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ICT and Poverty:
The San Bushmen
By Earl Mardle
(August 20, 2003)
Earl Mardle uses the Kalahari Bushmen (the San people) to
illustrate his point that there are flaws attributed to a
technology-driven approach to poverty alleviation. He suggests
that the alternative should be to "use technological
capabilities to engage the economic needs and resources of the
communities involved and create new opportunities out of existing
capabilities."
The Kalahari Bushmen are an example of a community that has become
marginalised by becoming excluded from their traditional nomadic
range. Up until now, the San people have relied on their knowledge
of where they live to survive comfortably. With changes including
fences that brought new boundaries, they fell into poverty until a
"CyberTracker" was introduced to them. This is a device
that takes their traditional knowledge about the migratory
movements of wild animals in southern Africa and makes it
accessible by means of handheld portable computers. As a result,
The San people's skills are benefiting the national parks, which
can now reliably monitor their game stock.
Some of the benefits of this project have included a decline in
poaching as well as preserving the Bushemen's knowledge about the
landscape and species. It has also helped establish a base of
information on animals' behavour patterns and migratory movements.
The tracker has taken what used to be a time consuming process
into one that takes just minutes. A warden enters his or her data
onto a handheld computer with a touch-sensitive screen. The
information connects to a Global Position System where the data
has a specific date, time and geographical location. The author
points out that the CyberTracker brings down the net cost to the
park authority while the quality of the information from the San
culture improves.
The author makes the case that poor communities have their own
economies and have developed their own knowledge that produces
good information and that this is "simply in an economic or
social or scientific language that rich communities don't
understand." He states, "I do not mean by this that
these communities have mystical knowledge to which rich Westerners
are no loner privy, I mean simply that they could not have
survived in their environment for many millennia unless they had a
science, an understanding, a knowledge about that place that was
intimate and precise and valuable." The author suggests that
Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) can act as a
translator in which case "we have to agree on a fair price
for the information while leaving the knowledge intact and in the
ownership of those who created it."
The author also provides another example of a product that the San
people have used for generations which is now being marketed
internationally. It is an appetite-suppressant called
"P57" that comes from a desert plant known as Hoodia
Gordinii. The San people have chewed it for "thousands of
years" to suppress their hunger and thirst while on long
hunting trips in the Kalahari desert. The South African San
Council and the country's Scientific and Industrial Research
Council (CSIR) signed an agreement and royalties earned by
commercial sale of the San's ancient knowledge of the plant will
be shared. The author points out that "engaging with the
knowledge of communities in poverty, respecting that knowledge,
and, wherever possible, using technologies to translate its
inherent value into the revenue they need, is a practical, but
subtle and difficult, good first step."
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Many ICT and poverty
projects use a model based on giving people access to new skills
or resources by engaging the capabilities of the computer to earn
money in new industries, a technology-driven approach to poverty
alleviation.
There are many flaws with this approach, as I have discussed
elsewhere; what is needed instead is an approach that uses
technological capabilities to engage the economic needs and
resources of the communities involved and creates new
opportunities out of existing capabilities.
This is much more difficult, but there is a perfect example on the
edge of the Kalahari desert that fits the bill.
Over the past 25 years the San people, the Kalahari Bushmen, have
become a depressed and marginalised community, excluded from their
traditional nomadic range by the good intentions of those who have
fenced it into national wildlife parks in which there is no place
for humans, and certainly no place for those who treat these
preserves of endangered species as a larder.
In the past the San people's understanding of their environment
was everything they needed, but as the fences went up, that
understanding became irrelevant; they lost everything and fell
into poverty.
Now an interface is being built between the traditional knowledge
that had sustained them for millennia and the new, commercialised,
money-centred world in which they find themselves. It is called
the CyberTracker.
The private CyberTracker project is making the important
traditional knowledge of the San (Bushmen) about the migratory
movements of wild animals in southern Africa accessible by means
of handheld portable computers. To date more than 120 trackers
have been acquainted with the new technology. The San's skills are
benefiting the national parks, which can in this way reliably
monitor their game stock. The project has also led to a
significant decline in poaching.
James, a San (''Bushman'') from the Kalahari, works as a tracker
for the South African National Parks Authority. … James can
neither read nor write. He used to have to tell his observations
to another game warden, who wrote them down and passed them on.
