close to 75 CFA per unit, with some even at 65 CFA per unit – hovering close to what they pay themselves for the access at 60 CFA per unit. The massive increase of the number of telecenters, particularly in Dakar, has seen some been forced to close, as they are no longer as profitable as they used to be. Sontatel has since imposed a six month moratorium on the creation of any new telecenters. [Daffé and Dansokho, 25-26]

Access to the Internet in Senegal

The liberalization of the telecom sector and the rapid increase in Internet connectivity coinciding at the same time lead to the first cybercafe in all of West Africa, Metissacana, which opened on July 4, 1996 in Dakar. When it opened, armed with 14 computers and an assortment of beverages and office facilities, Metissacana users could surf the Net in the heart of downtown Dakar for 2000 CFA. (However, by July 2002, Metissacana had shut its doors as a cybercafe in order to protest what it called the "abuse of monopoly" by Sonatel and "underscores the lax efforts by the State in this sector" and will now focus on being a pan-African home/business ISP.)^10a

Since then, there has been a rapid increase of public Internet access across all of Senegal, with the average cost in a cybercafe dropping each year. While the exact number of cybercafes in the country is unknown, it is quite likely that the number is roughly around 100. With teledensity as low as it is, and with the minute segment of the population who is literate, who have access to a computer and a phone line, Internet access is not something that is even mildly present in the secondary cities or in rural areas.

Specific figures on the geographic distribution of cybercafes (and Internet connections) in the country are unavailable as well, but it is clear that Internet penetration, like telephone pentration, is almost exclusively limited to the Dakar area. Coupled with a higher standard of living and higher literacy rates as compared with the rest of the country, this is not surprising.

In Dakar alone, one cybercafe owner, Blaise Rodriguez, estimated in November 2002 that there are at least 50 cybercafes in the Dakar area, if not more.¹¹ In the northwest of the country, in Saint-Louis, there are three in the city (including two on the island of Saint-Louis, the focal point of the city), and one on the mainland and two on the university campus, 11 kilometers away. Tambacounda, the largest city in eastern Senegal, has only three cybercafes, most of which are just small telecenters with a handful of computers each sharing a modem connection. As of December 2002, Tambacounda cybercafes charge around 2000 CFA per hour, four times the current market rate in Dakar.

Ziguinchor, the largest city in the Casamance, the southwest region of Senegal, which borders the Gambia to the north and Guinea-Bissau to the south, boasts a small handful of cybercafes, all which are within easy reach of the tourist areas. The first, run by Sud-Informatique, opened in 1997.

Most cybercafes in Senegal are not cybercafes in the sense of how they were first conceived in the United States and Europe – that is, they are not accompanied by a list of various kinds of coffee that can be ordered while checking email. Usually, there are a small number of computers (usually a dozen or less) which make up the bulk of what would otherwise just be a telecenter. Some even provide additional services, like photocopying and faxing – but most rely on computers and telephone calls for the bulk of their income.

Rodriguez has one such telecenter, in the Karack neighborhood of Dakar, a short walk from Africa Consultants International's “Baobab Center”, where many American students take classes while in Dakar. Carving out the space from his own home, Rodriguez opened up a computer learning center in June 1999.

He realized, though, by 2000, that more people were more interested in using the Internet than they were in learning about how to use applications like Microsoft Word or Excel. He added three extra computers (for a total of eight), which all shared one modem connection, and he charged 1500 CFA for one hour of Internet access.

“As Sonatel was charging us 1800 CFA per hour on, of course, one machine, when you had two people (each at 1500 CFA per hour), you were doing well,” Rodriguez says, “But by the end of 2000, that's when cybercafes really prospered. Everyone had a cybercafe.”

While Rodriguez's claim that “everyone had a cybercafe” may be a little exaggerated, it is true that the Senegalese government did make it easier for people to open up cybercafes by eliminating the importation taxes on computer material. Coupled with the reduction in telecommuncations costs, and the lowering of taxes, more cybercafes opened up in the Dakar area.

By the end of 2000, Rodriguez says, he began charging 1000 CFA per hour, and in March 2001, he had cut his prices to 700 CFA per hour.

“I should say that the raising and lowering of prices had to do with the cybercafe¹² in Sacré-Coeur¹³, They were playing with the prices. After he opened at 1500 CFA, and then dropped to 1000 CFA and finally to 500 CFA, all the customers went to him. We were forced to drop to 500 CFA as well. And after the end of 2001, as that was coinciding with Senegal's qualification for the World Cup – he dropped further to 250 CFA. We all had to follow him and to set our prices at 300 CFA. So you can say that since 2000, cybercafes in Dakar have all been between 500 and 300 CFA. The most expensive will charge 500 CFA, and the least expensive at 300 CFA – but there aren't any more 1000 CFA cybercafes in Dakar.”¹⁴

Even at 500 CFA per hour, this made the Internet very affordable. Other everyday essential items have similar costs in Dakar – for example, public transportation (100 CFA), a newspaper (100 CFA), a pack of cookies (300 CFA), a sandwich (400 CFA), a 1.5 L bottle of soda (500 CFA), a 1.5 L bottle of mineral water (300 – 800 CFA), a plate of food at a local eatery catering to locals (500 CFA). Again, as Rodriguez notes, the free market has had a dramatic effect on the affordability of Internet access, particularly amongst the youth of Dakar.

