New Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)

Paper presented by Peter Musa, Director of the Musa Heritage Gallery and Country Correspondent Computers + Telecommunications in Africa magazine on the occasion of the National Orientation Day 14th November, 2003 at the Government High School (GHS) Jakiri.

My paper as you are aware will centre on the New Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The industrial age was an era of the past and today our present generation is living in an age of information. The world's development is highly influenced by the flow of information. The technologically advanced countries of the north continuously have an edge over their counterparts of the south, as this region remains the world's poor or the have nots.

What are these New Information and Communication Technologies?

During the last decade a lot of advances have been achieved in the area that is now known as the New Information and Communication Technologies. These new ICTs range from satellite radio and television to digital phone networks, mobile phones, digital cameras, sophisticated digital copying and printing to the internet (digital or cyber world) to mention a few.

With satellite technologies, radio and television listeners and viewers are able to capture sounds or images from a wide spectrum of stations at ease without struggling to tune or search. This is done by a simple touch on the desired channel.

The global telephone industry is developing at a very rapid speed. Today, digital technology is widely used by telephone networks worldwide. Digital phone networks make telephone communication a lot easier. Once you dial a number your line goes through immediately, except the receiving phone is busy. Today thanks to digital technology mobile phones using satellite or relay stations/terminals have been developed. Jakiri is now connected to the world by phone and this makes it possible for persons from all over the country and abroad to make calls to their families, friends and colleagues in this town. On the other hand, the people of Jakiri can equally make calls to family members, friends and colleagues elsewhere both nationally and internationally. This in short means that Jakiri is already benefitting and making use of the new ICTs. With a digital phone network, people living in Yaounde, Douala and Buea for instance are able to link up to the Internet by connecting their phones to their computers. (I will talk about the Internet later on).

Digital cameras make it possible to snap photos, which could in the future be stored and modified on a computer. Such photographs could be printed in a photo laboratory processing such digital images or on a computer printer using ordinary or photographic paper. Nowadays sophisticated digital copying and printing makes it possible to print large volumes of documents within record time with a simple button touch. Books and other printed material are a lot easier to realise at cheap rates also. With such new technology these machines can do printing, folding and binding thus eliminating a lot of human output.

Internet is about communication. Internet is at the at the centre of modern digital communication, in particular the world wide web (www) has become one of the most popular ways of communication today. Other common names which are used to refer to the Internet are the information super-highway, cyber world, digital world, the net, world wide web, virtual world etc.

Internet and globalisation have gone a way to make the phrase "global village" which refers to our modern world a reality. These are someof the ways that the Internet facilitates communication.

1. Everyone who is interested can now have an electronic mail address commonly known as an email address. With an email address you can communicate with your friends, relatives, colleagues and business partners instantly from a computer. The person at the receiving end could respond immediately if he is online or connected at the moment the mail was sent or transmitted.

2. With Internet, net phone is possible. Imagine talking to your friends and family from a computer turned a telephone at a very low cost. In Yaounde or Douala using net phone costs about 300 frs CFA per minute to talk to someone abroad such as in the U.S.A or Europe.

3. Internet makes possible for you to visit millions of web sites covering every imaginable human endeavour from people to organisations, educational institutions to employment opportunities, business openings to multi-national corporations etc. My organisation, the Musa Heritage Gallery has a website of its own with a lot of information on the organisation and its activities as well as over 100 photographs. In addition, the Musa Heritage Gallery has several links on the Internet, which makes it possible for us to reach a global audience.

4. Students can use the Internet to gain admission into universities, obtain scholarship and make friends with other students abroad just to mention a few examples.

5. Teachers use it to gain additional material to make teaching interesting and rich curriculum wise as well as the possibility to communicate and be part of electronic conferences on topics related to their profession. Research and career advancement opportunities are wide open also for teachers who embrace the Internet as a modern working tool.

In summary, the Internet is a very useful tool for everyone irrespective of what you do. I encourage everyone present here to take the first step in fully embracing the new ICTs by taking a course in computer studies. Our government has already started to implement measures in this direction with the introduction of computer education  in some of our schools. Government should ensure that all our high schools are equiped with the necessary equipment, our teachers trained on the new ICTs so as to make computer education a reality in the Cameroon educational system.