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   Summary II - 4 - (14 - 27 February)


FOLLOWING IS A MACHINE TRANSLATION OF THE ORIGINAL IN FRENCH. IT HAS BEEN EDITED FOR MISTRANSLATION ONLY. THE ORIGINAL IN FRENCH IS AVAILABLE ON THIS WEB SITE AT: <http://www.ue-acp.org/fr/forum/syntheses/syntII4.html>

* * Title: Summary II - 4 - (14 - 27 February) - For a cooperation forum on a bigger scale * *

by: Anne SIMON <anne.simon@skynet.be>
<http://www.ue-acp.org/en/forum/presentations/simon.html>

°°° Summary:
For a cooperation forum on a bigger scale:

  • To have the press play a role of relay is an initiative to be encouraged. The different proposed initiatives should be better linked together and assorted with actions at a local level. However, it is necessary to take account of constraints and specificities of the press, and to manage to convince it that it is necessary to tell the stories of projects and not the scandals on which the readers are keen. This challenge is also true for Europe. It would be necessary to also take in account the more classic media such as the rural radio. Internet must be used in order to improve everyday life. An organization supports the setting up of telecenters.
  • Most important is that information is exchanged, and not circulated one way. The forum must make possible a bigger transparency on the financial flows of cooperation, and to explain to the public how cooperation works in an accessible language.
  • It is not necessary to limit actors of cooperation to those that are involved in projects of development. The forum allows those that wish it, whether they are journalists, officers, schoolmistresses, or members of a professional network, to be relays of information. A discussion comes back on the question of the definition of actors and their legitimacy. Actors of the context in the chain of mediation find their raison d'etre in the function of mediation that they play every day.
  • We signal some questions to which you can answer, to go farther in the precision, with the sign ==>
°°°

1 - Following the discussion on the role of media in cooperation... and in the forum

* The press

Several intervening parties (Rene Segbenou, Aliou Sall) insist that there should be established narrower links between the different initiatives presented on the forum aiming to raise awareness and to mobilize the written and spoken press (regional West Africa from the collective of Abidjan; Senegal; and Central Africa).

It is necessary have to a common basis of action between these regional or national initiatives but also more localized actions. An approach in network is recommended.

==> Who will be members of this network and how will it be organized?

It is possible to take contact with information agencies such as SYFIA and PANOS.

Thierry Lassalle supports the initiative but damps the enthusiasm by recalling how the press works. He tells how, when he was head of project in Tanzania, a journalist, in spite of all deontology, had invented a story of diversion of funds without saying a word of the success of the story of those that had succeeded in obtaining this project. Media tend to only transmit information that is marketable and expected by readers.

* Communication

The initiative concerning the press could be relayed by other media (rural radio, for example) and via Internet of course [see Forum Coordination: 15/02/00 " Summary II-3 (28 January -13 February) <http://www.ue-acp.org/en/forum/syntheses/syntII3.html)>].

==> What about radio and telephone coverage?

Several contributions come back on the traditional forms of communication, elements indispensable of development. Rural radio and in particular digital radio can reach today populations of the enclosed rural zones and can play a "stupendous" role.

An organization specialized in telecommunications to which belongs Bruno Jaffre, the CSDPTT, tries to bring closer practitioners of development to telecommunications experts. It installs telephone infrastructure in a participatory way and sometimes integrated with other projects of development.

With regard to rural telephony, Bruno Jaffre recalls the existence of the RASCOM project aiming to cover the rural zones of Africa thanks to a satellite. He expresses his fears as for consequences of liberalization on the coverage of rural or enclosed zones.

* The new technologies of communication

These must be considered as of tools making possible to improve everyday life. In the experience of the CSDPTT, Internet makes it possible to improve communication with one's partners of the South. The CSDPTT considers supporting the creation of telecenters with participatory management.

2 - Nature of the necessary information " to democratize " cooperation and to make possible the improvement of it

For Rene Segbenou, based on an experience report relating the construction of a school in Benin, it is as much the way in which information is transmitted as the information itself that counts. It is through * exchange * of information that cooperation will be able to stick to the real society better. Exchange takes into account what the user of information says and provides him with detailed enough information on the project that involves him directly. The eu-acp forum encourages this exchange by its characteristic organization and way of working (database of experience reports). [For more of details on questions raised by the circulation and the use of the available experience bank on the site <http://www.ue-acp.org>, see Forum Coordination: 24/02/00 " [LOME] Exploiting the experience bank <http://www.ue-acp.org/fr/forum/archives/2000-02/msg00020.html>]

In conclusion, for the different intervening parties that pronounced themselves on this question a forum of cooperation should make it possible:

  1. to create the conditions of information sharing
  2. to give more weight to the circulation of information
  3. to facilitate the access to information itself in a more comprehensible language for all
  4. to give a bigger transparency to financial information
  5. to publicize concrete experiences (results, progress and difficulties)
  6. to transmit public information on the procedures of cooperation

==> These different objectives would deserve to be detailed. With regard to the fifth point, it would be necessary to know how to convince journalists to tell the stories of lives and projects that appeal to readers.

