The keynote speech discusses the opportunities and challenges of digital publishing in West Africa. Some of the opportunities mentioned include using technology to address the lack of access to quality education materials across the continent, and the potential to reach the large youth population. However, challenges also exist such as poor internet infrastructure and the fact that e-commerce has not taken off in the same way as in Western countries. The speech argues that publishers need to explore multi-platform approaches to content delivery utilizing both digital and traditional formats. Overall, the future of publishing in Africa is seen as promising but requiring innovation to overcome barriers.
Connecting with Latinos: Multicultural, Millennial & Mobile Melinda Gipson
Joe Camacho, CMO of Sabio Mobile, keynoted Campaign Technology East with an overview of how to reach Latino / Hispanic Voters in your next digital campaign.
Ali washington sept 2013 spear presentationGenome Alberta
Mike Spear's slide deck on social media tools and a bit of theory behind it, presented to the ALI Social Media & Government workshop in Washington DC, September 2013.
Connecting with Latinos: Multicultural, Millennial & Mobile Melinda Gipson
Joe Camacho, CMO of Sabio Mobile, keynoted Campaign Technology East with an overview of how to reach Latino / Hispanic Voters in your next digital campaign.
Ali washington sept 2013 spear presentationGenome Alberta
Mike Spear's slide deck on social media tools and a bit of theory behind it, presented to the ALI Social Media & Government workshop in Washington DC, September 2013.
We live in a rapidly changing world … a world in which there seems to be a conspiracy by the proponents of globalization to use digital devices for the westernization of all other cultures. This is indeed a worrisome development! But more worrisome is the fact that in contemporary African society, our communication systems ( music, dance, drama, story-telling, masking etc.) are being gradually superimposed with movie-watching, computer-gaming, celebrity-following and other digitally-induced forms of communication that are counter-productive to Africans. Obviously, such digitally-induced forms of communication not only shape the understanding and dreams of the ordinary citizen wherever he/she may be; but also create mass market of Western culture at the expense of indigenous African culture. In the light of the above observation, this paper shall with particular prejudice to the non-verbal forms of communication in traditional African setting, examine the roles of the indigenous modes of communication vis-à-vis their Western counterparts in the message transfer process. The study shall adopt the textual analysis method of research to investigate the survivability of the indigenous modes of communication among the Igbo’s in South/East Nigeria in the face of palpable threat from the digital divide.
Global Engagement in an Interconnected WorldSummarized from a p.docxwhittemorelucilla
Global Engagement in an Interconnected World
*Summarized from a paper by the same title, authored by Dr. John Lee, Associate Professor of Social Studies, N.C. State University
Introduction
A mother sits with her son at a computer. Music fills the room as stylishly dressed kids dance on a computer screen. The scene is a house in the Western African country of Senegal where an encouraging mother is watching a music video with her son and offering her opinion of her son’s favorite new musical group, Rania. The group is from South Korea and is part of a music phenomenon called Korean Pop (or K-Pop) that fuses electronic, hip hop, rock and R&B musical forms. The young man made a video of his mother’s opinion of the group and put it on YouTube. A South Korean musical group, singing music online that emerged in black American culture, is being shared by an African boy on a global commercial video sharing network. How did we get to this point and what are the implications of this interconnected and overlapping world for this young man’s future and the future of young people in the United States?
A certain vision of the future is already here, although unevenly represented around the world. This future is cross-cultural and supported by a global economic system of multinational interests delivered through a decentralized communications network. Young people today are growing up in an interconnected world with access to information through a wide variety of mediums and devices that support the exchange of ideas and opinions. Given that these systems for communication are in constant flux and are being rapidly developed, children must prepare for a future that will look different than the world of their parents.
Trends in Youth Global Engagement
There are six trends that will shape the global engagement of Generation Z over the next decade. Each of them is outlined below.