“(The low rate) of 300 CFA has made it possible for all youth to know how to use the Internet...today it is rare to see a kid who doesn't know how to use the Internet. You can find someone who doesn't know how to use a computer – meaning he doesn't know how to use Word or Excel, but it's hard to find someone who doesn't know how to use the Internet.”¹⁵

However, this assertion may be inflated, even for Dakar, according to Olivier Sagna, a professor at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar who has done extensive research on the Internet in Senegal.

“That is, of course, exaggerated. In Dakar, there are two million inhabitants. There is a large number who live in great poverty, there are a lot of people to whom the Internet means nothing. Indeed, in some urban neighborhoods, in neighborhoods where the middle classes live, we see more and more youth – sadly, there aren't any viable statistics on this subject – but there is a large number of youth who completely master the Internet. What is certain, and what perhaps this cybercafe owner meant by that remark is that in cybercafes, there is a large majority of users who are youth. That, we can say, if did statistics on youth, represent perhaps 70 to 80 percent (of users), maybe more. But that doesn't mean that the majority of youth have access to this tool. That youth represent the majority of cybercafe users – without a doubt – but to say that the majority of youth use the Internet – no. They're still a minority.”¹⁶

Regardless of the actual, specific number of Internet users in the country, it is probably not far from the truth that most of them are indeed youth, and that most of those connected youth are in Dakar.

With the international bandwidth reaching 36 Mbps, those not on a dialup connection generally have comparable connections to broadband connections in the United States. Certainly at the two universities, Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, and Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, who each have a high-speed 1 Mb dedicated connection, speed is not a problem. Indeed many of the cybercafes have relatively good quality and fast connections, either ISDN or a dedicated digital line which is sold directly to the telecenter from Sonatel. Given the high cost of telecommunications and computer equipment, home Internet access is limited to an even more select few.

Sonatel, although privatized in 1997, retains a monopoly on the telecommuncations market through 2006. Indeed, this monopoly has been one of the factors that have been a major hindrance to the deployment of the Internet. Many Senegalese techno-savvy intellectuals, like Olivier Sagna, lament the artificial economic support of Sonatel.

“There is the monopoly situation of Sonatel, which is a major blocking element which has been holding back prices more than it otherwise would if there had been a free market. It's been blocking the quality of service, and on the technical side, it's limited the deployment of alternative solutions than the ones that are in use today.”¹⁷

With the majority of telephone connections, in addition to the simple demographic fact of the concentration of people in the Dakar area, Internet access outside the city is generally both expensive and hard to come by.

User Profiles

Like in most places in the world, Internet connectivity is first adopted and best mastered by the most educated sector of the youth population – the university and the high school age crowd. However, no official data has been collected on the exact number of Internet users, nor on their demographic and age breakdown. Olivier Sagna estimates that in all of Senegal, there are around 11,000 Internet users – or .127% of the entire population of 8.6 million. [Sagna, 47]

However, a quick glance at any Senegalese cybercafe sheds some light onto some of the activities that “Internautes” take part in. Not suprisingly, overwhelmingly, these are email and chatting, but also some users use it to download music and to gather information, often about universities abroad.

“Except for access points offered in the university environment, the clientele of these cyber cafes is composed primarily of foreign residents and travelers, individuals of some means, and young people from financially well-off families, for whom surfing the net at a cyber café is a 'must.' In addition to this phenomenon or fad, the resource is also being used by 'average' Senegalese to communicate, with increasing frequency and at lower cost, with family members abroad, as well as by small-scale economic agents, for whom the Internet is gradually replacing the telephone and fax.” [Sagna, 46]

The “average Senegalese” not using the Internet for business purposes mostly partake in email and chat exchanges, mostly with French Internet users, and a small handful of Net users from other African Francophone countries. It is just a way to connect with the outside world. Many connect through francophone dating websites to strike up conversations with members of the opposite sex.

Blaise Rodriguez identifies¹⁸ the most common activity in his cybercafe as being Internet chatting, especially amongst girls, on amour.fr or rencontre.fr, all French-run singles-themed websites. Others will often chat via the CaraMail website, run by Lycos, where many people have an email account, as the interface is in French.

However, a blatant problem which remains is that people do not see the immediate relevancy in their daily lives. It's merely a toy, and not a tool. Those who use it, or who even promote it, are considered by some to be “adventurers”¹⁹ or “dreamers”, according to Mamadou Gaye.

Without a significant percentage of the population who has access to the Internet -- and even for those who could, but who don't see its importance -- the Internet could be viewed as useless to Senegal.

Current Practical Uses of the Internet in Senegal

Nonetheless, even if the Internet is still only being used by a technocratic elite which require the rare trinity of a connection, a computer, and technical know-how, there still have been some fascinating localized applications of information and communcations technologies, many of which can be used as tools for social development.

