Emerging Technology & Practice for Conservation Communications in Africa (sneak peak)  

by USAID/BATS Program

Twenty-five years ago, information and communications technologies (ICTs) were not well integrated into the development policy agenda and were largely overlooked by development agencies.1 In the past decade, ICT's have experienced unprecedented growth, due to a complex of technological and economic factors including economic globalization, the rapid advance of the Internet and advances in telephonic technology that have greatly increased performance while dramatically dropping production and operating costs. ICTs, by themselves, do not equate to economic development but are becoming ever more integral to broad-based development strategies. There has been a growing recognition of the awareness, outreach, social, and business transactions, knowledge sharing and education and performance monitoring and accountability. ICTs' transformational capabilities have been especially evident in governance, health, finance, and agricultural interventions in

Africa. The conservation community also has increasingly used ICTs in many different activities but opportunities for faster and greater impact from the use of ICTs also exist.

Tablet training for field surveys, DRC. Photo credit: Brody Dittemore

In the anticipated USAID white paper, Emerging Technology & Practice for Conservation Communications in Africa, findings from a study have resulted in a discussion on the rapidly growing number of mobile and Internet-based applications for managing and sharing knowledge and information; how the role of ICT has facilitated other sectors including finance, health, agriculture, and governance; and how emerging ICTS are being and can be used in conservation.

Deeper still, the paper delves into two integral African regional conservation programs USAID's CARPE and the US Forestry Department's STEWARD. CARPE is a large and long-established central African project that works through a network of NGOs. It is relatively data-intensive and makes extensive use of satellite imagery, GIS, and other land use planning and management tools. STEWARD operates in a transboundary network of protected areas in West Africa and uses a more traditional suite of communications and knowledge sharing tools, relying on live interaction, print materials, and videos more than other forms of communications. Its main web interface is a low cost partnership with FRAMEweb (click here to access the community). The kinds of ICT tools used and the way in which they were used has been largely influenced by the mission of each program, the geographic scope, the stakeholders involved and the communication and knowledge sharing strategies that each program evolved.

The main point, however, is that not only have these applications greatly facilitated research and data analysis but they have been very important in public awareness and education from local communities to national and international decision makers. The tremendous diversification of both ICT devices and software combined with falling costs for equipment and subscriptions have opened up many new markets and tremendously expanded the number of users of ICT in less than 10 years in much of sub-Saharan Africa. As such, the paper makes the assertion that ICT assessments and tools will be a valuable part of project/program design and initial work planning by implementers.

[1] OECD Report, 33