Here you can find some thoughts that led to my engagement with the topic, mostly based on a research paper I wrote for a course at the University Bremen. After my research travel I critically read through my assumptions again and supplemented them with my experiences and observations.
The context of South Africa
South Africa is a land of extreme inequality due to it‘s historical development, ethnical composition and political situation that can be seen as a compressed arena for observing local impacts of global developments and the major question how digital technology effects inequality on a local scale within a society.
Over 20 years after the end of Apartheid racial and economical disparity and segregation are still omnipresent and also in terms of the digital world the country is widely separated. Whereas the access and usage of ICT in upperclass (mostly white) urban areas is comparable to most Western societies, in (mostly black) townships and remote rural areas sometimes there is barely no ICT infrastructure and the radio is still the most common source of information. During my travel I found my previous impression confirmed, that even if there are a lot of more people are using ICT everyday now, the crucial positions in technological infrastructure are mostly in the hand of Whites or Indians.
But apart from the inequalities I found my understanding of “access and usage of ICT” more and more shaking, as these definitions are also much dependent on the way of measuring and are mostly based on “classical” definitions, such as number of landline internet connections per inhabitants. Thereby they overlook that South Africa, as many other developing countries, kind of leapfrogged certain levels of technical development. For example the number of mobile phone users in South Africa much higher then in any country from the Global North.
The Digital Divide
When looking at recent developments and shifts toward a global knowledge society there are basically two opposite opinions about the role that digital technology plays in the developing world: The optimists praise the benefits of free access to information and communication as tools for learning, empowerment and democratization whereas the pessimists argue that according to the Knowledge gap hypothesis the inequality between rich and poor also widens in terms of access to Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
This unresolved contradiction structured my approach towards the topic and determined my interests during the research travel. Of course I wasn’t able to find any distinct answers, but instead was able to narrow down my interest to a specific question, that I would like to continue investigating in the ongoing project: Is the western fascination about digital communication really about people having access to the Internet or about the Internet having access to the people? Or as my friend Mthobisi Maphumulo expressed it: “Technology was not explained to us, it was advertised”