Access To Knowledge For Development Workshop: The Networked Public Sphere and Civic Engagement, Reflections on Egypt and Tunisia

By: Heba Alam El-Din, Refan AbdelNabi, Sarah Abaza and Toleen Mohammad AlJobeh


 
The link to A2K4D Workshop slideshow on Picasa album.

Access to Knowledge for Development (A2K4D) held its fourth annual workshop on Monday, June 16, 2014 and began its second session at 11 a.m. The session expanded on developing a better understanding of the role of public network sphere. The speakers: Rob Faris, Jazem Halioui, Fares Mabrouk, and Lina Attalah elaborated on how different activities are taking place in research.

We’re considered to be in the era of mobilization and social networking. Mobilizing over a cause raises the question of “whether the cause is a progressive or a regressive cause, so you can mobilize to support, for example, a regressive legislation.” Said Attalah, chief editor at Mada Masr.

For example, you can rally for a leader to use violence against citizens, which is a negative utilization. Progressive mobilization aims to things such as a regime change.

Mabrouk, from the Arab Policy Institute in Tunisia, emphasized on the reasons why people mobilize and a large-scale example is the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions. So mobilization is an act that doesn’t have a value judgment in and of itself. The cause is what matches what you’re mobilizing over. Mabrouk also highlighted that we need to understand how collective actions are organized online and offline.

The government and other forms of authority are naturally intimidated by the power social media has given the people. This is where civic engagement comes into life.

The people form a community that is capable of discussing and collaborating to create needed social change to improve. These powerful institutes have trouble infusing their strength on online spaces because they tend to support citizens.

The way Internet and mobility are approached has improved because of sociology, “which relates to how the mobility in the Egyptian society, you can find many things but (not) up-to-date in globalization.” Said Dr. Nouran Fouad Ahmed, director of copyrights office in relation with the Ministry of Culture in Egypt.

If the authorities managed to control these spaces eventually, it is by trying to crack the system as it exists. States now are using Facebook to, somehow, control their citizens, which is a regression.

Creating a Facebook page for a certain cause, people who see the posts or comments on a group tend to take these insights in as their own opinions, then others start mimicking them.

There is a responsibility, both as a mobilizer and as a journalist, to distinguish between narrative and fact. “The questions is: how to transform this information into a narrative that is supportive to your cause. This is when, not necessarily the issue is opinionating, the issue is rather, how you become convincing through turning information into narrative so it is a different story.” Attalah explained.

This slideshow is composed of the live-tweets that were tweeted live during the session.

A2K4D Discusses Research, Advocacy and Policy at AUC

Thursday, June 19, 2014

By Nourhan Abdel Hamid, Tarek Beltagy, Nora Seweify and Mahmoud Elsaeid

 

 
   Cairo, Egypt - On Monday, June 16, 2014, three diverse scholars discussed Research, Advocacy and Policy during Access to Knowledge for Development’s (A2K4D) fourth Annual Workshop. The workshop was held at the American University in Cairo’s Moataz El-Alfi Hall, and consisted of five sessions.

    
The fifth and final session of the workshop included three speakers who each gave their own insights about the topic. The three speakers were: Heba Ghannam, a community outreach manager at Tahrir Academy, Pranesh Prakash, an Access to Knowledge Fellow at the Yale Information Society Project and Tobias Schonwetter, director of the Intellectual Property Law and Policy Unit at the University of Cape Town's law faculty.

 Schonwetter mentioned during the session, “Policy makers don’t necessarily come from the same area,” and seeing how diverse the panel at this session was; his point was proven right.

 The three critical thinkers spoke about the importance of research and what each of them are doing or aim to do in order to reach their initiative. All the speakers adopted different techniques and had diverse approaches towards their research; however they each made compelling arguments.

 Prakash mentioned how he believes that his approach is much more research oriented; not to say that advocacy is not important. However, he explained that achieving thorough research is the main aspect in his point of view.

 “Our dream is to have a new Egyptian generation of critical thinkers,” Ghannam said. She then went on to discuss how she wants her project to influence every child in the country, as one can’t expect to have new innovators if the material being taught to them is outdated. Her initiative has adopted new and fun ways of teaching kids, which have enabled children to learn in diverse ways.

 Another important point was one raised by Schonwetter, which was “Don’t preach to the choir.” This point was emphasized throughout the entire conference, seeing as what good would it make if one addresses people who already have an idea.

