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The hidden colonialities of mobile communication: Phone uses by women in a South African rural community

- Dalvit, Lorenzo

  • Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo
  • Date: 2024
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468239 , vital:77035 , ISBN 9781003304197 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003304197-5/hidden-colonialities-mobile-communication-lorenzo-dalvit
  • Description: This chapter discusses the experiences and uses of mobile phones by women from Dwesa, a rural area in the former homeland of Transkei in South Africa. While representative of many similar rural realities in terms of poverty, internal migration, and lack of infrastructure, Dwesa is the site of an ICT-for-development project called the Siyakhula Living Lab. A decade and a half worth of multidisciplinary research and an intense working relationship with the community provide the scope for understanding the arrival, uptake, and adoption of mobile communication in a marginalized rural area. Local women often stood out as a particularly interesting group, for example, as information and communication technology champions in the community. The empirical component of this chapter draws on four individual interviews to explore the potentially problematic sides of mobile communication. In particular, the chapter employs the theoretical lens of coloniality to interrogate the oppressive potential of mobile phones in terms of gender relationships, negotiating gendered identities and interacting with institutions in a still largely patriarchal milieu.
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  • Date Issued: 2024

A Critical exploration of YouTube texts by and about people with disabilities in South Africa

- Dalvit, Lorenzo

  • Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo
  • Date: 2023
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468129 , vital:77021 , https://rosa.uniroma1.it/rosa03/mediascapes/article/view/18303
  • Description: The work of intellectuals such as Marx and Gramsci has been exten-sively employed in the study of social inequalities across contexts and in relation to different dimensions. As one of the most unequal societies in the world, South Africa provides a number of past and recent exam-ples of discrimination, oppression and violence on the basis of race, gender, socio-economic and migrant status, political affiliation etc. De-spite their continued marginalisation during and after apartheid and de-spite accounting for a substantial portion (7.5%) of the population, peo-ple with disabilities appear relatively neglected in scholarly and media debates. The booming Internet and mobile penetration, which promised to give a voice to the voiceless, increasingly seems to reproduce and at times exacerbate such marginalisation. By drawing on Gramsci’s no-tions of hegemony and public intellectuals, in this paper, I explore dis-cursive constructions by and about South Africans with disabilities on YouTube. Videos and comments are purposively selected from three active channels based on their relevance and are quantitatively as well as qualitatively analysed. The first objective of the study is to under-stand disability in relation to other dimensions of diversity, eg race or gender.
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  • Date Issued: 2023

Celebrating authentic bodies: Instagram (self) representations of models

- Battisti, Fabiana, Dalvit, Lorenzo

  • Authors: Battisti, Fabiana , Dalvit, Lorenzo
  • Date: 2023
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468151 , vital:77024 , DOI Code: 10.1285/i22840753n25p7
  • Description: South African society is characterized by a historical legacy of institutionalized segregation and oppression along racial and, to a lesser extent, gender and (dis) ability lines. While social media can be considered a relatively elite phenomenon, it has the potential to challenge stereotypes and reshape public discourse. Beauty contests, fashion shows and modelling parades represent offline as well as online sites of struggle over aesthetic canons, aspirational looks, and ideal bodies. At the same time, they offer opportunities for alternative, marginalized and stigmatized bodies to" step into the light", as it were. Due to the primacy of the visual element, a platform like Instagram offers a rather unique opportunity to affirm that racialized, gendered and disabled bodies are not only normal, but authentically beautiful. In this paper we adopt an intersectional lens to investigate Instagram profiles by South African models with disabilities. Five women who differ in terms of ethnic affiliation as well as impairment were selected for an in-depth qualitative critical visual analysis and an ethnographic content analysis. In a South African context still largely shaped by patriarchy, sexism and ableism, we found (self) representations on social media are intimately intertwined with resistance, advocacy and social change. Self-representations by models with disabilities include sharing authentic aspects of self, affirmation, and role modelling.
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  • Date Issued: 2023

Mobile communication and urban/rural flows in a South African marginalised community