Trend #1 – The Emergence of an Online Global Identity
Online social networks connect people and create avenues for extending our identity. Identity is connected to our physical being, but increasingly young people are crafting online identities using social networks. Manuel Castells describes this phenomenon in his recent trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Castells argues that the organization of global economics, political and social institutions prompts individuals to create meaning in their lives through collective action. This explains why networks such as Facebook have become so popular (500 million active users), so fast (Facebook went online in 2004). The attraction of Facebook is the human interaction and collective action that it facilitates. The technology is much less important than the human activities that the technologies enable. In fact, actual interfaces such as Facebook come and go rather quickly (e.g. AOL and MySpace, both with explosive growth and quick declines). These global networks allow people to be free of their “other” identities - ...
Risky Reading: images and the vision of African educationkioglobal
Kio Global presentation delivered at the International Private Schools and Education Forum, Africa conference, London, 2013.
In early years as in digital culture, pictures (and few words) are the currency. In the African classroom, what are we looking at?
The words of Frantz Fanon that ‘each generation must discover its mission’ come to mind every time I have an opportunity to speak with young South Africans.
The Giver Essay Questions. . Best Custom Academic Essay Writing Help amp; Wri...Holly Bell
The Giver Summarys For Chapter 1 5 Essay - INKSTERSCHOOLS.ORG. Using the Document-Based Questions Technique for Literature: Lois Lowry .... The Giver Article Essay Activity and Project by Samsons Shoppe TpT. The giver essay questions. The Giver Essay Questions. 2019-02-06. The Giver By: Lois Lowry Novel Study Essay questions, Novel studies .... The Giver Chapter 1 Questions. The Giver Sources and Worksheets Essay prompts, Essay questions .... The Giver Essay The Giver Emotions. The giver essay questions by glob72violow - Issuu. The giver intro Essay questions, The giver, This or that questions. The Giver Essay Questions.docx - The Giver Essay Questions 1. What does .... The Giver Essay Prompts. The Giver - 6th Grade Humanities. The Giver Movie Guide Questions Worksheet PG13 - 2014. Giver assignment 5. The Giver Movie Guide Questions Worksheet PG13 - 2014 .... The G
My Career Goals Essay Example Free Essay Example. Charting the CPA Journey: Education, Career Path, and Prospects Free .... My Future Goals Essay - 622 Words Free Essay Example on GraduateWay. Descriptive essay: Essay on future career goals. College Essay Career Goals - Educational and Career Goals Essay Examples. What are your future goals essay. The Discussion of Future Career Goals Essay Example Topics and Well .... How to Write an Essay About My Career Goals With Example. 008 Essay Example Future Career Plan Sample 617907 Thatsnotus. 017 Essay Example On My Career Goals Scan0159 Thatsnotus. Educational goals essay examples. Educational Goal. 2022-10-19. 023 Career Goal Statement Zdxttkpg Educational And Goals Essay Thatsnotus. 001 Essay Example Career Goal Thatsnotus. My Future Career Goals Essay Example 400 Words - PHDessay.com. Future Career Plan Example Inspirational 55 Career Goals Essay Essays .... 020 Future Career Goals Essays Choosing To Describe Why I Chose Nursing .... 003 Future Goals Essay Sample Graduate School Personal Statement .... Stirring Future Career Goals Essay Examples Thatsnotus. My Future Career Goals Essay Example Topics and Well Written Essays .... Career goals Essay Essay on Career goals for Students and Children in .... My future career goals essay. Career Goals Essay - How do I Write my Career Goals? - Career Cliff. My career essay. Career Preparation Essay. 2022-10-16. My future goals essay. My Future Dreams essays. 2019-01-19. Essay About Career Plans And Goals. 010 Career Goal Statement Zdxttkpg Essay Example Goals Thatsnotus. 003 Essay Example Writing Smart Goals Examples 265254 Career Thatsnotus. 020 Essay Example Career Thatsnotus Essay On Future Career Goals Essay On Future Career Goals
We live in a rapidly changing world … a world in which there seems to be a conspiracy by the proponents of globalization to use digital devices for the westernization of all other cultures. This is indeed a worrisome development! But more worrisome is the fact that in contemporary African society, our communication systems ( music, dance, drama, story-telling, masking etc.) are being gradually superimposed with movie-watching, computer-gaming, celebrity-following and other digitally-induced forms of communication that are counter-productive to Africans. Obviously, such digitally-induced forms of communication not only shape the understanding and dreams of the ordinary citizen wherever he/she may be; but also create mass market of Western culture at the expense of indigenous African culture. In the light of the above observation, this paper shall with particular prejudice to the non-verbal forms of communication in traditional African setting, examine the roles of the indigenous modes of communication vis-à-vis their Western counterparts in the message transfer process. The study shall adopt the textual analysis method of research to investigate the survivability of the indigenous modes of communication among the Igbo’s in South/East Nigeria in the face of palpable threat from the digital divide.