 Schonwetter also mentioned how fixing instead of solving is the main aim that should be achieved. Throughout this session, there were several questions, such as; does the law have to change before research is done? How can these scholars influence the government? And how long will it take for an actual change to happen? These questions were certainly answered by the panel with emphasis on research, advocacy and policy.

Open A.I.R. Comes to A2K4D Workshop at AUC

By Mirit Agaiby, Seif Issa, Wadie Zakhary and Yasmin Ashmawy

Cairo, Egypt - Law and business faculty members in the annual Access 2 Knowledge 4 Development Workshop discussed intellectual property and innovation to enhance development in Africa, on Monday, June 16, 2014, at the American University in Cairo.

Members of the Open African Innovation Research Network (Open A.I.R.) who joined the session as panelists were: Nagham El Houssamy, as chair, and Nagla Rizk, an economics professor from AUC’s School of Business. Faculty of Law members at the University of Ottawa, Canada, Jeremy de Beer and Chidi Oguamanam, were also present. The other panelists included Research Fellow Douglas Gichuki from Center for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law at Strathmore University, Kenya, and Dick Kawooya, assistant professor at University of South Carolina, United States.

Open A.I.R. aspires to better the economies of African countries through emphasizing the evolution of knowledge governance, innovation and intellectual property, starting now until the year 2035.

The workshop’s focus was to discuss the two books that the panelists either co-authored or edited: “Innovation & Intellectual Property: Collaborative Dynamics in Africa,” and “Knowledge & Innovation in Africa: Scenarios for the Future.”

The presenters displayed two short movies, explaining their developmental works in Africa, and summarized the findings of both books.

The first book, “Innovation & Intellectual Property: Collaborative Dynamics in Africa,” tackles case studies on the complex relationships between innovation and intellectual property from nine countries in Africa.

During the discussion of this book, Kawooya stressed on dividing “the Collabrative Intellectual Property into formal and informal interactions.”

“Knowledge & Innovation in Africa: Scenarios for the Future,” discussed three possible scenarios for Africa’s future; “wireless engagement,” “informal is the new formal,” and “sincerely, Africa.” Both books are available for free download.

Shirin Elahi, Open A.I.R Scenarios consultant, illustrated that everyone creates future scenarios in their own heads.

“If I do this, this might happen. Whilst if I do this decision, the route is more likely to be that,” Elahi explained in the video. 

Open A.I.R. spent three years researching scenarios in Africa to better predict the population’s future. Its first draft of the report on these scenarios was revealed at a conference in Cape Town in 2012. 

“We hope that this research would be very useful in practice. We did not do this research so that it could sit on libraries’ shelves,” related de Beer, during an interview.

Open A.I.R. will also participate in next year's A2K4D Workshop at AUC, which will be held in June 2015, to summarize their latest findings and research. 

Below is a slideshow with all the tweets that were live tweeted during the session.

A New Book Covers Censorship Obstacles Worldwide

By Alia El-Mohandes, Nourhan El-Bery, Rana Hassan and Sherwet Salah

 

Cairo, Egypt – On Monday, June 15, 2014, the Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) at the American University in Cairo (AUC) held their fourth annual workshop in Moataz Al Alfi Hall.

The A2K4D consisted of five sessions. In the third session, Access to Knowledge Global Academy (A2KGA) speakers’ explained their contribution to Access to Knowledge (A2K) movements and the collaboration between the Information Society Project (ISP) at Yale Law School and the A2K initiatives at AUC.

Valarie Belair-Gagnom, executive director of ISP and one of the speakers, talked about the role of ISP in A2K movements. Belair-Gagnom said, "ISP believes that A2K is about intellectual property, but it is far more than that, it should be about human flourishing, economic development and human freedom."

ISP deems that A2K is a demand for justice and an issue of "individual participation in human liberty. Producing books and participating in making policies," which would have been difficult without global collaboration, explains Belair-Gagnom.

Professor Nagla Rizk, founder director of A2K4D in AUC, talked briefly about the historical development of the collaboration between A2K and ISP. A2K holds and discusses workshops and case studies from all over the world. In Egypt, they are called "A2K Egypt country studies," Rizk clarifies.

A2K Global Academy’s new book discusses different case studies on censorship worldwide, "the book will be published in the next few days," says Rizk. She stated that censorship could take many "complex formations" due to the access to new technologies.

Pranesh Prakash, resident fellow at Yale ISP and one of the speakers, provided detailed information about the upcoming book and mentioned the shift that happened in censorship. "Private actors are now the main issue when it comes to censorship, it is no longer in the hands of the state," says Prakash.

