A selection of comments from different actors on the Development Gateway.
"Not poverty focussed, like building another pyramid for pharoah"
World Bank staffer, July 2001
"The World Bank is launching its most ambitious information project to date: an Internet portal that aims to be a major entry-point to the Web's resources on development issues. But doubts abound about the initiative and the Bank itself appears clueless about how to maintain editorial independence. Will the Gateway end up as a gatekeeper?" Tanya Birkbeck, Gemini News, July 2001
"It is difficult to see how the proposed gateway will address many of the needs that civil society actors, especially those in the South, actually have. Despite the setting up of an independent GDG foundation to run the project, the real potential for ownership by civil society is very limited.
The rather centralised approach to setting up and managing the gateway was not welcomed, as neither favouring partnership nor perhaps being the best technical solution. Other ways exist to achieve a similar result. By focusing on the production of an Internet product, there is a danger that the capacity building process, especially in the South, will be overlooked. Choosing products over process risks excluding many civil society actors."
EADI Newsletter 1/2-2000, page 4, European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes
"Another disconcerting part of such initiatives is that they begin to focus on the technicalities of communication and information sharing rather than on the fundamental issues of development. And the question that fascinates the new age thinkers is 'how best to use the Internet' to improve communication and networking with one another. Yes, that's fine, but communication and networking about what? And for whose benefit?"
Reflections On The Inaugural Conference Of The African Knowledge Network Forum, Professor Yash Tandon, Director Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations Initiative (SEATINI), September 2000
"I think the lesson is not for the Bank alone. It is for all institutions that work on 'grand' projects. My own experience in Africa over ten years shows that 'grand' projects seldom work (even if you have local portals, national gateways). For us in Africa what we need is more training, better packaging techniques at local level so as to deliver relevant content to all when needed"
Post to Global Knowledge e-consultation on the Gateway, Lishan Adam, advisor on information technology and connectivity at the Economic Commission for Africa, October 2000
"From the publication of the World Development Report 1998-99 on 'Knowledge for Development' to present discussions around the Global Development Gateway, the World Bank is attempting to carve a niche for itself as the 'Knowledge Bank'. The Bank's knowledge agenda often tends to be centralized and absolutist and draws on economistic and technocratic models. These trends contribute to the emergence of a narrow knowledge agenda that both neglects sociocultural issues and those concerning a wider political economy. Thus, the plural nature of knowledge is denied and the Bank's own problematic role in knowledge generation is not reflected upon."
Lyla Mehta, 'The World Bank and its Emerging Knowledge Empire', article in Human Organisation, Summer 2001.
"The Gateway project would only serves in providing false impression that poverty in the developing world can be fought in the syberspace, and would thus contribute very little in achieving its advertised objectives. He further argued that the initiative would help develop the technical capacities of the World Bank rather than those of developing countries, as the latter would need initiatives that empower their people and develop there technical skills."
Comment at Meeting of Contemporary Arab Studies, Dr. Louay Safi, Director, Center for Balanced Development, September 2000.
"In my experience as Product Director for a web development firm specialising in portal software (including online community-building tools), when large organizations such as newpapers attempt to create spaces for community-building, hijacking of the agenda of communities is a risk. At worst, the most energetic activists become coopted and begin to serve the agenda of the paper. At best, the portal is not used by the communities.
The result is that the resources spent for the construction of the portal represent a lost opportunity cost - money that could rather have been given to community groups for their own use.
Newspapers (and other large institutions) can play a positive role in facilitating community building if they adhere to the following principles: provide the environment for autonomous community publishing, try to limit their editorial intervention, and draw their facilitators from established networks of community organizations. These principles are generally only achieved if the paper involves established networks of community organizations from the beginning - invites them to participate in the process of building the portal and the accessing the social networks required to sustain it. A spirit of partnership is key. In this respect, some of the ideas of civic journalism represent a good starting point for these kind of initiatives.
At the same time, we have to remember that newspapers are commercial organizations. They want community groups to participate in their portals as content generators who will validate the community roots and groundedness of the publication, increase page views and allow the paper to command greater advertising revenues. Thus very often it is the staff of the paper, or their commercial allies who become central actors, setting the editorial agenda in a direction that may not represent the needs or views of the majority of community groups in a region.
There is a danger that the GDG will fall into this latter trap. If the selection of topic guides and advisors remains the prerogative of Bank staff, then there is a risk that the editorial agenda of the GDG will strongly bear the official stamp of the organization and thus not serve as a real space for pluralism and dialogue amongst a variety of perspectives in the development community. It would serve the Bank well to allow for a rotating system of topic guides and advisors, and include the opinion of outside community members as determinate in the selection process."
David Ainsworth, Ph.D, Product Director HBE Software, Inc., July 2001
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Published: 10 September 2001 , last edited: 29 June 2006
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