Global Engagement in an Interconnected WorldSummarized from a p.docxwhittemorelucilla
Global Engagement in an Interconnected World
*Summarized from a paper by the same title, authored by Dr. John Lee, Associate Professor of Social Studies, N.C. State University
Introduction
A mother sits with her son at a computer. Music fills the room as stylishly dressed kids dance on a computer screen. The scene is a house in the Western African country of Senegal where an encouraging mother is watching a music video with her son and offering her opinion of her son’s favorite new musical group, Rania. The group is from South Korea and is part of a music phenomenon called Korean Pop (or K-Pop) that fuses electronic, hip hop, rock and R&B musical forms. The young man made a video of his mother’s opinion of the group and put it on YouTube. A South Korean musical group, singing music online that emerged in black American culture, is being shared by an African boy on a global commercial video sharing network. How did we get to this point and what are the implications of this interconnected and overlapping world for this young man’s future and the future of young people in the United States?
A certain vision of the future is already here, although unevenly represented around the world. This future is cross-cultural and supported by a global economic system of multinational interests delivered through a decentralized communications network. Young people today are growing up in an interconnected world with access to information through a wide variety of mediums and devices that support the exchange of ideas and opinions. Given that these systems for communication are in constant flux and are being rapidly developed, children must prepare for a future that will look different than the world of their parents.
Trends in Youth Global Engagement
There are six trends that will shape the global engagement of Generation Z over the next decade. Each of them is outlined below.
Trend #1 – The Emergence of an Online Global Identity
Online social networks connect people and create avenues for extending our identity. Identity is connected to our physical being, but increasingly young people are crafting online identities using social networks. Manuel Castells describes this phenomenon in his recent trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Castells argues that the organization of global economics, political and social institutions prompts individuals to create meaning in their lives through collective action. This explains why networks such as Facebook have become so popular (500 million active users), so fast (Facebook went online in 2004). The attraction of Facebook is the human interaction and collective action that it facilitates. The technology is much less important than the human activities that the technologies enable. In fact, actual interfaces such as Facebook come and go rather quickly (e.g. AOL and MySpace, both with explosive growth and quick declines). These global networks allow people to be free of their “other” identities - ...
Risky Reading: images and the vision of African educationkioglobal
Kio Global presentation delivered at the International Private Schools and Education Forum, Africa conference, London, 2013.
In early years as in digital culture, pictures (and few words) are the currency. In the African classroom, what are we looking at?
The words of Frantz Fanon that ‘each generation must discover its mission’ come to mind every time I have an opportunity to speak with young South Africans.
