CommGAP jointly organized a seminar on February 22, 2011, entitled “Africa’s Emerging Infosystems: A Pathway to Security and Development,” with the Africa Region’s Governance & Anti-Corruption in Projects Team of the World Bank, and infoDev.

In Africa's Emerging Infosystems: A Pathway to Security and Development, Steven Livingston argues that security and development initiatives in Africa have been affected by remarkable changes in information environment. At the close of 2010, there were 5.3 billion mobile cellular subscriptions; 6.1 trillion SMS messages were sent annually; two billion YouTube videos were watched daily; there were 600 million Facebook account; and 110 million Twitter messages - tweets - were sent daily. Yet analysis must go beyond numbers and conventional debates about social media and political mobilization, as seen recently in Tunisia and Egypt. Information technology is most accurately understood as a complex system of systems that affects the nature of information environments, and therefore collective action and governance. New institutional forms emerge in accordance with particular information environments. The new African information environment affects the way security and accountability is sought, banking conducted, and agricultural assistance provided.

In the seminar, Professor Livingston discussed his findings in more detail, which was followed by a discussion.

Presenter: Steven Livingston, Professor of Media and Public Affairs and International Affairs with appointments in the School of Media and Public Affairs (SMPA) and the Elliott School of International Affairs (ESIA) at The George Washington University.

Chair and Moderator: Sahr Kpundeh, Africa GAC-in-Projects Team Leader and Sr. Public Sector Specialist, Africa Public Sector & Capacity Unit, World Bank.

Discussant: Eric Chinje, Manager, Global Media Program, the World Bank Institute.

For more information about the event, please see this blog post.