Information and its communication has always been central to holding communities, societies and nation-states together. This is achieved through the process of communicating symbols of common purposiveness and beneficial inter-dependence. Beginning with the basics such as a common language to common culture and interest, information flows are at the center of cementing together individuals and the wider bodies/organizations to which they may belong (Mabogunje, 1989).

When societies and nation-states become more complicated or sophisticated through the diversification of individual and group pursuits, goals, language, race and religion, it becomes necessary that the information flows holding the entities together develop similar characteristics in order to remain effective. If the media for managing such flows proves inadequate for the task, the cohesion of such entities is severely tested. Beneficial interdependence needs to be constantly made apparent and widely conveyed through enhanced information systems. Individuals and groups need to feel a symbiotic part of the wider society and nation-state. Attaining this state of affairs requires information flow enabling technologies that can diffuse the sophisticated symbols that would effectively transcend such glaring differences as race, language and religion. Managing "commonness and unity in diversity" requires more enhanced information flow media than that required to run either a one-language, one-race or the conqueror-subject relationships of yester-years.

Even out of the context of the information revolution and its promises (Talero & Gaudette, 1995), Africa’s information (indeed total) development process, needs to reckon with pertinent afflictions. One is this region’s great diversities in language, religion and race, or social heterogeneity (Onyango, 1990). This has the potential to obstruct information flows. Second, is the poor communications/information systems infrastructures - another potential obstacle to information flows. Third is the historically coerced state of co-existence between most communities. Present nation-state borders of Africa are by-products of historical events in Europe. These borders have, therefore, in moments of crises, proved to be traps keeping together "sworn mortal enemies". Evidence of this can be gleaned from popular vocabulary that is full of blatant pejorative metaphors used to describe neighbors in order to underline self-identity. The inherent instability is a further potential source of obstruction to information flows in the spatial sense. These problems have national information management implications and point to information management failures.

There is a set of cultures that effectively question the legitimacy of Africa’s national borders that define "kith and kin" (members of similar language/racial/religious grouping) as aliens located in other countries while identifying "enemies" as compatriots. This will need to be addressed through appropriate information strategies.

Secondly, it points to a failure of national information flow management systems to project a credible picture of commonness/unity in diversity. This national issue has not received adequate attention and resources in Africa’s recent history of self-rule. However, the persistent vulnerability of the nation-states to internally fomented discord and the attendant instabilities, point to a serious oversight on the part of those responsible for this continent’s destiny and also their advisors. Coercive tactics, prioritizing physical infrastructures, and the denial of diversity has obviously failed to knit the peoples together. Thoughts and resources must now be directed at creating and strengthening intangibles like regulatory and institutional infrastructures that are participative and accommodating of diversity. Efforts should also aim at recruiting widely to the national cause of productivity and competition in the "global village". This is particularly important because of the recent events in the world in general and in Africa in particular.

First is the advent of democracy and the attendant freedoms of speech, association and the articulation of differences.

The other is growing global interdependence, the unpopular power system and the ensuing culture of financial discipline that threatens to do away with the aid/grants system that sustained the unaccountable national management styles originating from the cold war years. For almost four decades, and buffeted by the "cold war dividend", the art of negotiating and bargaining solutions in national interest and the greater long-term good was sacrificed for short-term and delusively simpler methods of force. It became easier to ban alternative thoughts and institutions and systems of authority (traditional or otherwise) than to engage them in dialogue. It was easier to deny tribal, racial, ethnic and religious diversities. Most managers of state affairs demonstrated serious strategic and planning incompetence in major aspects of stagecraft. But they did not have to foot the real costs of such mal-administration because of the spin-offs from the cold war. Recent bloody explosions of long suppressed ethnic-racial and religious animosities across the length and breadth of this continent is testimony to the high opportunity cost that may still have to be paid. The adoption of force led to instituting mechanisms restrictive to information flows and to the censorship of ideas. Thus the terrain needed to effectively exploit new information technologies to support unity and stability remains largely uncharted.