The Giver Essay Questions. . Best Custom Academic Essay Writing Help amp; Wri...Holly Bell
The Giver Summarys For Chapter 1 5 Essay - INKSTERSCHOOLS.ORG. Using the Document-Based Questions Technique for Literature: Lois Lowry .... The Giver Article Essay Activity and Project by Samsons Shoppe TpT. The giver essay questions. The Giver Essay Questions. 2019-02-06. The Giver By: Lois Lowry Novel Study Essay questions, Novel studies .... The Giver Chapter 1 Questions. The Giver Sources and Worksheets Essay prompts, Essay questions .... The Giver Essay The Giver Emotions. The giver essay questions by glob72violow - Issuu. The giver intro Essay questions, The giver, This or that questions. The Giver Essay Questions.docx - The Giver Essay Questions 1. What does .... The Giver Essay Prompts. The Giver - 6th Grade Humanities. The Giver Movie Guide Questions Worksheet PG13 - 2014. Giver assignment 5. The Giver Movie Guide Questions Worksheet PG13 - 2014 .... The G
My Career Goals Essay Example Free Essay Example. Charting the CPA Journey: Education, Career Path, and Prospects Free .... My Future Goals Essay - 622 Words Free Essay Example on GraduateWay. Descriptive essay: Essay on future career goals. College Essay Career Goals - Educational and Career Goals Essay Examples. What are your future goals essay. The Discussion of Future Career Goals Essay Example Topics and Well .... How to Write an Essay About My Career Goals With Example. 008 Essay Example Future Career Plan Sample 617907 Thatsnotus. 017 Essay Example On My Career Goals Scan0159 Thatsnotus. Educational goals essay examples. Educational Goal. 2022-10-19. 023 Career Goal Statement Zdxttkpg Educational And Goals Essay Thatsnotus. 001 Essay Example Career Goal Thatsnotus. My Future Career Goals Essay Example 400 Words - PHDessay.com. Future Career Plan Example Inspirational 55 Career Goals Essay Essays .... 020 Future Career Goals Essays Choosing To Describe Why I Chose Nursing .... 003 Future Goals Essay Sample Graduate School Personal Statement .... Stirring Future Career Goals Essay Examples Thatsnotus. My Future Career Goals Essay Example Topics and Well Written Essays .... Career goals Essay Essay on Career goals for Students and Children in .... My future career goals essay. Career Goals Essay - How do I Write my Career Goals? - Career Cliff. My career essay. Career Preparation Essay. 2022-10-16. My future goals essay. My Future Dreams essays. 2019-01-19. Essay About Career Plans And Goals. 010 Career Goal Statement Zdxttkpg Essay Example Goals Thatsnotus. 003 Essay Example Writing Smart Goals Examples 265254 Career Thatsnotus. 020 Essay Example Career Thatsnotus Essay On Future Career Goals Essay On Future Career Goals
How to Write an Informative Essay - Peachy Essay. Informative Essay - 10+ Examples, Format, Pdf | Examples. How to Write an Informative Essay Guide | HandMadeWriting. Examples of Informative Essays. Informative Essay: With Examples, Topic Ideas, and Expert Tips. Free Essay - 26+ Examples, Format, Pdf | Examples. How To Start An Informative Essay Examples - Coverletterpedia. Informative Essay Examples sample, Bookwormlab.
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Africa youth culture is changing so fast due to global youth culture and media influence. This is causing a growing gap between the youth and adult worlds in Africa. Youth are disconnecting from much of African society including church and faith. What are some ways forward.
Notes from a presentation delivered by Ineke Buskens, Research for the Future, at Information for Change 2007, Cape Town, South Africa, 18th June 2007.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
"Impact of front-end architecture on development cost", Viktor TurskyiFwdays
I have heard many times that architecture is not important for the front-end. Also, many times I have seen how developers implement features on the front-end just following the standard rules for a framework and think that this is enough to successfully launch the project, and then the project fails. How to prevent this and what approach to choose? I have launched dozens of complex projects and during the talk we will analyze which approaches have worked for me and which have not.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
Empowering NextGen Mobility via Large Action Model Infrastructure (LAMI): pav...
Keynote Speech: Technology and the Future of the Book
1. Digital Publishing in West Africa: Technology and the Future of the Book
www.informationforchange.org
Keynote Speech: Technology and the Future of the Book
Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, Co-founder, Cassava Republic Press
Transcript of keynote speech delivered at Information for Change 2011, Lagos, Nigeria, 11th May 2011.
Thank you for the invitation. I’m both honoured and humbled to be the keynote speaker for this important and timely
event.