Such local projects include the “Multimedia Caravan”, which travelled around Senegal, introducing and training people to ICT. Here, a farmer was able to learn better farming techniques, and a marabout was able to hold a teleconference with his constiuents across the country. Continuing with the local strong religious application of ICT, the Mourides of Touba have created a relative economic and technological powerhouse for Senegal. Their results have yielded important private sector counterweight to the results of public action in Dakar. Finally, there is the use of ICT in a simple version of telemedicine in the hospital of Senegal's fourth city – Saint-Louis.

The 2002 “Multimedia Caravan” -- a joint venture with the local Dakar-based Senegalese NGOs, CRESP and OSIRIS -- traveled throughout the Senegalese countryside, introducing people to Internet technology in a trailer filled with computers and telecommunications equipment. They made a particular effort to center their education campaign throughout the rural areas of the Senegalese countryside.

In fact, one of the best results of this technology was for a Senegalese farmer, who was hired as part of the support staff, merely to help move and set up the computers – and not an anticpated target of the Caravan.

Mamadou Gaye, who was heading the Multimedia Caravan, tells²⁰ how one day, while he was giving a workshop on using the Internet, and as he usually does, he asked those who would not be taking part in the activity to leave. But those who usually left, the drivers, the guards, and those without any specific technical know-how, remained.

“We're the teachers now,” they said.

“What do you mean, you're the teachers?” asked Gaye.

“We've been trained, and now we'll teach others,” they answered.

The group of men who were hired to do manual labor – not to pay attention during the seminars -- were actually paying attention during all of the lessons, much to the amazement (and delight) of the organizers of the Multimedia Caravan.

“And so it was they who taught. So by the end of the tour, everyone knew how to use the Internet. There was one of our guards who said: 'When I'm not doing this, I'm a farmer, I raise chickens and things. Here's what I discovered on the Internet – while surfing, I found out a way to increase my crop yield, and I know how to do that now.' So it's a question of information. He was just a guard. We needed him to move the computers from one place to another, and at night he didn't do anything, but he used his free time to learn about Internet research, to be trained and introduced to the Internet. You don't need university degrees to know how to use a computer.”²¹

Simple amounts of information, disseminated at near negligible cost, can go a long way in the day-to-day lives of someone like a Senegalese farmer, who is a guard to supplement his income. While this may be an anomaly, that a literate farmer happened to be in the right place at the right time, it is possible that this could occur with accelerating frequency. Multiplied ten times, or a hundred times in the country, year after year, how many more yield increases could he and others like him have?

Another recent application of Internet technology that was used in a very specific way in to the context of Senegal was a recent videoconference (facilitated by the Multimedia Caravan) that was held by an Islamic marabout with his followers in another part of the country.

Marabouts, known in other parts of the Islamic world as “imams”, are highly respected and very important Islamic clerics. In the more religious circles of the society, they are the focal point of religious daily life. Even for the moderately religious, to interact with a marabout is something of great importance.

A certain Dakar marabout regularly made a trip out to a Ndioum, a Pulaar village in southern Senegal, but coincidentally, when the Multimedia Caravan was in his village, he was too ill to brave the dilapidated roads to get across the country. Instead, Mamadou Gaye and the rest of the Multimedia Caravan set up a live videoconference, with the marabout at the Sonatel studio in Dakar, and their own equipment on the other end.

“They were in the village, and the marabout was in Dakar, and the people were able to greet and ask live questions to the marabout. Voila, the time was cut shorter, they did their conference, and the marabout didn't even have to go anywhere,”²² says Mamadou Gaye.

Thus the people of the village of Ndioum could see, even if they didn't understand how the technology operated, they could see how this technology could be interesting and useful to them, in their own specific milieu. While this particular application may not have broad-reaching relevancy in the context of social development, it is an interesting case to note as it shapes something very specific to Senegal – the marabout and brotherhood version of Islam – and makes the technology applicable to that situation.

In fact, one of the best-documented cases of information and communication technologies being molded to fit a specific local context can be found in the religious city of Touba.

Founded in 1888 by Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, a leader of a mystic Islamic religious brotherhood, the Mourides, Touba has grown to become the second largest city in Senegal, with over half a million residents. While most of these people are religious followers, it is no doubt that many have followed in the wake to take advantage of the commercial opportunities that it provides. The Mourides themselves are known for their commercial activity throughout the country, and use Touba as an ideological hub for such activities. [Gueye, 3]

In his dossier sponsored by UNRISD, Cheikh Gueye has compiled an interesting case on how ICT has affected the city of Touba, in his 2002 work “Strategies and the Role of ICTs in Urban Growth: The Case of Touba”²³. There, he outlines how Touba has seen an explosive expansion of its populus, in some ways, growing more than Dakar. It draws many people who flock to it much in the same way many Jews “return” to Jerusalem – many of whom are merchants and businesspeople. [Gueye, 4]

In addition to the economic explosion, and in many ways as a crucial element of it, there has been an outburst of ICT in Touba. Cynthia Hewitt de Alcantara identifies three significant aspects which have fueled this prominent change.