The continent is in dire need of creative and innovative approaches to the search for conflict resolution, voluntary co-existence and unity, participation and sustainable development. This is particularly so because the menu of options is drying up. Governments pleading for aid and grants cannot credibly deride and discredit alternative proposals as "agents of foreign ideologies". Democracy and the rule of law, human rights and people empowerment, the global village and unity in diversity cannot sit comfortably with the rule of the gun and the enthusiastic administration of "legitimate violence". Even the "men in uniform" are coming to terms with this reality. What do new information technologies (NITs) offer that could support the generation of some answers to these problems? What threats are embedded along the path opened by NITs? What can we learn from the experience of others who have trodden this path before which could inform our planning process? Having missed previous development waves, how promising is this one given the spatial realities of Africa (Lubbe, Egget & Hawkes, 1995)? How real is the revolution?

2. INFORMATION AND THE NATION-STATE

Information and its flows has always been at the center of the formation of human organizations. In fact (Miles & Robins, 1992), all tasks to which human labor is applied inherently involves some measure of information processing. This ranges from receiving instructions (communication), checking to see the state of affairs (perception), or performing calculations or other mental acts (transformation/information). However, the phenomenon we are concerned with here is much bigger. We are addressing the new information technologies and their effects on both the foregoing and on a wider scale. We are addressing the convergence of computing and telecommunications technologies occasioned by developments in microelectronics. According to one development thesis, microelectronics is the new heartland technology providing dramatically cheapened capacities to store, manipulate and communicate information. Around it, related information and communications technologies are at the center of rapid increases in performance and capacity. Included here are the fiber optics, satellites, optical discs and software.

The NITs have, and continue to have, large scale impact on corporate, national and international information management techniques and procedures. It is opening up many possibilities. But it is also closing others - many to which we have become accustomed. In the context of Africa, an intense analysis of these developments is called for. This continent’s track-record in squandering technological and other opportunities is legendary (Onyango, 1991). It is important to acknowledge that no technology is neutral in its impact on work organizations and experiences. It is also important to come to grips with the social relations under which the new information technologies are created and evaluate what can be influenced to best advantage (Beirne & Ramsay, 1992). Studies of technology show that it is not produced in a social vacuum before entering society and that it develops from past technological and scientific understanding. It is acknowledged that this often limits the scope for infinite variations and recasting at any given moment in time. Therefore, exhaustible investigation of additional options is always advisable. This is important. We need to look beyond the options and openings for deploying NITs than will normally be brought to our attention. The reality of this region’s finite resources demands this (Sahay & Walsham, 1995).

Even at the point of the organization, depoliticization of technical change is risky as it could obscure and ignore differences of interest and deliberate choices by management and in their interest. At national level such interests are demonstrated in government efforts to regulate information flows and the supportive new technologies via high tariffs on items like facsimile machines, refusal to free the airwaves, resistance to deregulate telecommunications and postal services, etc. Protection of consumers, jobs and national security are mere smoke screens.

Studies of the information economy are widespread. However, such studies have yet to adequately locate Africa in the pre-industrial-post-industrial continuum. But this search is important if a logical planning process for the region’s beneficial exploitation of these changes is to be pursued.

This region has pursued development mirages in the past and failed to recognize and ride the right and/or appropriate waves. Secondly, recent achievements in this continent (particularly democracy) that now permit considerations like reconstruction and participative national economic management must be credited to the ordinary African. Having similarly sacrificed before and been short-changed (Hyden, 1983), options opened by NITs and the cost implications and the inevitable diversion limited resources can only be justified in the context of optimizing utility on a sustainable basis. Therefore attention is paid here to NITs and democracy at the work place in addition to the macro issues of national stability and productivity.

Beirne and Ramsay (1992) have some observations on information technologies and workplace democracy from which lessons can be drawn. The need for participative national management systems following failures of the single-set management-driven blue-print quick-fixes that now litter this development landscape cannot be over emphasized enough. Miles and Robins (1992) caution against falling into "technological determinism"- reducing all economic and social change to expressions of technological causes and determinants. Also to be avoided is viewing change simply in terms of "a movement from the bad old days to the bright new times that are awaiting us". This linear perspective is faulted for stripping social and economic development of its complex and contradictory character. In this trap, countervailing and divergent processes risk being dismissed as anachronistic and residual elements of the old era and the supposedly new and emergent tendencies "absolutized" and projected forward as the paradigm for the new era. This ideal-type projection then becomes the bench-mark against which contemporary developments are measured. This was the trap in which the modernist, neoclassical and dependency development theories found themselves (Onyango 1990). The information technology based development perspectives on Africa need to avoid this linearity.

