Commons-sense: Towards An African Digital Information
Commons Conference: Johannesburg, May 25-27, 2005

Conference summary | Conference statement | Presentations | Media highlights

pic by Kate Thompson in Commons-sense: 99% Live

From May 25 to 27, 2005 , 150 delegates from 20 African countries, the US, UK, India and Brazil gathered in Johannesburg for the “Commons-sense” conference, hosted by the LINK Centre at Wits University 's Graduate School of Public & Development Management.

Funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the full title of the conference was “Commons-sense: Towards an African Digital Information Commons,” and it brought together people and projects from varying disciplines, all committed to a strong African role in regeneration of the public domain.

The key aim was to figure out how electronic networks and digital applications can be harnessed by Africans and African institutions in ways that will improve knowledge dissemination, creativity, innovation and economic development.

The evening of May 25 saw the launch of Creative Commons South Africa (ccSA) by cc Chairperson Larry Lessig and the cc South Africa team. It was standing-room only by the time Lessig addressed the packed audience, and went on to applaud the efforts of local South Africans who had joined the global movement ('Lawrence Lessig launches CCSA' by Diane Tipping Woods).

The two main conference days, May 26 and 27, featured speakers addressing the eight conference themes:

• Global Momentum Towards the Commons

• African Universities & Digital Resources

• eLearning & Curriculum-Sharing

• New Publishing for the Commons

• Policy, Regulation & Trade for the Commons

• Blogging the Commons

• Open Content for the Developing World

• Local Content & Language
  

Lessig opened the first session by rallying against corporate and copyright barriers to creativity in the digital online environment, while US consumer activist Jamie Love and African trade law expert Tenu Avafia drew parallels between the campaign for access to essential medicines and the need for greater access to essential learning materials.

The second session heard about the important DATAD electronic theses and dissertations project by the Association of African Universities (AAU), and a look at open-access scholarly publication in South Africa .

The elearning and curriculum-sharing session looked at African-developed open-source online learning management systems and at efforts to provide teachers and students with “open content” teaching and learning resources on-line. The “new publishing” presentations included a look at the BBC's Creative Archive project and two other case studies -- on online free access to research publications and local music distribution via CDs linked to a magazine.

The policy, regulation and trade session was eclectic, looking at government policies on exploitation of publicly-funded research and of indigenous knowledge, as well as presentations on unregulated “frequency commons” spectrum usage by WiFi innovators and the barriers to learning materials access posed by copyright and restrictive practices by international publishers.

Bloggers had their say about the importance of weblogging to building a culture of information exchange and interrogation, and the open content and local content sessions took an honest look at both the opportunities and difficulties the digital networked environment poses for developing-country content.

Inspired by the Creative Commons (cc) “some rights reserved” alternative copyright model outlined by cc Chairman Larry Lessig and others at the conference – and officially launched in South Africa on the opening night -- representatives from Uganda and Egypt announced that they too would start Creative Commons licence “porting” projects in their home countries.

Librarians and digital repository practitioners reiterated their support for open access initiatives and called for more proprietary journals to embrace open access principles, allowing free online access to scholarly articles. Eve Gray, consultant to the South African Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) gave attendees a strong motivation for following this step, declaring that since the HSRC's publishing department had moved over onto an open access platform – allowing free downloads of all publications and offering a high quality print-on-demand service for anyone who wants the paper versions - the sales turnover of the HSRC's publishing department has risen by 300% (read Lessig's blog entry).

The panel on open content in the developing world featured representatives from Creative Commons projects in Brazil , India and Namibia. Ronaldo Lemos, Director of Creative Commons Brazil, spoke about a range of vital, alternative copyright initiatives in his home country and announced a joint project with the Wits LINK Centre in Johannesburg to build Southern dialogue on media, culture and intellectual property in the 21st Century.

The presentations from a number of educational technology projects around South Africa and the continent made it clear how important it is for educational content providers to collaborate. The South African national Education Department's portal Thutong, the Shuttleworth Foundation, SchoolNet Africa and SchoolNet Namibia all announced their support of the Creative Commons open content movement, and the Derek Keats of the University of the Western Cape Alan Amory of the University of KwaZulu-Natal outlined their development of open source learning systems, and Keats highlighted the continent-wide AVOIR open source project.

