A Civil Society Case for Broadband in Nigeria (and in other Less Developed Countries) August 29, 2010

Following Mike's reference to John Dada and BB4NG - BroadBand for NiGeria - you may be interested in additional background on John Dada which goes some way to explaining his input to BB4NG and his deep understanding of the civil society perspective.

First his long term involvement with grass roots community development - http://www.dadamac.net/about/john

Then his involvement with Zittnet - a social business that he was instrumental in setting up at Fantsuam -
http://www.dadamac.net/projects/business-sme-livelihoods/rural-connectivity

This background means he is driven by community needs. He speaks from long experience of needing to communicate online while living in an under-served area - and of providing local solutions to this problem. He has a desire to enable others to have the same (and better) facilities - compared to those he has been trail-blazing at Fantsuam. He has a holistic (and deeply realistic) approach which is people driven - the absolute opposite of "bring the technology and they will come".

As for me - you may wonder how it is that I am "speaking for John".  Well, during my early years of visiting Fantsuam (and presenting training courses there) I was repeatedly amazed at John's work, at how much was on the ground when I first visited and also how much the whole set-up was growing and developing between my visits. I would point this out to John and suggest that he should have some kind of PR and administrative interface at Fanstsuam, to reach out to the wider world, so that people like me (ie bandwidth rich and living in "the developed world") could keep up with what he was doing, learn from his experiences, and collaborate with him in an ongoing way. He'd agree and a couple of times it seemed we might have found someone locally who would be interested in such a role. Although these people would have brought some relevant skills they did not understand the context, could not work without close supervision and/or additional training, and required payment - so nothing happened.

In the end John and I decided to work together to create the necessary PR and admin interface, to share more widely the information and knowledge that John builds through his work at Fantsuam. Hence Dadamac - and our weekly UK-Nigeria online team meetings and the way I am contributing online now, not just "in my own voice" but also having the authority to "speak for John".

Pamela McLean
UK-Africa Connections
Dadamac Limited
Email pamela.mclean@dadamac.net
Twitter @Pamela_McLean and #dadamac
Website http://www.dadamac.net/company
Dadamac's Posterous http://dadamac.posterous.com/

Dadamac - "We introduce people to each other (mostly UK-Nigeria) and help them do useful stuff. We also share our secrets on working well at a distance"