The Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC) has completed a 4-day workshop in Windhoek Namibia where indigenous African leaders and technology intermediaries have shared experiences on how geo-spatial information technologies (GIT) are used by indigenous peoples to express their traditional ecological knowledge to decisions makers for the purposes of securing recognition and rights. Key case studies presented included participatory mapping by ToCADI and San groups in Botswana, Participatory 3 Dimensional Modelling (P3DM) by hunter-gatherer peoples in Kenya, GPS-based mapping experiences from Cameroon, DR Congo, Namibia and South Africa.
The workshop included also capacity building sessions on web 2.0 applications including Google Earth, Google Maps, blogging, online video sharing, and use of electronic discussion groups including [ppgis]).
Web 2.0 applications have been presented and applied as adds on to GIT to help networking, communication, alliance building and remote collaboration for advocacy.
The event has been co-hosted and presented by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), ERMIS Africa, Cybertracker Conservation, Shalin Ry and the Rainforest Foundation UK.
IPACC’s mission: Help indigenous leaders be more effective in advocacy, using international laws and treaties in their home countries, building up alliances between indigenous peoples with similar challenges and needs. IPACC prioritizes making linkages between political leadership and traditional holders of culture and knowledge.
Further:
At the IPACC workshop in Namibia we discussed how Traditional Ecological Knowledge can be localised, documented and visualised via processes including geographic information technologies (GIT) and how Web 2.0 applications can add power to advocacy actions drawing on such information.
Here is a short video on Web 2.0 put to work in rural Africa : Agriculture and New Technologies – Web 2.0 in Africa (Web2forDev)
This video has been produced as a follow-up to the Web2forDev 2007 conference
From Giacomo Rambaldi