“In the region of Touba, Senegal, for example, three factors stand out -- migration to international destinations, a highly developed informal commercial sector, and widespread membership in Mouride religious brotherhoods have combined to create favourable conditions for the spread of information technologies over large areas and within even relatively poorer social strata. Migrants who are members of the brotherhoods need videos, fax services and telephones to stay in touch with their families in Senegal. Merchants also need these appliances and services in order to supply migrants and families with provisions. Finally, the religious brotherhoods, which receive income from migrants, need Web sites and radio programmes to deliver their message of faith across the world. The high level of organization of all three groups, and close connections among them, have stimulated the local information economy, in which mobile phones are so widely available that their price is lower than in most developed countries, technicians manufacture spare parts for these phones and build parabolic antennas from scratch, and state-of- the-art computers are not difficult to find (Gueye, 2001).”[de Alcántara, 37]

Indeed, this kind of active participation in adopting new technologies and applying them to a local context is something that is done most notably with an already educated and highly organized sector of Senegalese society. Being literate in at least French (and often Arabic) – languages that already have a wide range of online and technical materials -- allows the merchants to be part of a much more highly developed than their non-educated counterparts. The role of the Mourides in adopting and promoting technology is a hopeful case for ICT development in Senegal, and illustrates how indeed with the combination of the right education and business tools, that economic growth can occur. It is also interesting to note that these dynamic changes happened completely in the private sector – that isn't to say that the public sector could be boosting and actively promoting the use of ICT in business, government, and everyday life, but that the local private sector should not be overlooked. As Gueye writes: “As other indicators will prove, it is more and more the private civil society which provides for advancement and innovations in a context where the state is weak.” [Gueye, 4]

However, not all places have the inherent dynamism, capital, or organization that the Mourides have. Sometimes, a helping hand can come from the private sector – even if it comes from outside Senegal. In a joint partnership with Alcatel, the French telecommunications company, and the Dakar-based Metissacana together used ICT to perform local basic medical research to anticipate infant health problems in Saint-Louis, Senegal's northern regional capital.

The project, known as “Pesinet”, is fundamentally quite simple. Given the lack of local medical staff in Saint-Louis (one per 10,000²⁴), no one doctor can keep a proper watchful eye over all patients. Thus, babies are weighed twice weekly, and the information is put into an online database so that the doctor can monitor if the weight curves are abnormal. If so, the doctor informs the family that their baby needs immediate medical attention.

As Michel Mavros, the founder of Metissacana, says, Pesinet can be used as a prime example of aiding development in Senegal.

"The Internet is a complementary tool, it's something more that allows everyone to develop -- Pesinet, for example, contributed to fight against infant mortality. For us, that's development."^24a

Thus, as can be observed with the Multimedia Caravan, the local Islamic applications of ICT, as well as simple preventative medicine that uses ICT, indeed Senegal has done many things right when it comes to Internet technology. Indeed, with monetary and equipment aid from abroad, but more importantly, locally conceived and produced initiatives have shown that ICT in Senegal can be used to aid social development, both in the public and private sectors.

The key, of course, is to have the local technocratic elite pushing the use of such technologies to aid economic and social development. Locally constructed and produced initiatives will have the best chance of succeeding and aiding Senegal, or any other developing nation, to help itself properly conceive of the ways in which information and communication technology can be applied to a local context. The example of the Multimedia Caravan and the Mourides' use of ICT are both striking ones – they involve local non-governmental actors rapidly adopting such technology and encouraging their peers to follow suit. As such, they increasingly make the relevance of seemingly lofty gadgetry accessible to those who need it most. It is important to further examine who exactly those non-governmental actors are and what actions the government has or has not been taking to promote ICT in Senegal.

The Role of Civil Society and Government to Deploy ICT in Senegal

As in any society, there are those who adopt and promote new technologies far before they become completely mainstream. Senegal is no different. There are two major non-governmental organizations, CRESP and OSIRIS, both founded in Senegal, in addition to the Senegalese chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC), who see the benefits of Internet technology and actively promote it, and try to come up with better, local applications for it.

Government, especially in the developing world, has an important role in the promotion of new technologies. To its credit, the government of Senegal has done a lot to promote ICT in Senegal – indeed they have done a lot of things correctly, which can account for many of the success stories in Senegal – but there is a long way to go.

CRESP Senegal, or the “Resource Center for Participative Social Emergence”, was founded in Dakar in 1999, affiliated with its American sister organization, the “Center for Religion, Ethics, and Social Policy”, based in Ithaca, New York. It is run primarily by two Senegalese, Mamadou Gaye and Ismael Diallo, and one American, Marian Zeitlan.

According to the organization's website (http://www.cresp.sn), its first objective is to “promote the participation of people in local contexts to development through the use of new information and communication technologies.”

They, in conjunction with the larger and more active OSIRIS (created in 1998), or the Observatory on Information Systems, Networks, and Information Superhighways in Senegal, were the prime movers behind the 2002 “Multimedia Caravan” initiative, which took Internet technology into the most remote corners of Senegal, often with astounding results, as discussed earlier.