- Dalvit, Lorenzo

  • Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo
  • Date: 2023
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468162 , vital:77025 , https://doi.org/10.1177/000276422210928
  • Description: This article draws on Castells’ concept of space of flows to explore the role of mobile communication in mediating the flows of ideas, people and resources concerning Dwesa, a rural community in South Africa. While it is the site of an ICT-for-development project fifteen years in the making, Dwesa is representative of many contemporary South African rural realities in terms of lack of infrastructure, endemic poverty and ur-ban migration. Mobile network coverage is almost universal, sustaining a bidirectional flow of people, resources and information between Dwe-sa and urban areas such as Cape Town. A critical review of the sub-stantial body of research conducted in the area, as well as thematic analysis of social media texts and semi-structured interviews with community members, reveal that mobile phones play an important and nuanced role in arranging physical or virtual rendezvous, facilitating transfers of monetary and other resources, and enabling timeless communication and exchange of information across distance.
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  • Date Issued: 2023

Please Do Not Call It Human Right: A Southern Epistemological Perspective on the Digital Inclusion of People With Disabilities in South Africa

- Dalvit, Lorenzo

  • Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo
  • Date: 2023
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468228 , vital:77034 , ISBN 9781003388289 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003388289-5/please-call-human-right-lorenzo-dalvit
  • Description: South Africa is one of the world’s most unequal countries and has a well-known past of serious human rights abuses. Despite a progressive legal system, a relatively large economy, and one of the highest rates of Internet penetrations on the African continent, social inequalities extend to the digital domain. While digital inclusion for all is inscribed as a desirable goal in policy documents, in practice this is not the case. The rights based on which policy documents rely and from which much of the formal civil society sector draws is rooted in Western understanding of concepts such as “dignity”, “ability”, “inclusion”, and even “disability” itself. Employing a decolonial approach, this chapter problematises narratives about the digital inclusion of people with disabilities. It argues that for South Africans with disabilities, benefitting from government interventions and enforcing their rights depend to a large extent on their socio-economic background. An emerging body of research documents challenges associated with the new forms of exclusion/invisibility of people with disabilities online, such as inaccessible software/hardware, a steep learning curve, or the practice of hiding one’s disability to avoid pity or stigma. The ubiquity of digital technology makes digital inclusion of people with disabilities more of a necessity rather than a choice or a right.
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  • Date Issued: 2023

A Decolonial perspective on online media discourses in the context of violence against people with disabilities in South Africa

- Dalvit, Lorenzo

  • Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468140 , vital:77022 , DOI: 10.17231/comsoc.41(2022).3722
  • Description: As one of the most violent and unequal societies globally, South Africa is still profoundly shaped by a legacy of segregation and oppression. While race, gender and socio-economic status receive much attention, (dis)ability is an important yet often neglected dimension of inequality. In this article, I adopt a decolonial perspective in discussing online media articles about violence against people with disabilities. By focusing on stories related to issues that received extensive media coverage (e.g. mental health, police brutality and gender-based violence), I problematise the Eurocentric human-rights discourse informing public and scholarly discussions. I also explore the link between current understandings of (dis)ability and the legacy of a violent colonial and apartheid past. As a result of the intersectional nature of (dis)ability, many of the stories involve multiple layers of inequality and different forms of oppression. An explicit focus on extreme forms of institutional and physical violence, while restricting the scope of enquiry, brings the brutality of western modernity and its effects on the people affected into sharp focus. Legal recurse appears to lead to incomplete reparation at best while its failures perpetuate a cycle of marginalisation and oppression. Rather than problematising these structural failures as a result of western modernity and neoliberalism, the media inadvertently obfuscates such links by performing its normative, that is, by identifying and exposing individual culprits or by blaming contextual factors.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Differently included: A decolonial perspective on disability and digital media in South Africa

- Dalvit, Lorenzo

  • Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468173 , vital:77026 , ISBN 978-3-030-94121-5 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94122-2_16
  • Description: South Africa is a diverse country with a legacy of inequalities which extend to the digital domain. Alongside race, gender, socio-economic status and others, (dis)ability is an important dimension of inclusion/exclusion. In this chapter, the digital inclusion of people with disabilities in South Africa is explored through a decolonial lens. In particular, the focus is on unmasking digital inclusion as constructive absence, in problematising it as a right and in exploring its liberatory (as opposed to emancipatory) potential. By analysing publicly available online texts, it is argued that digital inclusion should be regarded as a complex and nuanced phenomenon, with the potential to address as well as reproduce inequalities and the marginalisation of (some) people with disabilities.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

