W3C launches first sub-saharan office at Meraka Institute

The first sub-Saharan African office of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was launched at the Meraka Institute on 14 May 2007. The launch workshop was attended by a broad spectrum of representatives from government, industry and academia and included delegates from South Africa, Botswana, France and Australia. It hosted a number of prestigious speakers including: Dr Daniel Dardailler, W3C associate chairman; Dr Danie Smit, SAP Research SA; Professor Johannes Cronje, University of Pretoria; Phil Hendriks, executive director for national research centres at the CSIR; Kagiso Chikane, Meraka centre manager; Kobus Roux of the Meraka Institute Wireless Africa and Stephane Boyera, W3C team contact for the Mobile Web Initiative.

In this article, Dr Quentin Williams shares information on W3C and his view of the launch.

The W3C is an international consortium which determines the future evolution of the web by developing protocols, standards and guidelines to ensure long term growth, and to maintain its global relevance in the future information society. It brings together over 400 member organisations that include important global IT players like IBM, Microsoft, Nokia, Yahoo and Google, as well as full time staff. The public is called upon to participate in a vendor neutral consortium for the creation of web standards that are fair, robust and accommodate the global diversity of people, hardware and software. W3C was founded by Sir Tim Berner-Lee, inventor of the WWW and director of the W3C.

One of the long-term goals of W3C is to promote technologies that enable a more collaborative environment and that ultimately makes the web a useful medium for social transactions. As the W3C explains on its website: “The social value of the web is that it enables human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C's primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.” In other words, a web for everyone, and available from any device, whether simplistic or complex, or any user, whether in the USA or Africa.

These goals add to the importance of a regional Southern Africa W3C office (www.w3c.org.za), for Africa and the international community. The speakers at the launch event articulated the fact that for long the information society, and particularly the internet, has raced ahead without African participation, which means that the needs of Africans have not always been considered when technologies were designed. Dr Danie Smit highlighted that African ICT companies needed to be active in global fora like the W3C to benefit from and influence innovations in technology leading to the next generation of the world wide web. This is a requirement for making an impact on the global stage, addressing the tremendous needs that exist and realising the vast business opportunities in Africa. He continued that success can only be achieved if the CSIR tackles the problem while taking cognisance of African conditions and its uniqueness. Professor Johannes Cronje took this further and said that while Europe brought the world philosophy, the West brought practicality and the East manufacturing. It is Africa, however, with its community-driven approach, that is able to bring the human issues to the forefront, focusing on the usability and usefulness of technology.

The regional W3C office will act as a relay between local stakeholders and the international community, ensuring that African requirements and expertise are put on the international agenda, that the region is included in future technology or standard development, and provides a platform for rubbing shoulders with global technology leaders. The Meraka Institute, with its partners, has found tremendous value in projects integral to the work of the W3C, such as web accessibility on the National Accessibility Portal project. Other key areas of W3C activity relevant to the African context include the mobile web initiative, especially considering that there are 30 million subscribers in South Africa alone; human language technologies and the semantic web.

The second aspect emphasised at the launch was that a Southern Africa office will help local stakeholders to gain an insight into market and research trends. This will allow stakeholders from government, business and academia to track development of emerging technologies, markets, and priorities and directly liaise with the other member organisations. These include major international companies like Google and eminent institutions like MIT.

It was evident at the launch that local and international partnerships are critical if Africa is to make an impact on the international community.

On the technology front, South Africa leads in many areas. These include mobile banking, mobile information access, digital media delivery and remote healthcare solutions. The W3C office will allow local stakeholders to participate in working groups that further address these, and will afford them the opportunity to determine strategic direction in fields that are close to their business interests. Other activities include participation in and hosting of W3C workshops, seminars and review of W3C policies and standards.

The establishment of the Southern African W3C office was initiated by Hina Patel, designation, and is being headed by Dr Quentin Williams, supported by Martin Pistorius, all from the Meraka Institute.

For more info please see:
The Meraka Institute: www.meraka.org.za
The W3C: www.w3c.org
The W3C Southern Africa office: www.w3c.org.za