OSIRIS, in addition, is responsible for the email newsletter BATIK, the Analysis on Information Technology and Communication Bulliten, which comes out monthly and is archived in PDF and HTML formats on their site, http://www.osiris.sn. There, they present Senegalese ICT news, their opinions on that news, and have a section devoted to current tech-related meetings in Senegal. It is the only locally produced news outlet of its kind in the country.

It has been primarily these non-governmental actors who are responsible for the state and the ongoing promotion of the Internet in Senegal. It is through them, and through other things like the Multimedia Caravan, BATIK, and others, that constant discussion is fostered about the Internet in Senegal, and its importance and impact on social development.

However, many of the leading members of these groups deplore the lack of a strong “political will” which would help bolster their efforts. In a recent interview, Mamadou Gaye, one of the co-directors of CRESP, discussed this problem in a recent interview, highlighting that much of what has been accomplished in Senegal has been done without the help of the government.

“But if [our work] was accompanied by a political will, then, Senegal would be able to aid other nations in the sub-region. Because there have been people who have worked for a long time in the shadows who are 'adventurers', as they are called . . . We are visionaries, more or less . . . Senegal doesn't have resources, but it does have minds who are working in the shadows with or without the State. With or without the State, they will go back home and talk and talk and talk [about the Internet] . . . Nearly all those who have worked in these domains are people who work in civil society.”²⁵

Gaye and others will agree that the Senegalese government seems to be in somewhat of a stasis – refusing to strongly commit to ICT, while at the same time not allowing the private sector to step in. The most blatant example of this is Sonatel's retention of a monopoly on telecommunications until 2006.

Most Senegalese ICT intellectuals say that they know what the problems are, and think that the solutions are obvious – just that the government does not seem to have the heart (or pocketbook) to really push ICT in Senegal. Olivier Sagna, too, laments the lack of political will to push ICT ahead.

“The roadblock is clearly a lack of awareness of the real strategies by the politicians. It's politically correct to talk of these questions, it shows that you know what's going on, that you're following what's happening. [But] concrete plans are not put into place. This shows that beyond these discourses there is a good number of politicians who hold to the ideas but don't really believe in them.”²⁶

And, as Mamadou Gaye points out -- the technocratic community believes that Senegal can be a leader in Internet deployment, particularly in the developing world.

“In June [2002], all of Senegal was happy because it was the World Cup. Why? Because we were able to compete with the other teams – this is simply because the people who worked on it for Senegal were put in the same conditions as the other nations. Because those who played for the national team, who was able to rival France [the defending World Cup champion], they all played in the French national championship. They had the same infrastructures for years together. So, if we stay along that line of thought, the results that we had during the World Cup, we can have similar results for new technologies. That's how I see things and I know that everyone will benefit because we have something to share with the rest of the world -- what makes up our strength, our culture – through the Internet. We can export it and allow people to see our true face. Because what they see from the outside is what they show on television, and television has its own agenda. But by developing new technologies, you can create your own website, you can develop your own locality, you can put in webcams so that people can see [what the place is like] -- 'Oh,that's what it's like. It's not the jungle, it's not the forest, it's not famine.' That is how people can develop themselves. I believe in it because I have seen results that cannot be neglected.”²⁷

Despite these criticisms, the success of the Internet in Senegal is in large part due to some crucial initial steps taken by the Senegalese government that have allowed the nascent technology-oriented community to develop as it has. Since as early as the 1980s, telecom-related government policy has been part of the vision – and they seemed to have the foresight then to at least have it be a constant component of the national political discussion. Indeed, they have attempted to foster an emergence of national telecom and information technology.

The most significant investments and government encouragement of Senegalese telecommunications, unlike most of their other African counterparts, can be reduced to a few major points.

As Olivier Sagna notes²⁸, the fact that since the beginning of Internet access, Sonatel has considered the country to be a single zone – meaning that any call for Internet was automatically a local call – the cheapest kind in the country. By lowering the price of dial-up Internet access to be the cheapest that it could possibly be ensures that less people cannot be priced out of taking a piece of the digital pie. The United States, when it developed Internet access, never ran into this problem as local calls have always been free.

In addition to the reduction on special digital lines for Internet Service Providers in February 2000²⁹ (and again in May 2001), and the continual investment in national bandwidth and connection to large international backbones (most recent in December 2000), Sagna also highlights the fact that the Senegalese government has completely eliminated the importation tariffs on computer material has made it much easier for cybercafes to flourish. (However, he also points out that there are still importation tariffs on a great deal of computer-related material, like routers and printers.)

Measures like these have allowed Senegal to “buck the trend”³⁰ of having the better-educated and wealthier areas of Africa (North Africa and South Africa) have a disproportionately more active Internet community.