From PowerPoint to Zoom: Interrogating the Gaze in Teaching at a Small South African University

- Dalvit, Lorenzo

  • Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468184 , vital:77028 , ISBN 9781003275060 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003275060-4/powerpoint-zoom-lorenzo-dalvit
  • Description: I teach Digital Media and Cultural Studies at a small residential university in South Africa. Due to retinal degeneration, I had to progressively move away from paper documents and increasingly rely on electronic tools and resources as well as a student assistant. In this chapter, I draw on the concept of the gaze as understood within the critical tradition to reflect on my journey with a specific focus on teaching. The departing and arrival stations of such a journey are PowerPoint presentations (which students have come to expect as part of a lecture) and Zoom meetings (which have become part of our new normal as a result of emergency remote teaching). Using PowerPoint reverses the power dynamics in the classroom. Rather than each student facing the all-seeing lecturer, I am placed under scrutiny as I try to memorise my presentation and rely on my assistant to keep up with the slides and alert me of questions. In our context, virtual lectures via Zoom are audio-only due to bandwidth constraints. My screen reader notifies me when students raise their hand and tells me who they are. I can also use earphones to listen to my own notes on a second device, which I found very empowering
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Identity, context and mobile media: A critical digital literacy service learning course in a South African township

- Boshoff, Priscilla A, Dalvit, Lorenzo

  • Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Dalvit, Lorenzo
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468195 , vital:77029 , ISBN 978-84-09-45476-1 , doi: 10.21125/edulearn.2022.1419
  • Description: In this paper we discuss a critical digital literacy service learning initiative involving post-graduate students in Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University in Makhanda (South Africa). As part of their studies, such students co-develop and teach a small-scale, non-credit-bearing short course on mobile critical digital literacy skills to learners in a township school. In South African terms, a township is an (often marginalised) area, present in almost every settlement, in which people classified as Blacks under apartheid were expected to live and to a large extent still do. As a microcosm of the diverse and still profoundly unequal South African reality, Makhanda offers ample opportunities for contact and collaboration across the geographic, socio-economic and digital divides. The Rhodes School of Journalism and Media Studies, recognised as one of the best on the African Continent, partners with a number of local organisations to support community upliftment and mutual learning. Community engagement, of which service learning is but one expression, is recognised as an integral component of academic activities for university staff and students. Rhodes University offers dedicated training and provides institutional support for activities such as the one discussed here. What makes our approach somehow unique is the adoption of photo voice as a pedagogical device in teaching and learning about identity construction in a marginalised context. Under the guidance of postgraduate students and their lecturers, learners learn about the technical aspects of taking photos to represent their identities using their mobile phone. Such photos are then used as a point of departure for facilitated group discussions about (self)representations, the social construction of identities and the importance of understanding these in relation to their lived context. In this paper we document and reflect on the conceptualisation and first iteration of the digital literacy service learning course, drawing some lessons for the future.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Online stories of inclusion and exclusion of learners with disabilities in South Africa

- Dalvit, Lorenzo

  • Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468206 , vital:77030 , ISBN 978-84-09-45476-1 , doi: 10.21125/edulearn.2022.1378
  • Description: A quarter of a century since the end of apartheid, the education system in South Africa still reflects its legacy of inequality and segregation along racial and, to a lesser extent, gender and (dis)ability lines. Depending on their situation, learners with disabilities may be accommodated within the mainstream system, homeschooled or attend specialised schools, often far away from their homes, families and support networks. The educational experience of such learners was disrupted during the past two years due to stringent measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Measures ranged from total shutdown to a shift to emergency remote teaching and learning through digital technology. This scenario brought the stark digital inequalities which characterise the South African context sharply into focus. At the same time, in some cases, digital tools provide a unique opportunity to overcome some of the challenges associated with special needs education. In this paper, I explore the narratives and experiences of learners with disabilities by conducting a qualitative content analysis of online texts such as news articles, videos, posts and relative comments. A focus on experience is consistent with current theoretical understandings of (dis)ability which seek to critique and overcome the deficit or social construction models still informing public narratives. Interpretation of the data within its social context captures the complexity and diversity of special needs education in South Africa and provides a Global South perspective.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Reflections on a course about radical discourses and the digital public sphere at a South African university