Despite some of the challenges of publishing on this continent, I am inspired by the power of publishing to perennially
question and change the configuration and facilitate critical thought. I’m continually excited about what we publishers
have achieved and provoked by what is still possible. It only takes a moment’s reflection to see that some of the most
important social transformations in global history have been empowered via publishing, whether it’s the printed version
of the King James Bible or the Communist Manifesto. Books, or rather, what lies inside them, have been so deeply
interwoven into the fabric of social change that we sometimes forget how significant they are. Publishing is one of the
key ways in which socio-cultural narratives are transmitted from generation to generation. It is also often the way in
which those socio-cultural narratives can be reworked or disrupted. Books have historically been a significant part of
the democratic process, impacting information and knowledge, turning subjects into citizens, and reshaping the status
quo into a set of questions in search of an answer.
In the wake of political upheaval in North Africa, Africans across the continent are more conscious than ever of the
possibility of social change. Most recently, Ugandans have been in revolt against the longstanding dictatorship of
Museveni, which was described to me a few days ago as “Mugabe-lite with a dash of Syria mixed in”. Here in Nigeria,
there are 100 million people under the age of 30 – more than the combined population of Libya, Egypt and Tunisia.
Again, there are 75 million Nigerians under the age of 20. Every year, 800,000 Nigerians pass their JAMB but do not
get into university because there is no space for them. Those that do get to university almost universally suffer a
grossly substandard tertiary education. It is the continual refrain of employers that new graduates are increasingly
unemployable; they have no transferrable skills, they are not able to write, they have no knowledge of Nigerian history
and apparently no curiosity for the world and with a poor attitude to work. In my experience, it is common for
recruitment drives in the private sector to attract tens of thousands of applicants, with only a handful who are deemed
potential candidates.
There is therefore a need for a revolution in the education sector, both in Nigeria and across the continent. There’s a
huge need for content and information to be served to students who lack access to good quality teachers and teaching
materials. Technology would seem to provide a potential answer. There are several submarine cables that now
connect west, east and southern Africa to the global internet infrastructure. Millions of Africans are now going online,
discovering Google, Wikipedia and social media. There are an estimated 40 million active internet users in Nigeria,
1
2. Digital Publishing in West Africa: Technology and the Future of the Book
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making it the largest internet population on the continent. Again, there are an estimated one million Blackberries in use
in Nigeria and 5 million Nigerians on Facebook.
However, the cut to the main cable from Lagos to the rest of the country a few days ago put most of the country out of
bandwidth and shows how precarious the internet infrastructure can still be. The question remains as to whether
technology-enabled solutions can significantly address the yawning knowledge-gap. While technology can
revolutionise the practice of citizenship (as we saw to a limited extent in the recent elections in Nigeria) and lead to a
demand for full participation/awareness of rights, we have to be careful not to turn to technology into a form of fetish,
or a set of magic bullets that can cut through sedimented practice and outmoded ways of being.
Sometimes, I wonder if we are not experiencing too much information. From a Western perspective, apart from the
information overload of the Internet, too many books are being published that will only ever be consumed by a handful
of people. According to a report in the Daily Mail, 59,000 of the 86,000 new titles published in the UK in 2009 sold an
average of 18 copies and more than 90 per cent of editions sell fewer than 3,500 copies. It’s not as if the increasing
amount of information available in the world is broadening tastes and leading to an increased eclecticism or
appreciation of difference. It is still dominated by Western myth-makers or those that has been authorized by the
West. Recent studies in social media consumption often show that far from widening users grasp of the world and
social connections across difference, social media simply confirms prejudices and boundaries that exist in the world,
whether they are based on race, class, gender, language, geography or ethnicity.
Here on the continent, for all the excitable talk of an emerging African middle class, the reality is that the majority of
Africans are still not online and if anything at all, “Amazon” remains a large river in South America. E-commerce (and
e-books) are a middle-distance dream. The need for printed books will remain the key issue for years to come as the
rising consumer class expands. Unlike the West where there is a glut in book and knowledge production, we simply
don’t have enough books providing quality information about our society today and in the distant past. In contrast to
their Western and Asian counterparts, many African children grow up without ever having seen, let alone owned,
beautiful, well-illustrated books which inspire them to a life of reading, beauty, learning and curiosity for the world. With
a youthful population, there is a pressing need to produce more content that will invite children to dream, to question,
to imagine, to look to the past with a view to understanding the present and provoking the future. There are simply not
enough publishers on this continent catering for the kind of varied tastes required to transform this continent. We
need not only literary fiction or educational books, but books ranging from romance, fantasy fiction, crime fiction,
creative non-fiction to history books.
