To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group
<digitaldivide@milhouse.edc.org>,
   mistica@funredes.org, <icacaribbean@dgroups.org>

Subbiah Arunachalam wrote:
>I think Prof. Adama Samasekou of Mali will be playing a key role in this
>conference on multilinguism at Bamaco. One of the things the conference
>should promote is setting up open access interoperable institutional
>archives in all higher education and research institutions all over
>Africa.
>That is the only way to make access to research information affordable and
>on a level playing field. Africa now has the technology (and it is
>improving all the time). All it needs is the political will.
>
>Arun

I had the pleasure of meeting Prof. Adama Samassekou (2 's') at the
first CARDICIS event in St. Lucia last year, which has had this as a
focus within the Caribbean and Latin America. It's a big issue.
Hopefully he will be available for the meeting this year.

Africa is a large piece of the puzzle, but it is only a piece of the
puzzle. Interestingly, it's becoming more of an issue within the United
States itself - my last visit to Miami has had so much in common with my
visits to other Spanish speaking regions that it's worth noting. In
fact, when I was in Boston for LinuxWorld, I was amazed at how many
people from the Caribbean and Latin America region were there, braving
the cold and planning vacations to where they were from.

This is one of the biggest issues, too, with Open content, and something
which we discussed at CARDICIS, and will quite likely discuss again.
Open Content allows for translations into native languages - and is one
of the largest unspoken qualities of licenses such as the Creative
Commons licenses.

-- 
Taran Rampersad
Presently in: Panama City, Panama