More recently, there has been an increased public rhetoric of high-ranking Senegalese officials in their discussion of Internet access, and its importance in the development of their nation. At the February 2003 meeting of the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva, President Abdoulaye Wade recalled the plight of Senegal, and all underdeveloped countries to become part of the digital world. “In the name of all marginalized people of the Third World where we are on the road to being excluded from the digital world, our situation is identical everywhere and our quest is the same.” [Le Soleil, 18 February 2003]

More importantly is the recent (January 2003) naming of Mohammed Tidiane Seck to the post of “Ministère de l'Informatique de l'Etat” -- a move that is considered by many in the technocratic community to be a move that will finally allow for a technically-minded political force to be created, one that moves beyond the seeming empty rhetoric that so many abhor.

Seck, until this new post, had been the director of computer science at the University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar. He defends the role of the government by noting that the deregulation and monopoly laws have to be respected, and cites new government projects -- all of which are still in their infancy stages.

"You cannot say that there is a lack of political will. Just because we have 'political will' doesn't mean that we can do whatever -- that's easy to do. To put things clearly, we have a good network, and good bandwidth that all the other countries of the sub-region want. But that doesn't mean that that we're satisfied, it's not enough, we have to go further. The thing that frustrates everyone in Senegal is that everyone wants a very quick opening of the market of Internet service. Today the deregulation is there, there is a de facto monopoly by a historical player, Sonatel -- the fact is that it's a transitory situation and that people don't want to wait -- political will cannot justify ignoring the laws, that's not possible."^30a

Seck also noted that by the end of the year, the first part of the government Intranet would be in place -- a new system which would have a centralized email system, internal web portals -- the initial phase of a Senegalese e-government initiative. He also mentioned government plans to incorporate an "Educational Network", to allow, using Internet technology, remote teaching and shared resources. While these plans may actually be realized, it is possible that they could also go via the route of the ill-fated government-planned "Technopole" -- which was supposed to be a high-tech incubator in Dakar. Today, three years after it was supposed to have been completed, it is nothing more than a large sandy lot on the main highway leading into Dakar.

Thus, while the government has talked a lot about ICT for a long time, they haven't taken any significant, tangible steps to further realize ICT penetration in Senegal. The few steps that they have taken have been seized upon by the intellectual civil society (and most often lobbied for, by them) to create a very small, but growing technically-aware middle class. This sector has only begun to taste the potential for telecom in Senegal – and they want more of it.

But the fact that such a group does exist, given the state of Senegalese life, that nearly one third of the population lives below the poverty line, is testament to the richness and the success of the Internet in Senegal. Indeed, rethinking the Internet to fit local contexts and situations (such as the Mourides of Touba have done) is a notable achievement.

The Internet has worked quite well in Senegal, mostly thanks to a few key government decisions, and a very active technocratic elite who foster local discussion and action to push the Internet in Senegal. It is also impossible to neglect the fact that Senegal's economic and political history is one that is hard to duplicate anywhere on the continent. Since independence, they have seen a completely peaceful transition to full and free elections, and most recently, a viable multi-party system.

ICT in Senegal has shown strong rays of strength and hope, but a large wall remains, before Senegal truly can become the leader that it has the potential to be.

Despite all of the fanfare both in and outside of Senegal about its growing current state of the Internet, there is still a small but significant number of hurdles which remain. Yes, Senegal does boast quite a number of success stories, but these, unfortunately, are much more the exception rather than the rule. Senegal's major impediments are a low literacy rate and the prevalence of an oral culture, the lack of local content and local application, and a prohibitively high cost structure – and combined with a lackluster government effort to promote ICT in Senegal, full Internet deployment is coming slowly, if at all.

It is important to note, however, that many of these things (such as investment in simple infrastructure) have little to do with ICT. A little bit of eduation and local structural investment could go a long way – indeed, all countries with high Internet penetration have very low levels of literacy and infrastructure.

These are not insurmountable, but without overcoming these roadblocks, the Internet will remain in the hands of the wealthy and educated – and will reinforce further social stratification – no doubt, as feared by some of the more pessimistic members of the Le Monde Diplomatique online forum in the early 1990s.

Literacy in Senegal remains quite low – indeed, according to the United Nations, only 37% of the population above the age of 15 is literate.³¹ The Internet, a highly written medium, would require a much larger percentage of literate people before they can even have the ability to decide whether or not the Internet is worth their while or not. Another major problem with literacy in Senegal, is that since independence, all literate people have been taught in French, which is usually the students' second or even third language. Literacy in local languages for children has only begun this past academic year, and even then, only in a few pilot programs nationwide. Some effort has been made to have adult literacy classes, most notably in the Wolof and Pulaar speaking communities, but for the most part, literacy occurs exclusively in French.

Arame Fal, one of the leading advocates for Wolof literacy, author and linguist, says that increased Wolof literacy would allow more people to have more access to written media, including the Internet. She notes already that people are using Wolof and Pulaar expressions in the discussions forums on www.seneweb.com -- expressions that she says, cannot be expressed in any other way. She also suggested that with an increase in local language literacy, that there would surely be an increase in local language content.^31a (In April 2002, Fal released a lexicon of computer terms, Baatukaayu x@mtéef, in French, English, and new terms that she has invented for the Wolof language.)

Even with French literacy, the fact that much software and web sites are developed for English-speaking audiences, having at least a rough working knowledge of English is of great importance as well, according to Olivier Sagna.

