Was WSIS worth it?

The media's role in the Information Society was the core focus of this year’s Highway Africa conference, held last month in Grahamstown. Many believe that the scheduling of Highway Africa was significant, given that it fell between the United Nation’s two-phased World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The first phase of WSIS was held in December 2003 in Geneva, with the next phase being planned for Tunisia in 2005. However, the question being debated by academics, officials and key stake-holders who attended WSIS is whether or not anything has come of the summit. Guy Berger, head of the Rhodes University Department of Journalism and Media Studies, sees the event as being valuable, and holds that issues discussed at WSIS are contributing “to a globally integrated information and communication system”. More specifically, he adds that it enabled us “to put under a single spotlight, a range of dispersed phenomena - whether media freedom, convergence legislation, or South Africa’s standing in a global communications forum”. Conversely, some believe that as yet, nothing could be reported as showing any impact from the WSIS Geneva, with things being just the way they were before the summit. People in Southern Africa are still having the same problems of non accessibility to ICT's.