Frenetic South African artist-lecturer-weblogger Nathaniel Stern took drew loud applause for his cheeky “remix” of one of Lessig's presentations, while Matthew Buckland, editor of the Mail and Gaurdian Online, announced that the site's “Blogspot” section for would now licence bloggers materials using Creative Commons. Tanzania 's Ndesanjo Macha spoke about his drive to encourage on-line blogs, novels, songs and poems in African languages, protecting and disseminating the content through Creative Commons licences.

Highway Africa News Agency (HANA) journalists were on hand to report on the conference, producing two editions of a conference newsletter and, through online distribution of articles, encouraging better understanding among African ICT journalists of the complexities of intellectual property debates. Local media, including Business Day newspaper and SABC Radio, reported on the event, and in “new media” contrast, a team of Rhodes University New Media Lab students produced cutting-edge “podcasting” and weblogging (for more articles, see ccSA press).

Dwayne Bailey from the translate.org software project announced a drive to populate open content resources such as Wikipedia with local African knowledge. South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) announced a new project entitled “Free Knowledge Communities” and the University of Cape Town Law School said it would provide legal support for local Creative Commons and other alternative intellectual property initiatives.

The final session of the conference, orchestrated by representatives of Open Knowledge Network (OKN) Africa and bridges.org, saw a microphone and digital audio recorder moving around the conference hall to record a multilingual statement of principles and goals. Each participant was asked to read a line from the declaration in his or her home language.

There are a number of challenges Africans face in developing the continent's presence in the global “digital information commons.” The conference made it clear that the commons issue is highly relevant and critical at this point in history, and that a united continental community of practitioners, thinkers and visionaries is essential.

"We believe in Africa 's role in the information society of today and tomorrow, and we see Creative Commons and open content initiatives as one way to give voice to the vast creativity and knowledge that exists in Africa .

Our vision is of a continent where information, knowledge and creativity are shared in ways that enhance African values of community and of ubuntu/umuntu. Africa is, in many respects, well prepared for this revolution in the field of "intellectual property rights". Although new to the western world, the idea that collective knowledge should form the starting point of a fluid, continuously-evolving creation process is not new to many Africans. Living by the philosophy of 'ubuntu', Africans have always created in collaborative groups. 'Ubuntu' is most effectively encapsulated in the phrase: 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu', which can be roughly translated as: "a person is a person through other people" or "I am what I am because of you".

This philosophy engenders itself in song, dance and music, where all individuals in the community participate in the creation process. The philosophy of Ubuntu is perfectly linked to the philosophies of open source and open content development. Ubuntu embraces a process where creation is acknowledged as evolving out of the community. It recognises that at least some of the value coming out of that creation process needs to be given back to the community in order to strengthen future contributions.

The vision of Creative Commons Africa is of a thriving Internet community using open content licenses to share information and knowledge, in order to educate our people, grow our markets, share our knowledge and celebrate Africa 's culture and heritage with people around the world."

Thanks to Phillip Schmidt, Peter Benjamin and Rhodes NML for the beautiful audio version of this statement, read in over 20 languages from around Africa.

