David Barnard is executive director of the Johannesburg-based Southern African NGO Network (SANGONeT). This Mott grantee has received $1.02 million in support since 1991 for its role as a regional and national facilitator in the information communication technology (ICT) field for the nonprofit sector. SANGONeT focuses on sharing information, building capacity, and linking people and organizations through the use of ICTs. From March 7-9, 2006, SANGONeT will host its second annual conference “ICTs for Civil Society.” Barnard discusses this topic with Mott Communications Officer Maggie I. Jaruzel.
Mott: Discuss the role of technology in building and strengthening civil society in South Africa and the broader South African region.
David Barnard (DB): We need to get NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) to start thinking about how technology affects the society we live in, especially in terms of policy issues. In South Africa, many NGOs still are not benefiting from technology because it is a cost issue for them. They don’t look at it as a strategic imperative in the context of their work.
We want this conference to introduce organizations to tools and technology. But it also is about technology’s broader impact on society, specifically the work of building civil society and NGOs, and shaping the societies that we live in from a policy point of view and from an advocacy point of view. We want NGOs to start thinking about ICT issues in the same way that they are involved in gender issues or rural development issues as part of the broader political landscape in this country. These issues are as important to NGOs in South Africa as they are to civil society organizations in the broader Southern African region.
Mott: Sometimes people working in the NGO sector underestimate the ways that technology can actually provide opportunities for their organization’s growth and development and also improve the quality of the work they do. Can you elaborate on this?
DB: There is no doubt that something like the Internet or the online environment of e-mail communication has transformed the work of many NGOs. Look at the international disasters—tsunamis and earthquakes—and the manner in which the Internet has been used as a means to raise money, generate interest and mobilize people.
There are many examples of this, but the trick is to bring those examples home to a local and specific country context. If you look at South Africa over the past five years, although it was coming from obviously a very low base, there has been a significant increase in the number of NGOs that now at least have e-mail addresses and are communicating online. There’s also a growing number of NGOs that have their own Web sites and some form of online fundraising linked to their Web sites to generate money to support their work.
You are seeing the introduction of a number of new tools and technologies, but to what extent are NGOs already using it in an integrated manner? To what extent in terms of internal streamlining, enhancing communication, enhancing the workflow in organizations, and enhancing project management? I think that kind of overall strategic approach probably needs a lot more work and a lot more awareness.
Mott: What are some of the challenges you see for NGOs moving into this next phase of technology?
DB: One of the big advocacy and policy issues in South Africa today is the huge cost of making a phone call. The huge cost of telecommunication in general. That is obviously an obstacle to enhancing the broader effects of technology and it’s an issue that we need to address from an economic and a communications point of view.
Obviously, broader infrastructure is also a challenge with a specific cost dimension. I don’t think NGOs understand it in terms of a strategic budget issue. For example, if it is a question of where money goes, it usually goes somewhere else other than to invest in technology . . . It is important to change minds or to give people a different perspective on the ways that technology fits in the world.
Mott: Explain some of the open content issues that are going to be discussed at the conference.
DB: When you talk about nonprofit technology, one of the big new dimensions is the question of open and free software issues. This is a big international issue in the IT [Information Technology] environment. Increasingly, it becomes a challenge inside the nonprofit context. There are big debates and discussions about propriety software, which are more affordable, such as Microsoft interventions versus free and open sources interventions . . .
There’s a big initiative in South Africa now to translate [technology] operating environments into indigenous languages instead of a Microsoft Windows environment. We have this huge new initiative so people can learn Zulu or Sesotho or enhance other mother tongue languages.
By doing this, you give people the ability to communicate in languages familiar to them. Obviously, it is going to be a challenge in Africa when such a big proportion of content on the Internet linked to Africa is content that was developed outside of Africa—and it is mainly in English. We are going to have mother tongue language issues because Internet content will be populated accordingly, which is as an empowerment intervention.
Mott: What are one or two major things that you hope participants can take away from this conference?
DB: We hope that, given the conference’s emphasis on open source, the interest levels and the awareness levels will be significantly higher than it is at the moment. The open source issue is a burning issue on the international nonprofit technology agenda and South Africa should not be left behind. Secondly, it comes back to the ultimate objective of the conference, which is to continue increasing the general awareness and understanding of technology in the NGO context. That is obviously our broader objective.
Additional Resources
- Click here for conference information.
- Click here to read about the new IT initiative.
- Click here to read details about the launch of PRODDER, the first comprehensive online directory of South African nonprofits.