To understand the nature and direction of change occasioned by new information technologies is important if African states are to locate themselves in the past-present-future continuum and plan accordingly. To plan for that future, an understanding of studies and thoughts on information, information technologies and the information economy is crucial and needs to be prioritized in national social science research enterprises (Sahay & Walsham, 1995).

3. PERSPECTIVES ON NITs AND DEVELOPMENT

Development is a process characterized by change in society. Structural change would, for instance, include such qualitative improvements as the promotion of higher level capabilities of the people, institutions and productive units. Development is also characterized by the offer to citizens of a fair share of the benefits of progress as well as improved quality of life under conditions of social justice. It further includes the capacity of a nation to enjoy autonomous participation in the community including a more adequate international division of labor (Adongo, 1996). There is no single inevitable trajectory of development (Robins & Gillespie 1992). In other words, there is no single, simple or general paradigm for development. In this context, recent democratic trends around this continent constitute important and integral development milestones. So are the changes, real and potential, occasioned by NITs. Therefore, the national development process includes the enhancement of a nation’s or society’s capacity to identify, acquire, assimilate, adopt, adapt, improve on and contribute to (that is participate voluntarily, efficiently, and optimally) in the global information and knowledge activities, and to use this to enhance its productivity. NITs can contribute a lot here.

Miles and Robins (1992) discuss approaches to contextualizing information and information technologies in development. Included here are:

Neo-Schempeterian Approach

The neo-Schumpeterian approach sees the new information technologies as the latest "revolutionary heartland technology" opening up opportunities for change on a very wide scale. Heartland technology is considered a technology which is employed across many production processes. The diffusion of a heartland technology depends on its ability to offer economic benefits (e.g. reduced costs or improved quality) in both economically and politically acceptable ways. A revolutionary heartland technology is defined as one that offers the possibility of dramatic changes in production costs and methods, so that it is applied widely and rapidly. This is closely associated with changes in perceptions of managers, engineers and workers of the relative costs and capabilities of different factors of production. Thus, something that was previously out of the question now becomes economically and technically possible. A technological revolution is then said to occur when the potential of a new revolutionary heartland technology is exploited across a wide variety of production processes and products. The processes that NITs have impacted include factory, office and marketing and distribution automation systems. The new products would include intermediate goods and/or services being used in the production processes (such as robots and business information services) and final goods and/or services being supplied to consumers. Neo-Schempeterians see the swarming of innovations in a technological revolution resulting in the creation of clusters of new products as innovations are built upon innovations that capitalize on the possibilities offered by a new heartland technology. Schumpeter also identified "gales of creative destruction" as these innovations challenge and undermine many existing branches of production, sets of skills, occupational structures, user-supplier relationships and social and economic institutions. Such a technological revolution is also referred to as a techno-economic paradigm. This neo-Schumpeterian approach to the information economy places heavy weight on NIT and the exploitation of the opportunities it provides.

It sees the information economy as a new stage in development with economies being restructured as the use of NITs become pervasive, as NIT sectors become of crucial strategic importance, and as new products and processes are experienced in work and everyday life situations. This techno-economic paradigm while acknowledging the need and inevitability of phases of "creative destruction" however ignores locational peculiarities such as those that made Africa miss the crest of previous development waves.

Flexible Specialization

Flexible specialization recognizes volatile markets and the means for quick identification of market trends and responses opened up by NITs. It points to NIT-based equipment that can be rapidly re-programmed to give economies of scope and mass customization in addition to the scale economies. The thesis is that as the technology allows for flexibility, firms are pushed in that direction because competitors are using the possibility to gain an edge. It is further proposed that even non-competitive areas such as public services soon follow as consumer pressure for flexibility grows as a consequence of experiencing it elsewhere. Flexible specialization also emphasizes the importance of institutional regulation at both micro and macro levels of the economy. Flexible specialization, unlike neo-Schumpeterian theories, pays some attention to space and place making it relevant to those concerned with the geography of the information economy and with regional development issues. Space and place issues and the address of regional economies offer a framework within which potential solutions to the problems of developing economies like Africa might be addressed (Miles & Robins, 1992).