“When people do Internet research, first you have to be literate, second you have to be literate in French, and third you have to have to have a good understanding of English, as there is a large amount of information on the Internet in English.”³²

No doubt as a function of not being able to read or write, people are forced to adopt an oral culture. Not only are family histories passed down orally, but simple information is disseminated in this very same manner – even for those who are literate. Senegalese, by their own admission, have not fully developed the habit of reading roadsigns or information panels – thus the concept of sitting down in front of a screen to read information is not as instinctual as it might be in the West.

Mamadou Gaye cites a prime example of this, when he and Sérigne Mbaye Diène, the President of the Association pour la Promotion Economique Culturelle et Sociale de Yoff, were visiting Hong Kong for a conference and they were trying to get directions.

“We have an oral culture. It is very difficult to get this tradition out of your head. I remember one time when were were on a trip, it was my first time out of the country, we were in the Hong Kong airport, and by his cultural training [Diène] asked a woman something in English – and the woman didn't even look at him. Two times, no, three times, no – on the fourth time, she told him 'Read the board' -- she just showed it to him. You see how sound is important to us. To us, even if you put up a sign, you won't read it to see what's going on – you'll just come and ask.”³³

Thus even a person who bothers to check his email everyday is not in the habit of checking signs to get information – why would he, when he can merely ask someone?

Gaye and others have pointed out that until this cultural norm is changed, that perhaps the technology should adapt to the needs of the people, instead of the people adapting to the technology. In other words, he suggests, why not develop touch-screens where audio information can be stored on web pages? Why not help familiarize people with ICT via media that they are already used to, and that doesn't require additional training to use?

One possible solution, as was suggested^33a by Mohammad Tidiane Seck would be to use simplified computers, such as the Simputer, created by Indian computer scientists. Such a computer, with an extremely streamlined version of the Linux operating system, operates entirely by vocal commands, and can convert text-to-speech -- all in the local languages of the people of Bengalore. Seck asked, with literacy so low, why couldn't we adapt such a technology? The possibilities are certainly worth exploring.

Yet another major hurdle, even for the literate minority, is making the Internet relevant to their situation. Even those who can afford Internet access, those who are literate in French, may not fully understand why they should care about the Internet. Indeed, if they are not interested in chatting up other non-Senegalese francophones in dating chatrooms, or finding out other information that comes from the outside world, what difference does it make to them?

There is a considerable lack of locally produced and locally consumed Senegalese web sites. From a purely anecdotal perspective, in the United States, where Internet access is prevalent already, it is most practically used to distribute information on a local scale. Online examples of this are Yahoo Maps, which can provide local detailed maps and driving directions, or an online version of a phone book (www.superpages.com) to look up local businesses.

One notable exception, is the up-and-coming site www.seneweb.com, which is run by a pair of American-educated Senegalese, Ali Diallo (who lives in Virginia), and Ousmane Mbaye (who lives in Dakar, and works for the new Agence de Régulation des Télécommunications as a network engineer). This site, all in French, is geared toward both local Senegalese, as well as their expatriate counterparts. The site claims to be the most visited Senegalese portal site -- indeed, it has Internet-radio (in Wolof and French) broadcast from Philadelphia, Senegalese news, an online store, and a very active discussion forum.

Sagna reminds us additionally, that using local information, especially between local businesses, is a phenomenon that applies to Senegal as well – and that Internet technology, in its current form, is not helping in this regard at all in Senegal.

“Other things that limit Internet use [in Senegal] are the fact that there isn't enough indigenous content being developed and put online which is relevant for Senegalese. When you are looking for information, most of the time, the information that you need is about your immediate environment. Of course it's always interesting to be able to check out what is happening elsewhere in the world, but often, concrete problems that a company has, that an administration has to take care of, these are problems that are directly linked to their environment, and to take care of them, you need direct information about that environment.”³⁴

Indeed it would be this free exchange of simple information about a locale – who is selling what and where, which could have massive impacts on social development. Indeed, e-commerce is not built overnight, and surely will not replace traditional brick-and-mortar (or in the case of many places in Senegal, cement-and-thatched-roofs) businesses completely. However, what ICT does have the potential to do is to significantly reduce the cost of inter-business communication.

Of course, it is important to note that these types of massive changes happened slowly in the United States, and surely will happen slowly in Senegal as well – and quite possibly, in fact, more slowly, due to the lack of education, resources, infrastructure, and organization.

Prices still remain prohibitively high for Internet access and investment in computer-related material – especially in the non-Dakar region. According to the United Nations 2002 Human Development Report³⁵, Senegal's GDP per capita in purchasing power parity dollars (2000 $US) was $1,510 – compared with the United States' $34,142. Such a huge gap in disposable income, certainly for things like computer material (all of which has to be imported) creates an additional barrier to further deployment.

Internet growth will continue to be stifled with Sonatel retaining monopoly on telecommunications for another three years, true free market prices will not be achieved until the monopoly is removed. Indeed, according to Amadou Top³⁶, a black market for new, faster, and easier to deploy Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) networks has already descended upon Dakar in small, but rapidly growing numbers. New technologies and market approaches are forcibly being stifled just to prop up a national business.