Rizk stated, “When you think of development in its wider sense it’s beyond economic growth so you look at growth of incomes but you are also thinking of health, education, democratization, political well being and all of these issues are in one way or another affected by technology and knowledge.”

A2KGA’s main goal is to promote A2K as a framework for policy making and advance economy research that reflects to immediate needs. A2KGA would help in developing model curriculum to teach students based on their research activity, Rizk concluded.

 

Multimedia Writing Project Portfolios

Multimedia Writing Project Portfolios

Students in JRMC 2202 Multimedia Writing at The American University in Cairo were required to produce digital portfolios of the work they completed in the course.

Each portfolio should have at least the following components:

• Home page
• Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR)
• Twitter Scavenger Hunt (TSH)
• Interview
• Photo Essay

In the near future, some of the students will also create and post an infographic.

There were other assignments/projects in the course including the Covering an Events assignment, but these are the components that will be featured on their portfolios.

In the past I had used Epsilen, a platform utilized by the university. However, Epsilen has not kept up with the digital times and it's a bit chunky.

After some research, I determined that Weebly was the best platform for this task. This decision was reached after watching a few introductory videos and the ease of use in building a website via the Weebly platform. The drag and drop component is super simple. The best part is that the end result has the potential to be organized and professional.

Students were given some time in class to work on the portfolios. They were also given detailed feedback after they posted a 'draft' of the portfolio.

The goal of the portfolio:

It should be error free because it is a showcase of their work to share for prospective internship or job opportunities.

Students should also be proud to display their body of work from the course in a public platform and in a professional manner.

This semester I taught three sections of this course. Here are the students' digital portfolios:

Multimedia Writing Section 1:
Nouri
Haidy
Yara Al K.
Mireille
Yomna D.
Nora
Yara El.
Youmna El.
Nushka
Karima
Mohamed
Yasmine


Multimedia Writing Section 2:
Salma B.
Hania
Salma R.
Nour
Youmna
Sarah
Hanan
Rowaida
Hana
Mayar
Yehia
Norhan


Multimedia Writing Section 3:
Haneen
Farah A.
Hannah
Nadine
Passant
Alaa
Noha
Farrah
Zeina
Rawan
Amira
Nourhan
Eshraka
Farah T.

Congratulations to the students for their efforts. And good luck in to their future careers in the media.

Lecture by professor N'Dri Assié-Lumumba: "Higher Education And African Development Since The 1960s"

By Hannah Altmann, Haneen Abdel Maksoud and Passant El Gayar

Cairo, Egypt – Professor N’Dri Assié-Lumumba of the African and Diaspora education at Cornell University in New York, held a lecture titled “Higher Education And African Development Since The 1960s: Global-Local Dynamics” on Sunday, April 27^th in Mansour Hall at The American University in Cairo (AUC). 

The lecture focused on the development of higher education since the 1960s in Africa.

“Education is a universal need,” states Assié-Lumumba, as she starts off the lecture and continues to say, “it has a particular connection with human advancement and social progress.”

When speaking of education, we have to look at the historical context. As the African-American historian, John Henrik Clarke had once said “the role of history is to tell a people what they have been and where they have been, what they are and where they are.”

After the creation of UNESCO in 1948, education was considered a human right; it gave the right for everybody to receive education and gave the states the responsibility to provide a framework for education (Assié-Lumumba). Prior to the creation of UNESCO, parts of Africa were still under colonial rule. Some countries didn’t receive education by their colonizers and those who did, by law had a limited amount of years of education they couldn’t exceed. However, Africans were eager to have access to education. The United Nations (UN) came to have similar views as them and the 1960’s was declared year of educational of development. Nevertheless, some African countries were still under colonial influence after their independence.

The lecturer continued to say that contrary to the UN’s belief, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) decided that higher education was not necessary in Africa, after the 1970s oil crisis. It was consuming too much money, and was not operating, as it should, according to the standards of the IMF and the World Bank. Therefore they refused to further invest in higher education in Africa and shifted their attention to basic education.

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aim to improve Africa by 2015. These goals include eradicating poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development. Assié-Lumumba points out that: ” if you want to succeed, you can’t miss out on any of these eight points” because as the Human Capital Theory suggests, there is a linear and positive correlation between education and development. An attendee of the lecture by the name of Ahmed Alaa said that "I found the lecture interesting because it made me understand why Africa is so behind in terms of education and development."