“Africa will be better represented”, Emeagwali

“Today Africans are not well represented on the web. But I think this will change with time”, Philip Emeagwali said at the end of the conference on Africa’s development held last week, Friday the 3rd of October in Taormina, Italy. Below, you can watch the video interview to Africanews.it

How do you think ICT, internet and computers can help Africa?
Well, what it does it bridges the gap between Africa and the West. When it bridges the gap that means we can tap on the intellectual capital of the West which is really the source of wealth in a modern world, as well as help Africa increase its own intellectual capital which would alleviate poverty in Africa.

What are the next changes the ICT in Africa will do?
As we know Africa has lacked behind. With 922 million Africans, which represents 15% of the world population, we are still underrepresented on the websites because if you look at the websites most of them comes from the west, are in the United States, but it will grow slowly and gradually with time.

There are lots of new projects based on the web 2.0 principles and on new webdesign techniques. What do you think about them?
The proliferation of blogging is vast compared to what it was 10-15 years ago. And also what it does in politics in Africa, for example in Zimbabwe, it does a lot of good for activism because of the decentralisation of the internet. 10 years ago it was easy to shut down free newspaper, but today they can’t shut down more than 5 thousands political websites because they are based abroad.

“Africa will be better represented on the web”, Emeagwali

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