“There is the cost of services, the cost of telecommunications . . . the costs of telecommunications are very high, so that will handicap, of course, [deployment of the Internet in Senegal]. We have a whole range of people who will not have access to the Internet because they cannot afford it. Another thing is the there is a lack of computer material. Most computers are ones that are in businesses, administrations, very few in individual homes – again due to their price. So there are many activities where there ought to be computers, but there aren't, linked to its high cost.”³⁷

The price of computer technology may be coming down, however, at least a little bit. In December 2002³⁸, Enda Tiers Monde, a Dakar-based NGO, has established, in cooperation with the national government, the first local computer assembly facility in all of Senegal. While an informal economy has existed for some time of building and assembling computers, a larger and more organized approach can only be helpful to the Internet in Senegal, and the spread of ICT.

So this small 8 million strong nation would seem to be a rising star on the world Internet stage. The success of the Internet in Senegal can thus be reduced to five major factors.

• Senegal has always been politically stable, and has known no violent internal conflict since independence.

• Senegal has excellent international bandwidth (36 Mbps) – a function of responsible government action and geographic dumb luck – Senegal happens to be geographically well placed to connect to the Internet backbone.

• Since the privatization of Sonatel, and allowing private day-to-day operations in the form of telecenters has dramatically driven down the price of telecommunications, and made it more accessible.

• Key government acts, such as considering country as a single zone for Internet access, and the elimination of importation taxes on computer material has made it easier to expand ICT.

• Senegal has a very active civil society that promotes the Internet – locally, and they have come up with remarkable local applications of Internet technology.

And consequently, there remain five major obstacles to overcome before the Internet can truly become a “tool” for development.

• The Senegalese intelligentsia maintain that there is a lack of “political will” -- lot of talk, but little action.

• Sonatel retains monopoly until 2006 – choice of services and cost, as a result, remain limited.

• Less than 40% of the population is literate, and even fewer are literate in national languages.

• Computer material, and public Internet access remains expensive where available, and is only available to a small percentage of the population.

• Few wide-scale, simple, cheap, and effective uses of the Internet have been demonstrated – it is still not relevant to most people in their daily lives.

Senegal, thus, can be seen as a model for Internet deployment in the developing world. Indeed, ICT should be part of the means of a larger strategy for social development, and not simply the end.

As Amadou Top recently put it, ICT, in some ways, is far more important in the South than it is in the North – it can, and must be, a crucial component towards social development.

“Not only can it [be linked to social development], but I think that more so than in developed countries, we need to use it for social development... the people of the South must see that this is a chance that they have, and until now, they haven't taken advantage of it. From time to time, they say ' you're a futurist, we have to build roads, we have to build wells,' but in my opinion, we don't have the same vision – we don't have the same understanding. It's a question of life or death – today there are no other means to make this leap than to use these technologies to solve our problems.”³⁹

FOOTNOTES:

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

de Alcántara, Cynthia Hewitt. "The Development Divide in a Digital Age" (2001) UNRISD.

Brun, Christophe. “Telecom & Internet: Senegal.” (2001) Institut de recherche pour le developpment.

Daffe, Gaye and Mamadou Dansokho. “New Information and Communications Technologies: Challenges and Opportunities for the Senegalese Economy.” Translation by Paul Keller. (2002) UNRISD.

Fal, Arame. Personal interview. Translation by Cyrus J. Farivar. 21 Mar. 2003. Dakar

Gaye, Mamadou. Personal interview. Translation by Cyrus J. Farivar. 12 Jan. 2003. Dakar

Gueye, Cheikh. “Strategies and the Role of ICTs in Urban Growth: The Case of Touba.” Translation by Cyrus J. Farivar. (2002) UNRISD.

Kahn, Sarbuland. “Bridging the Digital Divide.” Newslink 4^th Quarter 2001, Vol, No. 3.

Mavros, Michel. Personal interview. Translation by Cyrus J. Farivar. 21 Mar. 2003. Dakar

Mavros, Michel. Metissacana Press Release. July 2, 2002. Translation by Cyrus J. Farivar.

Rodriguez, Blaise. Personal interview. Translation by Cyrus J. Farivar. 12 Nov. 2002. Dakar

Sagna, Olivier. “Information and Communications Technologies and Social Development in Senegal: an Overview.” Translation by Paul Keller. (2002) UNRISD.

Sagna, Olivier. Personal interview. Translation by Cyrus J. Farivar. 31 Jan. 2003. Dakar

Seck, Mohammad Tidiane. Personal interview. Translation by Cyrus J. Farivar. 21 Mar. 2003. Dakar

Top, Amadou. Personal interview. Translation by Cyrus J. Farivar. 31 Jan. 2003. Dakar

THANKS TO:

[Editing]

• Earl Sawyer
• Jim Delehanty
• David Boyk
• Jean Smart
• Rachel Metz

[Support]

• John and Virginia Hadsell
• Mehrdad and Sydney Farivar
• Gumshoe