- Dalvit, Lorenzo

  • Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468217 , vital:77032 , ISBN 978-84-09-45476-1 , doi: 10.21125/iceri.2022.0661
  • Description: South Africa is characterised by persisting social inequalities, a vibrant civil society and one of the highest internet penetrations on the African continent. As in other parts of the world, digital media promised to revolutionise politics by giving a “voice to the voiceless”, i.e. creating a space for silenced and marginalised opinions, positions and counter-discourses. Recent local and international cases provide some sobering examples of how such voices may at times reflect fake news, conspiracy theories or hate speech. In this paper, I reflect on my experience teaching a third-year Journalism and Media Studies course on radical discourses online at a small residential and historically privileged university in South Africa. By problematising the normative ideal of the Digital Public Sphere as a space for equal, unrestricted and rational deliberation through the notion of radical voices, the course seeks to provide students with the conceptual tools to identify and challenge the boundaries of what is acceptable, possible or even imaginable. After engaging with a set of key readings and a brief introduction to relevant methodologies, students engage in collecting and thematically analysing relevant online texts. My experience developing and teaching this course over the past four years, including the moments of turmoil resulting from emergency remote teaching and learning, yielded some interesting insights in terms of teaching philosophy and practice, the themes chosen (and not chosen) and how students related their findings to the complexity of the South African context and their own diverse experiences.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Why care about sharing?: Shared phones and shared networks in rural areas: African trends

- Dalvit, Lorenzo

  • Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo
  • Date: 2014
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158639 , vital:40217 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC159490
  • Description: Tomi Ahonen, credited with introducing the concept of mobile as the seventh mass media, notes that the arrival of the mobile phone was a God-send for advertisers, as it is the only mass medium where the audience can be accurately identified. Conversely, the pervasiveness of location-aware, multi-sensor, permanently on and constantly connected devices raised privacy concerns about carrying "little brother" in your pocket at all times. One of the distinctive characteristics of mobile phones, setting them apart from all previous media, is the fact that they are personal devices: 60% of married users would not let their spouse access their mobile phone and, not surprisingly, teenagers are even less inclined to let their family members have a look at their device. Things have not always been so. In South Africa, research conducted among university students revealed that for many a hand-me-down phone the size of a brick and shared with siblings was their first mobile device.
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  • Date Issued: 2014

TeleWeaver: an innovative telecommunication platform for marginalized communities in Africa

- Dalvit, Lorenzo, Gumbo, Sibukelo, Ntshinga, Lindikaya, Terzoli, Alfredo, Hansen, Susan

  • Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo , Gumbo, Sibukelo , Ntshinga, Lindikaya , Terzoli, Alfredo , Hansen, Susan
  • Date: 2013
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/431317 , vital:72763 , https://www.academic-bookshop.com/ourshop/prod_2659103-ECEG-2013-13th-European-Conference-on-eGovernment-Como-Italy-PRINT-version.html
  • Description: Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) is becoming an increasingly important and multi‐faceted area of research and software development. Particularly through provision via mobile devices, e‐services can potentially reach and improve the lives of millions of people living in marginalised areas. The efforts of many governments in sub‐Saharan Africa are frustrated by poor tele-communication infrastructure, lack of skills and unsustainable models of intervention. In this paper we describe the holistic solution offered by the TeleWeaver platform. The novel approach to the development of the software, the strong sense of social responsibility of the developers and the collaborative spirit that shaped the ecosystem of which Tele-Weaver is part, warrants the adoption of an innovative approach to its marketing and implementation. On the one hand, the project needs to provide returns on investment and generate profit for the key stake-holders (ie government at the local and national level, academia, indus-try and socio‐-entrepreneurs in the target community). On the other, it must benefit all members of the marginalised communities it is intended to serve as well as the global community of software developers. Tele-Weaver was developed in close collaboration with the community of Dwesa, a rural area on the Wild Cost of the Transkei regions in eastern South Africa.
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  • Date Issued: 2013

