[governance] How do we engender effective participation from developing countries (Africa)?

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

Weeding out freeloaders from a fellowships process takes effort.  But yes,
it can be done, given people who are active in a particular region and good
at identifying who are genuine + deserving fellows and who are freeloaders
out for an expenses paid vacation.

 

The issue is not accountability as such.  And it is actually tough to play
mother hen to a couple of dozen people.

 

You can, however, do a lot by not leaving them to their own devices once
they arrive at the conference venue. Regular sessions targeted at fellows
tends to help (orientation / welcome program to start with, and if possible
hooking groups of fellows up with a mentor).  

 

Before that,  targeting the right people / groups for fellowships
announcements, and developing what can only be called a "bullshit detector"
might help.  Of course, it is even easier when you operate a conference for
network operators (people who run networks at ISPs) in the Asia Pacific
region, and so can easily fend off requests from people whose job profiles,
or  geographic location, don't match selection critieria.

 

That (being asiapac specific) certainly helps us when various people
claiming to be from Nigerian "trading companies" apply for fellowships and
ask for visa invitation letters . it is not just freeloaders looking out for
junkets we have to be careful of, there is a lot of fraud out there too.
Especially where someone issuing a visa invitation letter often has to
assume responsibility for repatriating a fellow [per visa regulations].

 

Speaking of that, visa regulations are often the single largest barrier to
attending these global events.   Especially where some countries' embassies
may have completely unreasonable, locally invented requirements for issuing
a visa.     I hardly need to tell you that, or people from other developing
economies who have to travel internationally. 

 

Funnily enough, the easiest places to get visas to are (say) the USA,
Australia etc.  If you want to go to, say, Argentina from India .. suffice
to say that's the only country that demands notarized affidavits, letters
from "the chamber of commerce your employer is a member of"  etc for a
business visa.. somewhat tough when you are a consultant, going to speak at
a conference.   

 

We Indians kind of inherited red tape and bureaucracy from 300 years of
being a British colony .. and then went ahead and refined it.    As I found
to my irritation when dealing with an Indian clerk working for the
argentinian embassy in New Delhi, not too long back . J

 

                suresh

 

 

From: kwasi boakye-akyeampong [mailto:kboakye1 at yahoo.co.uk] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 6:28 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Suresh Ramasubramanian
Subject: Re: [governance] How do we engender effective participation from
developing countries (Africa)?

 

Suresh writes:

"Or find some way to actually mentor fellows from the start to finish - so
that they can be drawn into the process. And improve fellowship selection
so that finding quality people from a particular location takes priority
over the usual CS catchphrases like "inclusive"."

And I coundn't agree more with him. He was trying to make a point by
suggesting hosting events in some remote and obscure place. That may be less
attractive to those who don't really mean business.

 

I'm not sure how it's going to be done but I believe strengthening regional
structures is one possible solution. That way selection of participants for
global CS/ IG related events will come from the regions themselves but not
from a panel who may not have an idea who those they are selecting are and
their motives for participation. Participants will then be made accountable
to their respective regions.

 

Kwasi



 

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