The Spatial Approach

The spatial theorists argue that geographic agendas are fundamental in the current period of economic and social restructuring and that social processes necessarily take place over space (Robins & Gillespie, 1992). It recognizes recent enormous and significant transformations in the spatial organization of economies and societies - transformations caused by developments in ICTs. Beginning with the telegraph’s de-linking of communication from transportation, developments continue down to computer control systems. It is proposed that NITs are giving rise to new global spaces of production, to new functional linkages between organizational units. Therefore, the command of organizational space, and the fate of territories (whether cities, regions, or nation-states) depends on developments of ICTs. If the new ICTs are to bring significant geographical transformations to any territory, then this will be under conditions shaped and constrained by earlier orders of accumulation. It is argued that geographical transformation is not determined by technological innovation, but, rather, that it is through the possibilities they offer that new spatial configurations might be elaborated. The contribution of NITs is thus seen as to enhance continuously the effectiveness of organizational control and to coordinate flows of labor, materials and information across space.

Spatial theory criticizes the post-industrial framework for assuming that the information society can transcend the friction of distance, and that ubiquitous ICTs will bring about a decentralized society of electronic cottages. It is identified that advanced communications technologies in fact encourage the appearance of new specialized production activities which themselves then frequently cluster together in geographical space. This aspect of the thesis asserts that the territorial implications of the new flexible economies resemble that 19th century matrix of production based on an area and not a firm. It identifies social solidarity among large global producers. Because flexibility implies specialization, and because specialization demands inter-firm collaboration, cooperation and trust, a tendency towards reconsolidation of the region as an integrated unit of production is identified. This is seen as reasserting the significance of place for the development process. Communication and information systems being fundamental to the coordination of transactions between localized firms and also crucial to the way in which the complex division of labor is articulated are leading to the reinforcement of the industrial districts. NITs are ensuring the integrity of the production system and also underpinning its localization and its containment within a particular territorial configuration. What is more, the space-transcending NITs actually bring about, not global and decentralized organizational forms upon which Africa’s "leapfrogging" hopes were founded, but rather localized and concentrated agglomerations embodying the "clan-culture" of the industrial district that characterizes the North-South divide. It is argued that information and communication systems cannot escape or transcend the logic of (geographically specific) social institutions, norms and behavior.

From an African position, this observed tendency towards deepening of the disadvantageous global concentration and centralization of economic power could spell big problems. In this scenario, multinational corporations (MNCs) retrench themselves as the key shapers of the world economy. It is the more extensive and intensive integration of their activities that becomes the primary dynamic of the present period. The "small is beautiful" projections of the post-industrialists that gave hope to Africa in this NIT-driven development continuum may thus be an illusion.

There are also implications for the continent’s ability to negotiate favorable terms of investment or production facilities. For the MNC, the global system makes it possible to shift activities around a network topology across territories allowing them to exploit minute spatial differentiation to good effect. Therefore, small differences in what space contains in the way of labor supplies, resources, infrastructures and the like become of increased significance. This, of course, exacerbates the already weak bargaining position of underdeveloped regions vis-à-vis MNCs. The paradox is that the less important the spatial barriers, the greater the sensitivity of capital to the variations of place within space, and the greater the incentive for places to be differentiated in ways attractive to capital.

The Northern localities (not all) are strategically placed in the new global networks and contain local structures and the means to shape their future. However, Africa, particularly, remains disadvantageously positioned having lost previous rounds of accumulations and having suffered historical erosion of skills, technologies, institutions and resources.

Here the future could still be shaped by the old logic of dependent and peripheral development unless innovative planning takes place (Onyango, 1990).

