Afro@digital. Un excelente documental.

Como llegaba el cine antes a los parajes más recónditos del planeta, como hace siglos irrumpía la gente del circo o de la feria para cambiarle la vida a los aldeanos... hoy un autobús recorre los vericuetos más apartados del África para llevar el progreso a quien ayuna día a día con el peor de los terrorismos, que es aquel que alienta a la pobreza.

Oumou Sy es una modista 'enterpreneur' que ha decidido montar la primera estación de internet rodante del mundo (The Cyberbus) para ayudar a sus paisanos y que estos no sucumban, ante una forma de miseria tan horrible como el hambre... la de la desinformación.

El documental Afro@digital de Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda (Congo) producido por la UNESCO, es una pieza clave para entender que la Era digital no es solo un producto derivado de la matemática y la tecnología… sino más bien una metáfora que apela al talento humano, que es capaz de cambiar la relación del individuo con la maquina, pero sobre todo con el mundo. La lógica de la pobreza y el fatalismo de haber nacido en el culo del planeta, se tambalean ahora en medio de una creciente democratización de la palabra. He ahí la clave de la digitalidad.

Una carta escrita a mano, puede ser vista con suerte por diez o veinte personas, pero un mensaje colgado en la Internet le pertenece a la humanidad, y esa es la oportunidad que representa para África y los africanos el acceso que deben exigir a las redes digitales.

GeNeRaCiOnAsErE/tony.

Afro@digital
(by Maylin)

The filmmakers of Afrodigital developed a very interesting argument through out the film about the connection between digital technology and Africa. The purpose of the film is to show how Africans feel and think about digital technology and how this technology impacts their lives. The film proposes a question: Since when does Africa communicate digitally?
According to Georges Kamanago, one of the filmmakers interviewed in the documentary, digital technology has long existed. He argues that the simple act of playing a rudimentary musical instrument is somehow digital, since music is related to mathematic, and digital technology is based on simple mathematics. The fact that the Ishango bone, the most ancient mathematical record found in the world, was discovered in African soil proves that they had mathematical knowledge twenty thousands years ago.

Another filmmaker, Ola Balogun, expressed important questions in the film. He asked: What kind of technology is best suited for Africa? What is the purpose of technology? The film shows the concern Africans have about the use of digital technology. They want to be able to use technology, not only to receive information already processed by other cultures, but Africans want to use technology to project their own and very unique culture. They want to be able to communicate their different perspectives on subject matters such as, world progress.A recurrent idea in the film is that technology does not have a value in itself unless you use it in a meaningful way.

One musician who was interviewed in the film, Ray Lema, says that Africans have been persuaded that they are poor. African politicians are concern on how to feed the people and therefore to talk about new technology seems unrealistic to them. There are two parts of Africa who coexist side by side. The Africa of the elite and ruling classes; and the Africa of the rest of the people. The elite has access to information and modern world technology. The rest of the Africans who live in remote villages and poor neighborhoods in the city don’t even have their basic human needs cover and only know about technology like a distance rumor. However, I believed that the content of this film is very different from the usual stereotype of Africa as a backward, no-modern space. Even though the majority of Africans don’t know how to use Internet for example, they realize the value of it. To illustrate, a fashion designer interviewed in the film, her name is Oumou Sy, described her experience when she takes the “Cyberbus” to the remote villages. The “Cyberbus” is a regular bus equipped with a big generator, a video projector, a big screen and long cables. She takes the bus to remotes villages to show people how the Internet works. She is an entrepreneur who wants to sell her products, but at the same time she is opening the doors of modern technology to the villagers. She expressed how the villagers understand they utility of the Internet. Another example is how African religious leaders use cell phones to communicate with their followers for spiritual consultations.

In conclusion, I believe this documentary shows that despite the fact that Africa is a continent where people sleep and awake to the terrorism poverty, people have the mental capacity to understand the concept of digital technology. Africans have the intelligence and sensibility to make good use of new modern technology. After all the origin of digital technology can be trace back twenty thousand years ago when an African civilization was calculating numbers with the Ishango bone.

GeNeRaCiOnAsErE/maylinm