And in these programmes you may involve teachers, but please have them run by universities and technical staff. If education in general does not move from lesson-bound software towards developing overlays on powerful generic bases, and integrating telematics, industry may determine future curricula. Concentrate on a top down approach, starting with a telematics philosophy and infrastructure, through training, working down to providing computers in classrooms. But choosing to speak for just a couple of minutes, his points went home to the gathering. He pointed out that 90 per cent of journalists operating in the continent can't even afford a computer.
People have to understand that democratising information is about access.
First of all, he noted, technology is no longer an obstacle in trade development. What's needed is a point of convergence between active projects, five or ten years down the line. Coordination through action takes place that way. And the system has been adopted in 69 countries. He told of how, at a high-level meeting last year of the Global Trade Point Initiative, one videoconference described how one small enterprise of 35 Colombian women reached markets in Switzerland, the US, Britain and France and was awarded the prize for best performance of 1994.