According to this thesis, the viability of local and regional economies will be a product of their ability to articulate a coherent organizational presence within a global milieu. Critical is whether they can insert themselves into the new network topology. In this, the question of communications infrastructure and its regulation will be crucial. However, technological endowments cannot be decisive as past experiences of technological transfer management efforts around this continent have demonstrated (Onyango, 1990/91). There are other powerful forces internal and external. Externally are the forces bringing about competition between places to establish a position within the new global division of labor. Internally there are practices and interests that are prime candidates for Schumpeter’s "creative destruction" including the social structures that are both a constraint and a contradiction (Beirne & Ramsay 1992). Spatial theory sees a real danger that the new global order could be marked by new segmentation of on-line and off-line territories differentiating localities that can harness territorial endowments to the network structure and those characterized by both internal fragmentation and external disarticulation from the network. It proposes the future for particular localities as depending on how effectively they can position themselves within these global networks.

The foregoing theoretical perspectives shed light on the role and significance of information in contemporary change and development. Their different insights improve the understanding of the way in which information has emerged as a pervasive force in the economy and society. What is more, there is increasing convergence among these perspectives (Miles & Robin, 1992). But, as yet, no general theory of the information economy is in place and against which proposals on Africa’s position on this development continuum can be tested. What of the developments at the micro or firm level?

4. NITs AND WORKPLACE DEMOCRACY

Beirne and Ramsay (1992) observed that management and labor relate from different points on the democracy scale and especially so in relation to the introduction of NITs at the workplace. Management is concerned with whether productivity benefits of technology outweigh its costs and how to realize and maximize benefits. Labor is, however, concerned with the consequences of technology change for work experience, control and jobs. The information handling capacities of NITs gives them direct impact on work. NITs have the potential to demolish traditional task definitions and demarcations. This can make it a particularly divisive weapon against the work force and against their capacity to organize. Africa’s employees are seeking industrial democracy, a right earned through great contribution to the ongoing continent-wide democratic dispensation. But management tends to fight to retain the agenda of controlling the new technology in the service of profit and growth because of the tradition and nature of their training.

Social constraint sculptures management policy. This social determinism can squeeze out abstract technical options opened by new technology.

It has been observed that labor costs tend to be in the background when management is planning technological or product change (Lubbe, Eggert & Hawkes, 1995). This has the tendency of making human resource utilization a residual issue for top management. What is more, European management styles, to which this continent largely subscribes, show little hint of managerial commitment to worker involvement as a means of improving the form of change or generating enthusiasm for it. Europe’s history of class differences may explain this (Beirne & Ramsey, 1992). Such management will only seek worker participation when required by industrial relations institutions or when forced by resistance of workers. Further, studies show management as jealous of their prerogatives, and technical change like NITs introduction (being capital investment) is a prime candidate for this. Then there is the predominance of financial objectives and cost control in management’s justification of capital expenditure. Industrial cultures like the British, for example, reportedly foster strong accounting domination (Lubbe, Eggert & Hawkes, 1995). This leads to increased pressure towards less innovative labor practices at corporate and national levels. Such postures can foreclose options to which NITs could be more innovatively and beneficially employed. The foregoing have worrying implications for organic NIT adoption and adaptation in Africa especially if the social origins of NITs are also considered.

Democracy is about the distribution of decision-making. Do NITs have the potential to support this? Industrial relations and collective bargaining culture and institutions are generally weak in Africa where most governments have decisively located themselves on the side of employers and capital.

Any industrial friction occasioned by labor tends to be labeled "illegal" almost instantly by authorities nakedly unsympathetic to such concepts as democracy and empowerment in the workplace and desperately pursuing the elusive foreign investment. Without it, however, management takes on exclusive responsibility to institute change from its already limited base of ideas and culturally-colored style. Employees appear to have limited influence in the nature and direction of the introduction and utilization of NITs at the workplace in developed countries. What does this mean for the democratic process at the workplace in Africa?