This was laborious and time-consuming. Today in only a few minutes
James enters his findings into a handheld computer which dangles
from his arm. The device uses a touch-sensitive screen, and James
need only type in various signs and symbols with a small plastic
pen. Then for a few seconds he connects the computer to the Global
Positioning System (GPS). In this way each of the approximately
100 analyses he makes every day is labelled with its date, time
and geographical location. When he gets back he transfers all the
data to a PC.
The inventor and monitor of this revolutionary combination of
traditional knowledge and high-tech is Louis Liebenberg, a noted
South African tracker and specialist in the threatened culture of
the San. Using the CyberTracker software he has succeeded in
preserving and further developing the Bushmen's knowledge about
nature and landscape, which has been handed down orally over
thousands of years from generation to generation. The aim is
better to understand the animals' behaviour patterns and migratory
movements. Trackers like James are contributing to reliable
management of the nature reserves and effective monitoring of the
game stock. Moreover it has been shown that the presence of
trackers considerably reduces the incidence of poaching.
Since 1995 over 120 trackers have been trained. 8 CyberTracker
teams are currently working in 8 national parks in southern
Africa. The importance of this idea is that it does not attempt to
capture the knowledge that it takes the exponents of San bushcraft
20 or 30 years to develop; rather, it provides an interface
between the vast and subtle store of knowledge of San trackers and
the park administration and creates a two-way economic benefit
between them and the park administration, which now has a tool
through which it can buy, not the knowledge, but the information
that it generates.
Until now the application of ICT in park management had been
typically Western, with high-tech devices being designed and built
for specific animals. The lion, buffalo, or hyena had to be hunted,
darted, knocked out, restrained, handled, fitted with the GPS
transmitter collar, and then released, disoriented and smelling of
humans, back to its group. Often the animal would simply brush the
device off either by accident or in anger and not only would the
benefit be lost, but sometimes the expensive device as well, along
with the expensive Western-educated, foreign wage-earning
technicians' time and resources to supply and fit and track it.
Meanwhile the San trackers sat listlessly in their hovels, their
minds filled with knowledge that was unavailable to others and
worthless to them.
The CyberTracker releases all sides from some of their problems.
The net cost to the park authority goes down, while the quality of
the information, drawn through the filters of San culture and
expertise, goes up, and the unintrusive monitoring by the San
means the animals are able to live normal lives again. By focusing
on what people know, by starting where they are now and finding
ways for technology to translate the value that poor communities
have into values that rich communities can appreciate, ICT CAN
contribute to poverty alleviation, but the look of the programmes,
the paradigm within which they work, needs to be rewritten.
Poor communities have their own economies; they have their own
knowledge that produces perfectly good information; it is simply
in an economic or social or scientific language that rich
communities don't understand. I do not mean by this that these
communities have mystical knowledge to which rich Westerners are
no loner privy, I mean simply that they could not have survived in
their environment for many millennia unless they had a science, an
understanding, a knowledge about that place that was intimate and
precise and valuable. But before the rich world gets access to it,
we have to find a translator, and ICT can be that translator; and
we have to agree on a fair price for the information while leaving
the knowledge intact and in the ownership of those who created it.
This process should not be seen only in terms of its ability to
raise people out of poverty, although that is its primary function;
it is intensely practical for the wealthy world as well, and once
again, the San are the focus of this process.
Sidelined over decades because of their dwindling numbers and
ancient way of life, the San have been reduced to a few struggling
communities living on the fringes of society. But now their
traditional knowledge may be their salvation; they stand to make a
lot of money - and gain much respect - from the international
marketing of an appetite-suppressant they have been using for
thousands of generations.
The drug named P57 is based on a substance scientists found in the
desert plant Hoodia Gordinii. The San call the cactus !khoba and
have been chewing on it for thousands of years to stave off hunger
and thirst during long hunting trips in their parched Kalahari
desert home.
A deal has been signed between the South African San Council and
the country's Scientific and Industrial Research Council (CSIR),
which identified the appetite- suppressing ingredient in Hoodia
during research into indigenous plants in 1996. At a small
ceremony recently held in the Kalahari desert near the Kgalagadi
Transfrontier Park, which South Africa shares with Botswana, the
San and the CSIR made a deal
to share royalties earned by commercial sale of the San's ancient
knowledge of the plant.
While intelligent diets and the end of gross feeding by a few
privileged communities might be to all our benefits in the long
run, engaging with the knowledge of communities in poverty,
respecting that knowledge, and, wherever possible, using
technologies to translate its inherent value into the revenue they
need, is a practical, but subtle and difficult, good first step.
Published on June 5, 2003
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