June 22, 2000
Web posted at: 1:00 p.m. EDT

(CNN) – In Africa communications are poor in many rural communities and it is difficult getting information on health care, markets for goods and education. Yet despite the isolation of many communities and the lack of a telephone infrastructure, the Internet is transforming and improving lives. Computer kiosks connected by digital radios are opening pathways and creating virtual villages across the continent, allowing useful information to reach those who need it most.

Lane Smith works on projects to bring the Internet to Africa. He is coordinator of the Leland Initiative at USAID, which seeks to help Africans solve African problems by utilizing existing technology. The goal is to provide economic opportunity and to allow access to information for those in need and to send Africa-related information worldwide.

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Chat Moderator: Thank you for joining us today, Lane Smith, and welcome.

Lane Smith: I'm very pleased to be on CNN and have an opportunity to discuss these activities.

Chat Moderator: How is Internet technology improving lives in rural African communities?

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Lane Smith: Well, the first thing that many people in rural African communities want is information that will help them improve the immediate aspects of their lives: better health care; better education for their children; better markets for the products that they make; and better information on inputs that they need to buy in order to make those products.

One of the big challenges they face is getting information channels that they can use. That always brings us back to the Internet as one of the most rapidly developing, rapidly cheapening, technologies of the century.

Chat Moderator: How is the Internet connection affecting such ideas as women's rights and racial tolerance in these areas?

Lane Smith: Women's rights are really a key issue out there, because there are a lot of efforts being made my government and non-government organizations, and by religious organizations, to really improve their understanding of the rights they have under current laws.

There are always two challenges to increasing the opportunities, whether they're women, men or children, to participate in their economic and social lives. One is to strengthen the legal framework. The second is to make them and people in their community aware of that more positive legal framework.

So, one of the real challenges, of course, is identifying the message in ways that can be read or transmitted or seen by village women. The Internet, as we all know, holds a lot of promise to being able to do that.

Chat Moderator: Can you tell us what steps are taken to get to these areas? How difficult is it?

Lane Smith: The big challenge is related to the fact that the Internet has been based on the telephone infrastructure. That's how it's grown so fast in the U.S., because there is such ready access to telephones.

In Africa, telephone infrastructure has not yet reached so many parts of the rural areas, or even the major cities. So, the advent of the new types of wireless technologies and more rapid and cheaper ways of laying down the new trunk infrastructure, such as fiber optic cables, make it much cheaper and more affordable to get these communication pathways out to neighborhoods that need them.

One of the approaches that has been developed so well in parts of Africa is the idea of telephone kiosks, which are really small mom and pop stores with one or two telephone lines. People from the community are able to come in and, for a modest expense, can get a phone call through or a fax message sent.

So, what entities like the government of Senegal are doing, is to try to make that commercially attractive by putting a computer in the kiosk, and training the shop owners to help the community search the Internet for the kind of information they need.

So, the real challenge is trying to figure out how to aggregate the demands for telephone services or Internet services, so that the big trunk of demand can afford to buy the telephone services or the wireless technology.

There are a lot of very, very promising approaches that the technology is bringing. I can think of two right away. One technology allows you to send high speed Internet traffic over the same telephone lines that carry a regular phone call. It's called a Digital Subscriber Line technology (DSL). That allows both the Internet traffic and the voice line at the same time. It allows you to use the same infrastructure.

There are satellite-based approaches, also. For example, World Space is a company that has a satellite positioned over Africa and another over Asia that broadcasts digital radio programs straight to the household area, over every square inch of Africa territory. Because that is digital, you can also send one-way Internet messages over that. It's received by the radio and through a small cable into a computer, and it becomes one half of the Internet. That's available today, and the radios themselves are dropping in price almost on a weekly basis.

The big hope, of course, is that technology will continue to get cheaper, and the ability of African consumers to identify the information that they want to get from someone, or that they want to send to someone, will also increase, and they can begin to take more and more advantage of the world economy that's out there.

There's another example, actually, that I'd like to describe -- the community learning center approach. We have been working closely with three entities in Ghana: Accra, Kumasi, and Cape Coast. These community learning centers have 10-20 computers at work together with a good Internet connection. They do specific efforts to reach out to community members, women, students, businessmen, human right advocates, to identify the information that they have and want to send, or information that they need, and can learn how to get.

They charge a small fee for these services, thereby becoming more self-sustaining. Again, it's one more way to aggregate the demand in a culture where the individual consumer cannot afford the technology for his or her own use.