African Languages And ICT Education

- Dalvit, Lorenzo, Murray, Sarah, Terzoli, Alfredo

  • Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo , Murray, Sarah , Terzoli, Alfredo
  • Date: 2011
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/431166 , vital:72750 , https://www.scitepress.org/Papers/2011/33507/33507.pdf
  • Description: In South Africa, English plays a dominant role compared to African lan-guages in empowering domain. Better access to Education through the use of African languages is an object of heated debate. This paper shows that an intervention involving the use of an African language in the domain of ICT Education can change the attitudes of Black universi-ty students. The methodology used included a survey with preliminary and follow-up questionnaires and interviews and an intervention involv-ing the use of localised software and of an on-line glossary of computer terms translated, explained and exemplified in an African language (isiXhosa). This experience increased the support for the use of African languages as additional LoLT, even in the English-dominated field of study of Computer Science. This is an initial step towards promoting linguistic equality between English and African languages and social equality between their speakers.
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  • Date Issued: 2011

Multilingualism and ICT education at Rhodes University: an exploratory study

- Dalvit, Lorenzo

The role of the web in the promotion of African languages

- Maseko, Pamela, Nosilela, Bulelwa B, Sam, Msindisi S, Terzoli, Alfredo, Dalvit, Lorenzo

  • Authors: Maseko, Pamela , Nosilela, Bulelwa B , Sam, Msindisi S , Terzoli, Alfredo , Dalvit, Lorenzo
  • Date: 2010
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/431370 , vital:72768
  • Description: In this article we explore the possible contribution of the Web in promot-ing the use and status of African languages. Participation in sharing and producing knowledge through the Web can play a key role in the eco-nomic, social and educational development of Africa. While physical ac-cess to information is hampered by lack of infrastructure and connectivi-ty, epistemological access is hampered by the use of English. Re-sources in African languages are available. Until the amount of Web content and the number of users reach critical mass, these resources play a symbolic rather than an instrumental role in promoting African lan-guages. The use of electronic resources available on the Web could contribute to cutting the printing and transport cost of paper material, es-pecially in multilingual settings where many languages would have to be represented. Another practical way in which the Web can promote the development of African languages is to promote communication among their speakers. This is already showing its potential by allowing experts from various disciplines to work collaboratively on the development of new indigenous terminology through mailing lists and chat rooms. On a larger scale, the Web can play a unifying function among speakers of different varieties of the same African language.
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  • Date Issued: 2010

An intercultural approach to implementing multilingualism at Rhodes University, South Africa

- Kaschula, Russell H, Maseko, Pamela, Dalvit, Lorenzo, Mapi, Thandeka, Nelani, Linda, Nosilela, Bulelwa, Sam, Msindisi S

Deconstructing language myths: which languages of learning and teaching in South Africa

- Dalvit, Lorenzo, Murray, Sarah, Terzoli, Alfredo

  • Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo , Murray, Sarah , Terzoli, Alfredo
  • Date: 2009
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/431260 , vital:72759 , https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/91537059/Deconstructing_language_myths_which_languages_of_learning_and_teaching_in_South_Africa.sflb-libre.pdf?1664136385=response-content-disposi-tion=inline%3B+filename%3DDeconstructing_language_myths_which_lang.pdfExpires=1714984902Signature=dj35y~SObsQq0TnqD-oDUj3CX7lgNnKJcMAchC7rarU74xqfrMlVfOwi-MZrNZvWvpxyzquBsmr1veH-ggRVXQP7TX4eKQq3tXV-gJZg3xyo7QJoGwrGPTjC4btF2kNrVJc6TQulzuPFEz47GtjQ6Nint4SmE7A30EMUMd8j25KgCUdtzqwx9kjBs-niKu~z-pk-Xon5YOolMTepbOwNr9wKGj8JafblTdnFs-H8CZ-Et4BD2mYV3GxnR0QLfgawFgDYkOSZnYhkl6wFsXG~Euwlhcvtp0EgUOfP4id~Ov9hhA-rSQxl81X2Dh1BdMuT3GSsK6VNmO7TikSC7NeGlQ__Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
  • Description: In this article we argue for the use of African languages as Languages of Learning and Teaching (LoLT) for native speakers of such language in South Africa. We believe that both public and academic debate is in-fluenced by a set of ‘language myths’: 1) only one language should be used; 2) the earlier one starts using English as LoLT, the better; 3) us-ing English as LoLT improves English proficiency. These myths be seen as a direct manifestation of Western hegemony, and English-functional arguments are often the terms of reference. We will try a dif-ferent approach by highlighting the advantages of using an African lan-guage (ie isiXhosa) as LoLT and, whenever possible, we will try to put English on the ‘defence stand’. The purpose of this paper is not to ad-vocate the substitution of English with an African language. We believe that bilingual education is the appropriate choice for South Africa, but in order to achieve full equality between English and the African lan-guages in education, arguments in support of the latter must be put forward proactively. With our paper, we hope to contribute to this new perspective.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