The potential for polyvalence (multiskilling which includes assuming supervisory or decision-making functions) as a result of the introduction of NITs has been found rare in practice despite the "management optimism of the inherently enskilling nature of IT" (Beirne and Ramsay, 1992, p.9). Those who regard flexible enskilling and responsible autonomy as necessary to realize the potential of NITs point to management’s failure to adopt the polyvalent option as restricting the scope of the technology and the work system. They argue that technological innovation is far more effective where autonomous teamwork and polyvalence is in operation. The prognoses is that the outcomes of IT innovation for industrial democracy will depend on the interplay of management perceptions, objectives and policies and employee perceptions, organization and responses. That is, they will continue to emerge from a dialectic of struggle and control. Good results from Sweden are, for instance, ascribed to, among other qualities:

5. CONCLUSIONS

The development wave that brought forth the Pacific Rim tigers missed Africa. This was largely the result of one-track rigid policies that excluded majority participation, became unaccountable and, therefore, corrupt. Departicipation on national issues remained a frame of reference and action until the recent democratic wind. This period was particular in its obstruction of alternative thought. One party political systems covered for single government-driven economic, scientific and cultural policies. The policies were sourced from donors/allies/friendly foreign sources and administered with gusto by a tunnel visioned bureaucracy. Many options and avenues were closed and participation restricted. It is not that alternatives to national economic management systems were unknown in Africa. It is because the alternatives were not sought. Local expertise was sidelined and still remains largely so. The alacrity with which foreign consultants are still sought and embraced under the pretext that they come with their own pay-package is a relic of this past. This system needs to be undermined. It is a candidate for "creative destruction". In this, the ongoing democratic wave is important and the momentum needs to be enhanced. A priority is to exploit the space opened by this development amidst the opportunities availed by NITs. Conformity and demagoguery that underpinned the last phase of one-party driven programs must be relegated to the past, permanently. What do NITs offer in this direction given the regulatory and practical obstacles that are a relic of the permanently dark period.

African governments have prevented the generation of alternative ideas through censorship, restricted travel and gathering legislation and regulations, and, inadvertently, the running down of physical infrastructure. They adopted the system of administration by fiat, backed by minimum documentation of government decisions and enjoining of public sector workers to oaths of secrecy.

NITs are opening up solutions in this direction. The internet and WWW offers the channel for exchange of ideas away from the public glare of politically driven gatherings. It is also inaccessible to the listening-in devices at the disposal of the financially-strapped governments. The advanced ability of NITs to delink communications form transportation means the possibility to transcend the physical infrastructural and other travel restrictions and barriers visited by the authorities Informal/invisible colleges and campuses for the discussion and testing of alternative thoughts is now possible. But what is even more promising is the coming round of the multilateral agencies to the need to support information harnessing to advance development (Talero & Gaudette, 1995).

Even as the sources of limitless aid/grants of the cold war era dry up, there are alternatives opening up for both collaborative and project-specific funding. These demand considered and informed initiatives and negotiating skills from the African parties - a practice they are unaccustomed to. Governments thus remain largely unhappy with these new systems partly also because they restrict their ability to transfer resources in support of patronage and pet projects. The arrival of new institutions on the scene such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as alternatives to government departments in conducting development needs to be seen within the democratic scale of advancement. These institutions are attracting independent funding and as the restrictive capacities of governments wane, will be able to be more assertive in defining their own priorities and agendas and thus further opening up the space for alternative thoughts and activities.

In this scenario, what is the fate of the ordinary Africa? It is difficult to say at this stage. But an opportunity to be exposed and express alternatives, and, hopefully, effect changes of government, interact with alternative accountable institutions, is a major positive move in the search for a sustainable development posture. At least for a start, NITs have much to offer at this stage. African libraries too have a critical proactive role to play as they creatively source funds and resources from new players and as governments lose the ability and incentive to restrict their activities. They need to act as mid-wives in this potentially exciting regeneration. This does not play down the challenges. They are many and varied. Alternative institutions of information delivery are coming on board. These are more flexibly designed to cope with change and do not carry the baggage of tradition and a negative cultural history. But the opportunity to do much and to ride the crest of this wave and challenge is there.

There is, in addition, a gradual convergence of views between African governments, bilateral and multi-lateral agencies, NGOs and NITs based development theorists on the need to take advantage of the current wind to pull the continent out of the malaise. What needs to be cautioned against is the possible drift of this convergence towards the single-track blue-print inflexible policy administration styles of the last three decades. This convergence of views needs to be exploited to ensure a documentable, and therefore, accountable, system of administration, subject and amenable to auditing and alternative inputs and ideas. This is just the start. A lot of thoughts and exchange of realistic ideas is called for.
 
 

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