Local Content Development and Information Society

In building the Inclusive Information Society, care should be taken not to perpetuate the domination of nations of the world by certain languages and cultures. A big challenge that we have currently is that the dominant language and culture in terms of the content available on ICTs is that from the West. While this is understandable as a historical matter, in ensuring that the Information Society is fair, just and contributes to a better world, more effort will need to be exerted to ensure that content available on the ICTs is relevant and appropriate to all communities, and also available in their languages. This will ensure that all communities feel part of this global Information Society.

Local content can be defined in the context of an Information Society as “an expression of a community or inhabitants’ locally created and adapted information, knowledge and experience that is relevant to the community’s situation based on their social, economic, political, cultural and religious needs”. For the purpose of local content development, South Africa will prioritise local content development to the creation, promotion and preservation of Indigenous Languages, Arts, Culture, Heritage and innovation including indigenous knowledge.

The promotion of local content in the context of information society is, ICTs should communicate locally relevant messages, information and knowledge. This means providing opportunities for local people to interact and communicate with each other, expressing their own ideas, knowledge and cultures in their own languages. Local content is critical for the promotion of cultural and linguistic diversity as well as the affirmation of cultural identity and heritage. To a large extent, this means that ICTs need to be conveyors of locally relevant messages and information.

ICTs need to provide opportunities for local people to interact and communicate with each other, expressing their own ideas, knowledge and culture in their own languages. This should also contribute to socio, economic and political development. The appropriate policy regime, vibrant indigenous knowledge systems and the application of technologies that support cultural and linguistic diversity are three mutually reinforcing measures that countries can employ in the development and promotion of local content. Digitisation of the available local content is a critical step highlighted in both the WSIS Plan of Action and Tunis Agenda for the Information Society. There are also issues of broadcasting locally relevant content, research and development of appropriate technologies that will be relevant for local content development.

Corporations in developed countries have a dominant stake in the ownership of ICTs and the content disseminated through such technologies. As a result local content faces intense competition. Extensive financial and other resources are used to push non-local or global content through television programming, advertising and the spread of global brands. Some of these corporations have registered software patents in violation of the act.

This means that citizens in developing countries are flooded with ideas, values and cultures that are foreign to them. Unless developing countries find ways to match the foreign content there is a real danger that local cultural heritage and economic livelihoods may be undermined or overwhelmed.

As instruments of empowerment, ICTs should communicate locally relevant messages, information and knowledge. This means providing opportunities for local people to interact and communicate with each other, expressing their own ideas, knowledge and cultures in their own languages. South Africa need to have a comprehensive national programme to ensure the digitisation of the available local content.