Local content is indeed another widely talked about issue, content is a wide subject which cross cuts in all areas of life i.e. agriculture, business, tourism, health, history, education, travel, entertainment, nature, etc. these are broad categories however if broken down we find further segments which makes it even more complex e.g. on health we could have animal and human diseases. This is why no individual organisation or individual may wholesomely claim to achieve and satisfy all our local content needs.
It is evident that Africa lags behind local content availability on the World Wide Web. I believe that there exist all sorts of content out there in various forms, what may be lacking is its availability on the web. Most of the content is out there with the elderly who may be passing on with valuable content, sometimes on government/other offices shelves lying in dust, research institutions that have not digitized their work as well as citizens who get various experiences everyday of their lives etc. This calls for consolidated efforts to ensure that our people are not only consumers but authors of information. With the advancement of technology today this is possible, tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and mobile phones allow for this.
There have been challenges in Africa most of which are currently being addressed by various governments, issues such as poor infrastructure (connectivity), lack of documentation of work, high cost of equipment, dependency syndrome where one feels it is the other responsibility to act among others. There have been various efforts to address some of these and specifically for Kenya, the current news of the arrival of the fibre optic cable is indeed great. Various tax waivers in the communication industry also levels the playing filed further. Credit goes to various Governments for this development notably Kenya and Rwanda.