Adoption of ICTs in a marginalised area of South Africa

- Mapi, Thandeka, Dalvit, Lorenzo, Terzoli, Alfredo

  • Authors: Mapi, Thandeka , Dalvit, Lorenzo , Terzoli, Alfredo
  • Date: 2008
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/431130 , vital:72747 , https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/4390301/5-thandeka-libre.pdf?1390837024=response-content-disposi-tion=inline%3B+filename%3DAdoption_of_ICTs_in_a_Marginalised_Area.pdfExpires=1714988863Signature=N683m3iYa8BDSsrNBb-fZpYmsy~pftZZQbiEdNz8ZFJaL2I-Wt32FIJcLEKFnrSjj0AfnYak4RVZjuZhuFVHQZOnkt7tIBBwccqexeEkwq94rCX6r1~aA~GdyL4Z3WzHRK~Xoug17mnu869TGq8VxuSNBf-LmbSr03uZeXlk2dpobbp3ROl06wauhLm02p1th1qBM5n-Bc0q8wYS-zkY-jA9fc7w6ZE~m6hlHE6Amt1xg~db99oRcu1EuXSdHyWDZDw3OsQ9zlMfX7AU6EBhfAtFbxXuVXOlNOEPuXHgiQ1UbFveqfVKGFRg0dmYXzw62MQM0EQQ2g4qXgk2Xc2z0cQ__Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
  • Description: This paper examines how a community in Dwesa, a marginalised area in the Transkei Region of the Eastern Cape, South Africa, adopts Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). This research is part of the Siyakhula project, which aims at promoting the potential of the area through ICTs. The project is situated in four different schools: Mpume, Nondobo, Mtokwane and Ngwane. Fostering ICT awareness and a sense of owner-ship by the community are seen as crucial factors, and computer literacy education is an integral part of the project. The study focuses on how di-verse groups of people adopt new technologies and approach ICT educa-tion. Qualitative research methods such as Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Participant Observation (PO) were adopted in the study.
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  • Date Issued: 2008

Opensource software and localisation in indigenous South African languages with Pootle

- Dalvit, Lorenzo, Terzoli, Alfredo, Wolff, F

  • Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo , Terzoli, Alfredo , Wolff, F
  • Date: 2008
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/428496 , vital:72515 , https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1andtype=pdfanddoi=912f3d0d94f0268467e1d790fd7780f14d9c4e44
  • Description: The majority of the South African population is not fully proficient in Eng-lish. Besides access to the necessary infrastructure, many Africans lack epistemological access to the ICT world simply because of linguistic reasons. Limited availability of resources and lack of interest for the promotion of African languages in the ICT domain among their speakers are often blamed for this. The opensource community has been particu-larly responsive to the needs of this portion of the population, and a vari-ety of software is already available in African languages. Translate. org. za, an NGO committed to the development of opensource software in all 11 South African languages, has been particularly active with respect to this. On the one hand, they have developed a Webbased application to support collaborative translation online. On the other, they have part-nered with various institutions to organise translation efforts, mainly rely-ing on volunteers. In this paper we describe an experience showing how these two models can be used to address issues of lack of resources and support for the use of African languages in the ICT domain.
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  • Date Issued: 2008
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