It is often said that the problem in Nigeria (and elsewhere on the continent) is a problem of leadership. I’ve often felt
that to be a somewhat simplistic response. Clearly, the problem is also a problem of followership. Citizens are
insufficiently aware of their constitutional rights, their capacity to make demands on their leaders as well as the option
to interrogate their leaders’ decisions and their own choices. It is almost as though people are just allowing existence
2
3. Digital Publishing in West Africa: Technology and the Future of the Book
www.informationforchange.org
to pass them by so that they can later outsource the task or responsibility to an external figure – religion, political
leaders etc. It is as if we have forgotten how different things were in the past and we have no knowledge of different
times and places and we are perpetually stuck in the present. Publishing is a powerful way to intervene here. Books
are an excellent way to provide the resources to imagine that a different future is possible. Books can change minds
and prompt fundamental social questions. This is why writers across time and space have often come under criticism
and faced imprisonment.
As a publisher on the continent, it is the best of times and also the worst of times. It is the best of times because first
of all we have a youthful population that must be educated and must read and become better informed about where
we have been and where we should be going. These youths will require both educational materials as well as other
reading materials that will fire their imagination as well as provide a form of escapism. As we can see from the
popularity of Nollywood films, there is a huge desire to escape from the daily grind of existence and deep existential
uncertainty. We need to develop more escapist and fantasy literature than we have produced in the past. Popular
fiction is the mainstay of fiction publishing elsewhere in the world; it is a huge gap in the market here and an
opportunity to wean Nigerians off James Hadley Chase and Danielle Steele and towards similar local stories.
Escapist popular fiction offers a reprieve and a retreat from life, all the better to return to the world anew – bringing
with it the cultural confidence that comes from seeing yourself represented.
Secondly, there’s a huge opportunity to produce children’s books, which are so crucial in terms of children’s
relationship to ideas and myth-making. Children’s books are a powerful way to create revolutions in thought. In one
of our children’s books, we have a story which features a female mechanic and a male nurse. This confounds
expectations in a place like Nigeria, but at the same time, lays the seeds of possibility for rethinking gender relations
and opportunities for women in the minds of girls and boys. Again, in another of our children’s books, we feature a
physically challenged child, giving representation to the unrepresented in society and showing children that difference
is not to be feared or shunned but to the embraced as part of their variegated world.
As publishers, we must get better at tapping into the oral culture which structures society in Nigeria and elsewhere on
the continent. While there may sometimes be a lack of enthusiasm for reading, there is never anything other than joy
in the all too human practice of telling and listening to stories. We need to find a way to marry text with voice to bring
back the power of storytelling. Digital technology allows us to do so and we must embrace it fully even if Internet
infrastructure remains a challenge.
Again, more people are getting educated, even if inadequately, and there’s a real hunger for learning or at the very
least to be literate. Even the house-help wants to learn to read and write because she knows that she has to be able
to send text messages to her friend because it is cheaper than using voice calls. The motor mechanic wants to be
able to ask if he can join you on Facebook. Again, this requires a certain level of literacy. Many disenfranchised youth
(the so-called ‘almajiris’) in northern Nigeria dream of reading; some constitute part of the people that buy the Hausa
3
4. Digital Publishing in West Africa: Technology and the Future of the Book
www.informationforchange.org
market literature – only that they have to get others to read it to them. We shouldn’t forget that far more fiction books
are bought and read in Hausa than in English, with romance stories sometimes selling in the hundreds of thousands.
