“Sharing Information: African Perspectives”: bridging the knowledge divide

Abstract There is increased recognition of the vital role that scientific information and knowledge has to play in education, poverty reduction and sustainable development. The reverse case is also true – that unless access to information and knowledge is made available to all, the gap between poor and wealthy countries will continue to widen. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan has recently written of how the “unbalanced distribution of scientific activity generates serious problems not only for the scientific community in the developing countries, but for development itself. It accelerates the disparity between advanced and developing countries, creating social and economic difficulties at both national and international levels.” Advances in technology, particularly in the areas of electronic publishing and dissemination, have led to new ways of communicating information and knowledge and thus present a huge range of opportunities for developed and developing countries alike. They also bring many significant challenges, which are nowhere perhaps more keenly experienced than in developing countries. In this paper I will outline some of the key challenges and also some of the important opportunities presented by the revolution in scholarly electronic publishing. I will illustrate this with examples of projects exploiting new technology to enhance access to information in developing and transitional countries and bridge the knowledge divide.