	Thurs 26 May, Donald Gordon Auditorium	Fri 27 May, Donald Gordon Auditorium
8:30 am	Coffee/tea, registration	Coffee/tea, registration
9:00 am	Welcome - Luci Abrahams LINK Centre Director, "Introduction to the Commons-sense project" Heather Ford, LINK Centre, Commons-sense Project Managerz	Welcome – Prof. Loyiso Nongxa, Wits University Vice-Chancellor & LINK Centre Advisory Board Member Launch – Draft of “The Digital Information Commons: An African Participant’s Guide” – Chris Armstrong, LINK Centre Commons-sense Project researcher
9:15-11 am	1. Global momentum towards the Commons • Lawrence Lessig (Creative Commons) • James Love (Consumer Project on Technology) • Tenu Avafia (Trade Law Centre for Southern Africa) Global Momentum towards the Commons: Lessons to draw from the access to medicines campaign PRESENTATION: Open Office Version PDF Version	5. Policy, Regulation & Trade for the Commons • Bhavini Kalan, SA National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI) PRESENTATION Open Office Version Microsoft Power Point Version PDF Version • Mogege Mosimege (SA Dept. of Science & Technology) PRESENTATION Open Office Version Microsoft Power Point Version PDF Version • Francois Bar (Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California) Wireless Commons and Innovation Background Paper: Geeks, Cowboys, and Bureaucrats: Deploying Broadband, the Wireless Way PRESENTATION: PDF Version • Achal Prabhala (Access to Learning Materials in Southern Africa) PRESENTATION Open Office Version Microsoft Power Point Version PDF Version
11-11:30 am	Tea	Tea
11:30 am – 1 pm	2. African University Libraries & Digital Resources • Mary Materu-Behitsa (DATAD Project, Ass. of African Universities’) Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD) PRESENTATION: Open Office Version PDF Version •Hussein Suleman (Dept of Computer Sci., U of Cape Town) Institutional Repositories and Licensing of Research Output. Suggested readings PRESENTATION: Open Office Version PDF Version • Charles Masango (Dept of Library and Info. Sci., U of Cape Town) COMMERCIAL PUBLISHERS VERSUS SCHOLARS? OPEN ACCESS SOURCES IN THE DIGITAL REALM PRESENTATION Open Office Version PDF Version	6. Blogging the Commons • Megan Knight (PhD Candidate, Wits University) Blogging: a new medium, or a new form of an old one? • Matthew Buckland (M&G Online) PRESENTATION: Open Office Version Microsoft Power Point Version PDF Version • Vincent Maher (New Media Lab, Rhodes U) PRESENTATION Microsoft Power Point Version PDF Version • Nathaniel Stern
1-2 pm	Lunch	Lunch
2-3:30 pm	3. eLearning and Curriculum Sharing • Derek Keats (KEWL, U of the Western Cape) • Alan Amory (Open Learning System, U of KZN) Needs Analyses & Design PRESENTATION Open Office Version PDF Version • Papa Youga Dieng (RESAFAD, Senegal ) • Neil Butcher (SA Dept of Education’s Thutong, SA Edu. Dept) PRESENTATION Open Office Version Microsoft Power Point Version PDF Version • Karien Bezuidenhout ( Shuttleworth Foundation) Open content licensing in the non-profit sector:The Shuttleworth Foundation’s Approach PRESENTATION Open Office Version Microsoft Power Point Version PDF Version • Shafika Isaacs (Schoolnet Africa) The School Net Africa Experience PRESENTATION Open Office Version Microsoft Power Point Version PDF Version	7. Open Content for the Developing World • Ronaldo Lemos (Creative Commons Brazil) Building the southern dialogue on ip, media & culture in Brazil PRESENTATION: Open Office Version Microsoft Power Point Version PDF Version • Lawrence Liang (Creative Commons India) • Joris Komen (SchoolNet Namibia) PRESENTATION: Open Office Version PDF Version • Claudio Prado (Brazilian Ministry of Arts & Culture)
3:30-4 pm	Tea	Tea
4-5 pm	4. New Publishing for the Commons • Paula LeDieu (former Joint Director, BBC Creative Archive) • Eve Gray (Consultant, SA Human Sciences Research Council) Digital publishing and open access for social science research dissemination PRESENTATION: Open Office Version Microsoft Power Point Version PDF Version • Rebecca Kahn (Student Life Magazine)	8. Local Content & Language • Peter Benjamin (Open Knowledge Network (OKN) Africa) PRESENTATION: Open Office Version Microsoft Power Point Version PDF Version • Bornwell Mwewa (OKN Africa) • Philipp Schmidt (Bridges.org) • Dwayne Bailey (translate.org) PRESENTATION: Open Office Version Microsoft Power Point Version PDF Version

Conference media coverage highlights:

- Highway Africa News Agency (website, download PDFs from day 1 and 2)

- Rhodes New Media Lab: 99% Live - Weblogs, podcasts and moblogging

- Matthew Buckland, M&G Online editor: 'Creative Commons Anyone?' 'Commonists or Communists?'

- For more go to the Creative Commons South Africa 'press' section.

Anything else we should add? Contact us.