Question from Croxley: Mr. Smith, as I live in Africa, I would like to know how all of this is going to be provided, as many people are illiterate.

Lane Smith: That's a great question, and a great challenge. There are lots of efforts underway to develop visual cues that will allow people to take advantage of the Internet, to find the information that they want, or send information that they have to other people. Some of those are related to technology that has been developed for people with disabilities. Some are voice activated. Some are based on icons.

Those kinds of resources can be linked closely with the technology efforts that have already moved ahead in Africa, such as the health technology efforts, or the agricultural efforts.

For example, there are programs being developed where a farmer can look at a series of photos on the screen, find one that approximates the current condition of his crops, or the type of insects on his crop. He can choose the picture, and find out his next step, the type of pesticide, or other steps that will help him deal with the agricultural challenge he is facing.

Also, it could show the current market price, weather conditions, transport conditions, or other things that will help him make a more informed choice about what to do or where to ship it. Again, we always believe that the curve of technology can solve most of the problems that are out there, provided that some simple but in some ways difficult policy steps are taken.

Question from NoReality: What sorts of translation software is available to the African and Asian people so they can communicate effectively with others on the Internet?

Lane Smith: That represents one area of very rapid growth. My daughter takes Spanish in school, and has found pretty effective translation software on her Internet service provider. The challenge has two levels to it. The first is increasing the capability of the software to accomplish generic translations.

The second is making sure that all of the world's languages get fed into that generic translation software. In some ways, this represents economic opportunities, because it may be possible for someone in the village who speaks English to serve as a go-between for the villagers and thereby turn his or her English into a marketable skill.

Question from MaryG: Would people have Internet access to AIDS, health and birth control information, too?

Lane Smith: There are a lot of efforts developing. I have been approached by five or six entities in the last 60 days, trying to figure out how best to use the Internet to make this kind of information available to residents in Africa and Asia.

I've heard a concept put on the table called the Knowledge Vaccine. The idea being that there is a fundamental body of knowledge on health, on economics, on democracy, that everyone in the world needs to and is entitled to learn, in order to be able to function effectively in the world economy or in the village economy.

Clearly, one big component of that would be the kinds of health issues that are important. So, we're hopeful that the technology would help. If the people can identify the information that is critical, we believe that the technology would be able to get it out to them.

Question from Croxley: Do you not get a hostile reception from the elders in the village concerning you bringing a computer into their villages?

Lane Smith: I have not seen a hostile reception myself. We've had not so much a hostile reception as concern and curiosity. The curiosity is about what this technology is, and what the computer is that brings it.

The concern, of course, is that people have ways of life that are comfortable and important to them, just as we do. Anything that is new can threaten that way of life, issues related to pornography, for example, or other types of content that are undesirable. These are issues we've seen through the four years of the Leland Initiative.

We encouraged the organizations, with which we work, to make sure they're as transparent as possible in addressing these kinds of content issues. We keep saying that the best defense is a good offense. So rather than trying to suppress objectionable content, it may be more worthwhile to focus on getting your side of the story out, or the content that you value out, so everyone can see it as well.

Question from MaryG: What sort of government censorship of ideas or access would occur in these nations? Any?

Lane Smith: That's actually what I was referring to. There's not one single government that we've worked with on the Leland Initiative, and that's more than 25 in Africa, where the issue of content was not raised. But we've continued to recommend very strongly that attempts to manage the content, censor the content or control it, be done through a transparent and legal process.

Again, we recommend that governments may find it more effective to get their story out. We've seen some very good examples of that, attempts to get their story out, rather than attempt to suppress the things they don't like. We're encouraged, because more and more governments in Africa are agreeing that more openness and more information rather than less is the best way to approach this.

Chat Moderator: Do you have any final thoughts to share with us?

Lane Smith: Absolutely. It's been a real privilege to work on the Leland Initiative, primarily because the governments and people we've worked with are so enthusiastic to take advantage of this tool.

Today we see hundreds of new companies springing up in Africa to take advantage of the Internet, and literally tens of thousands of new subscribers coming onto the Internet every month. All of these people are contributing to their own economies, villages and families, but also contributing to the rest of us in the world.

It represents an opportunity for us that we don't want to squander. The Leland Initiative itself has done very little, compared to what the Africans we've worked with have done for themselves.

Chat Moderator: Thank you for joining us.

Lane Smith: Thank you very much for having me.