In addition, as a result of the youthful demographic, more and more young people are technologically savvy and are
quickly soaking up the latest tech that comes along. Many young Nigerians are writers of open source code, even if
they do not yet write other forms of story. However, the technology is still not sophisticated enough to allow for
serious data mining and, as I have said, e-commerce has yet to kick-off. But e-commerce will become a mass-market
phenomenon in time here, as it did nearly ten years ago in the West, and publishers or producers of content have to
be ready for the platforms that will become available. Finally, the increasing status of celebrity Nigerian authors such
as Teju Cole, Chika Unigwe, Helon Habila, Chimamanda Adichie etc. and alongside media attention and publicity for
companies such as Cassava Republic through our book parties is encouraging more people to think about writing and
open up a new Word document. With careful nurturing and direction, this will help to develop the next generation of
content producers.
However, being an African publisher is also the worst of times because first of all, there’s economic recession globally
and people are not necessarily thinking about books, at least not literary fiction. Attention is often turned to other, more
immediate forms of entertainment. However, I see this as an opportunity. Rather than just produce content in book
format, we should be thinking how of how to produce content from a hybrid, multi-platform perspective, drawing upon
the different talents in the culture industry. Although there are now many different devices (Kindle, the Sony Reader,
the Nook, tablets such as the iPad etc.) which provide a variety of platforms for accessing and buying books, many of
these are a long way from the lived realities of Africans. At the moment, it is more feasible to consider accessing
content through mobile handsets. The increasing use of smart phones such as Blackberries and their equivalents that
enable access to the Internet and data will be the key opportunity for years to come. So we have to explore different
strategies simultaneously to produce content for the different markets/classes to access using the most appropriate
platform for that market segment. Sometimes it will be in the traditional book form, other times through audio books
that can be downloaded on mobile phones or read as ebooks, or narrated on radios. We however have to be careful
that our strategies do not fall into the hands of pirates or the value of the content is not diminished in the process of
digitisation. With so much free information on the internet, it is necessary to communicate to consumers that
developers/producers of content must be adequately remunerated because the production of ideas, knowledge,
entertainment, creativity takes time and resources. We cannot assume that because content has become digitised
that the cost necessarily must be reduced. Someone still has to pay for the cost of the content of which printing
typically only takes up between 15 -25% of the total cost of a book. When content is transferred from a physical book
to other platforms such as mobile content, audio forms, radio plays, gaming etc, all the participants must still be
compensated. Migrating to a multi-platform form of production incurs additional cost.
So rather than thinking of books as merely something on the printed page, in the age of the digital and social media,
we should be thinking of stories as a site for certain form of sociality and congregation, where readers and authors
and other content producers come together to produce a content or discuss the content that has been produced and
taking it to a different direction. Digital publishing therefore should not just be about platforms and e-devices, but
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5. Digital Publishing in West Africa: Technology and the Future of the Book
www.informationforchange.org
about the opportunity to create a social space gathered around certain stories and forms of narrative. On this
continent of fantastical storytellers, this becomes a vital opportunity for communal participation. Imagine a book set in
Nairobi, and a reader reads it and decides that they want to inflect that story with a Lagos sensibility. Imagine inviting
readers to retell the ending of Things Fall Apart or what would have happened if Okonkwo had a sister, what would
she have done? In this way, writers and readers are engaged in a highly collaborative mode.
Through technology, publishers can increasingly deliver rich content using a variety of media. We can talk also about
ebooks and the possibility in terms of sales and better access etc. However, I am skeptical about the immediate
opportunities here in Africa. Nonetheless, digital allows us to challenge the notion of the narcissistic authorial voice or
the cult of the ‘genius’ that is at the heart of book production with its obsession over the individual celebrated author
which masks the collective efforts that is involved in any act of creation. However, with digitalisation and socialising
media, especially where online text, art, music, film are combined, a dynamic and collaborative way of creation and
learning becomes available. In societies like ours where we have mis-educated and under-educated individuals
whom we allow to transmit their own mis-education to future generations, interactively produced and inherently
participative content can reduce that and offer teachers and learners a new way of learning and ultimately enable a re-
discovery of the joy of the ‘book’. There is much work to be done.
Thank you.
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