Etienne Tasse, journalist himself, had proposed to make experience reports available to journalists. Aliou Sall is rather skeptical. He proposes to list topics to discuss and to transmit them in a press file.

==> There remains also an ambiguousness, if it is " dangerous " to wish to teach to the general population the concepts of cooperation - which would induce it to adjust to cooperation and not the opposite - why inform on the procedures?

3 - What actors for what relays?

A discussion on actors took place pursuing the previous discussions on the topics " to put actors at the heart of cooperation " and " to start out from the local level ".

Thierry Lassalle is indignant about the formulation " true actors " and the disparagement of mediators. He highlights the ambiguousness to wish to limit the true actors to the "grassroots" recipients and donors "at the top". Actors are multiple and change. It is all those who act at their level to improve societies. At the level " of the context " actors are mediators who make it possible to establish bridges between those who receive and those who give, between experiences of the past and actions of today. They analyze, explain, transmit information, and negotiate. This need of mediators is specific to the South: in Europe also it turns out that one doesn't know how to get high commissioners and political leaders interested in the realities of societies benefiting from cooperation.

Aliou Sall pursues by recognizing that until now we are limited too much in discussions to actors recognized within the confines of the existence of a project. In fact actors are all those who intervene in the society or the territory involved without being associated formally to the project. This reminder is close to the idea defended by Rene Segbenou, for whom it is up to cooperation to adjust to societies and not the opposite. Aliou Sall questions the legitimacy of some local NGOs to represent civil society. He considers that they are dependent on circles of power. Moreover, these NGOs, by creating distortions on the market of the local work, hire local officers and skills.
For Djibril Diop, the term " true actor " is only used to recall that it is necessary to reverse the top-down approach of cooperation and to recall that those for whom it works are the poorest and don't have access to what happens on this forum.

What is the articulation between these actors and the eu-acp forum? Intervening parties already began to reach out to journalists. Themselves they are relays individually or through networks or organizations to which they belong. Jules Dumas Nguebou, presenting the RIAH network, shows, for example, the existing relationships between the populations, the elected representatives and the professionals of the city. They communicate with the help of newsletters and newspapers. The RIAH opened a center of information and a citizens' capacity-building center in Cameroon, citizens' universities of training in Benin, in the Ivory Coast, in Senegal and Cameroon.

INFORMATIONS :

* Conclusion of the EU-ACP negotiations and a new agreement Forum Coordination: 22/02/00 " [LOME] Conclusion of EU-ACP negotiations " <http://www.ue-acp.org/en/forum/archives/2000-02/msg00015.html>

* In bibliographic reference to the discussion on the role of relay of the media and the use of Internet, the work " The First Mile of Connectivity - Advancing Telecommunications for Rural Development through a Participatory Communication Approach" is presented by Gilles Mersadier (Inter-reseaux) <http://www.ue-acp.org/en/documents/mersadier.html> (*)

* The information agencies SYFIA and PANOS as well as their details Forum Coordination: 24/02/00 " [LOME] More on Syfia and Panos " <http://www.ue-acp.org/en/forum/archives/2000-02/msg00020.html>

* Bruno Jaffre presents the CSDPTT organization of which the objective is to promote exchanges and help between peoples, in particular by bringing support to actions of development in the fields of posts and telecommunications ". He describes several ongoing projects. Bruno Jaffre: 22/02/00 " [LOME] Info on rural telephony" <http://www.ue-acp.org/en/forum/archives/2000-02/msg00016.html> It is possible to obtain the two numbers of the newsletter of CSDPTT by e-mail: Bruno Jaffre <bruno.jaffre@cnet.francetelecom.fr>

* Jules Dumas Nguebou presents the RIAH, Inter-African Network of populations, which gathers the populations of Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso and Cameroon. He describes the projects completed by the RIAH and gives the e-mail contacts for national relays. Jules Dumas NGUEBOU: 23/02/02 " [LOME] Re: A common basis of action " <http://www.ue-acp.org/en/forum/archives/2000-02/msg00017.html>

Anne SIMON
Forum Coordination <moderation@ue-acp.org> <http://www.ue-acp.org/fr/forum/participants.html>

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