Introductions July 19, 2010

Hi Steven and Everyone

I'm Pamela McLean. I used to belong to the Digital Divide list,and valued it, so I'm glad to see this group starting up. I'm based in the UK and work with people online and in Africa - especially Nigeria and Kenya. It's hard to introduce myself through skills labels, titles or affiliations so please forgive me telling my story.

My digital inclusion interest happened by accident. It started over ten years ago when a friend, who was married to a Nigerian (the late Peter Adetunji Oyawale), asked me to help with a community project he was setting up back home in Ago-Are, Oke-Ogun, Oyo State, Nigeria. As a result I learned about Nigeria, and rural realities and the problems of communicating between UK and rural Nigeria.  I didn't plan to go to Africa - but in fact I've averaged about one "working holiday" per year since 2000 - when I do training, or whatever I'm asked to do, and get updated through local reality checks. Over the years my knowledge and networks have extended.

Together with people in my network I have learned how to mesh together various different communication systems (and different cultures). This means that we have great experience of getting maximum information back and forth through limited communications infrastructure using whatever will work:

1. UK-Nigeria Internet services (which initially only linked to big cities in Nigeria)
2. Local communication networks in Nigeria - our strategies have included the informal local grape-vine, messages sent using motor-cycle taxis, via drivers at motor parks, through church and mosque announcements, via the town-crier, through the manager of a cyber cafe, community meetings, printed information packs sent by professional courier to the city then through the informal system, CDs sent to the city - on in our usual ways, emails sent back to UK through intermediaries, letters and video tapes sent back to UK passed hand to hand by travellers. 
3. Phones - as the phone network has rolled out this has made a considerable difference
4. When my friend John Dada got a VSAT connection at Fantsuam Foundation we were able to communicate much more frequently, and now have weekly UK-Nigeria team meetings between UK and Fantsuam.
5. Andrius Kulikauskas also helped me enormously through his extensive Minciu Sodas network and use of his worknets chat room (where I have held regular monthly drop in sessions for around three years).
   

My personal inclusion interests relate to education. I had "second chances" at higher education (doing a teaching certificate as a mature student - in my twenties - and a degree through the UK Open University). I was living in a rural area in UK with family responsibilities and very limited local opportunities - and so when I go to rural Africa, with its chickens, goats, and everyone greeting each other, it always reminds me of my time in deepest rural UK. I was working as a teacher in the UK when the first "micro-computers" came on the scene - and was an early adopter. It saddens me greatly to see the mistakes that were made here repeated in other countries (such as too much emphasis on hardware and too little on training). I was delighted when, in 2004, John invited me to start doing training courses for his local teachers.

Gradually I found myself acting as an informal "UK office" for various projects on the ground in rural Nigeria - and elsewhere in Africa. I had good internet access and they were "band-width challenged", so I represented their interests online and also at face to face meetings in the UK. 

Now John Dada and I work together under the name Dadamac so that we can make our knowledge and networks available to others in various win-win ways. http://www.dadamac.net/home

I look forward to meeting new people here, renewing old contacts, exchanging (and growing) ideas and finding new opportunities for collaboration.

Pamela McLean
UK-Africa Connections
Dadamac
www.dadamac.net
pamela.mclean@dadamac.net