This is the twelfth conversation of the 100+ Conversations to Inspire Our New Direction (#OKFN100) project.

Since 2023, we are meeting with more than 100 people to discuss the future of open knowledge, shaped by a diverse set of visions from artists, activists, scholars, archivists, thinkers, policymakers, data scientists, educators, and community leaders from everywhere.

The Open Knowledge Foundation team wants to identify and discuss issues sensitive to our movement and use this effort to constantly shape our actions and business strategies to deliver best what the community expects of us and our network, a pioneering organisation that has been defining the standards of the open movement for two decades.

Another goal is to include the perspectives of people of diverse backgrounds, especially those from marginalised communities, dissident identities, and whose geographic location is outside of the world’s major financial powers.

How can openness accelerate and strengthen the struggles against the complex challenges of our time? This is the key question behind conversations like the one you can read below.

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This time we did something different, a collective conversation. We were lucky enough to bring together several members of the Open Knowledge Network to discuss the current context, opportunities and challenges for open knowledge in Francophone Africa.

The conversation took place online in French on 19 June 2024, with the participation of Teg-wende Idriss Tinto (Burkina Faso), Ivan Kibangou Ngoy (Congo), Narcisse Mbunzama (DRC), moderated by Sara Petti, International Network Lead, Project and Community Manager at OKFN.

One of the important contexts of this conversation is precisely Narcisse’s incorporation as regional coordinator of the Network’s Francophone Africa Hub. With this piece of content, we also aim to facilitate regional integration and find common points of collaboration for shared work within the Network. 

We hope you enjoy reading it.

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Teg-wende Idriss Tinto: My name is Tinto and I work in an association called Open Burkina and I’m a member of the Communauté d’Afrique Francophone sur les Données Ouvertes (CAFDO), which was co-founded in 2007. Before all that, I worked on open data in public administration as technical director from 2015 to 2020.

I have a lot of experience and a great interest in open knowledge. That’s why I joined the Open Knowledge Network in 2013.

Ivan Kibangou Ngoy: My name is Ivan Kibangou. I’m based in the Republic of Congo, in Brazzaville. I have been a member of the Open Knowledge Network since last year, and I am just starting to work on open data. Since last year, I’ve been part of a consortium that, with the support of the World Bank, is supporting the government in an open government project with the Open Government Partnership. The consortium includes 10 civil society organisations and all the representatives of our country’s government ministries. It’s a very promising project, and I believe that the experience I’m going to draw from our Network will enable me to be much more effective.

Narcisse Mbunzama: My name is Narcisse Mbunzama. I work in the field of open data in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in Kinshasa. I have been leading the DRC’s Open Data Initiative since 2009. We lobby the government to adopt an open approach. I’m also active in open government and budget transparency projects. 

I see this prototype programme as an opportunity to raise awareness, mobilise and reach out to organisations and activists in Francophone Africa, given that the region very often lags behind when it comes to open knowledge. Through greater cooperation at regional level, we can perhaps have more impact and achieve our objectives.

Perhaps we can start there, by the way: what is the status of open knowledge in Francophone Africa in your opinion? Where do we stand today in the region?

Ivan Kibangou Ngoy: The concept of open knowledge is something that has just come to us. It is a requirement that has been imposed on our governments by international organisations. The commitment of civil society in Congo Brazzaville, for example, is not as dynamic as in other countries, in West Africa, for example. 

Open data is a relatively new concept for our civil society, and I think it’s a great opportunity to lobby governments to put into practice what they have committed to do in international treaties. We lobbied, for example, for all the country’s ministries to set up a website to give citizens access to information. Our constitution states that every citizen has the right to be informed. The sites have been created, and that’s already a done deal, but now they need to be kept up to date.  There is a willingness to support governments in this process, but unfortunately we are up against dictatorial regimes that are certainly not committed to transparency. There’s a long way to go.

Narcisse Mbunzama: We can see that in Francophone African countries there are not many activities linked to open knowledge. There are of course countries that are very active, such as Burkina Faso, Senegal, Togo and Cameroon, but when you look at Central Africa, for example, there is virtually no activity.

In addition to this disparity between countries in the region, there is also a huge disparity between large cities and isolated rural areas, where the very concept of open knowledge is not widespread. 

One point that seems important to me is that there is a correlation between a country’s democratic situation and the way it promotes transparency and open data. As Ivan said earlier, dictatorial regimes will have no desire for transparency and will manage resources in an opaque way. We have no access to any data on state revenues from the sale of oil and other raw materials to foreign countries, for example. And as this money forms part of the budget that is then used to fund education, health, etc., we have no information on that either. The total lack of information is certainly one of the causes of the limited interest in open knowledge on the part of civil society. 

Then there’s a fear too: trying to find out how much a state spends on the public good can be considered a breach of national security in some countries, so it can be very dangerous. 

On top of all that, there’s a linguistic observation to be made: the Anglophone countries of Africa are much more active than the Francophone countries. Why is this? Firstly, there’s a language barrier: many people don’t speak English and therefore don’t have access to all the material, websites and information, most of which is published in English.

But there is also a barrier linked to resources and access to funding. It’s very difficult to find funding for open knowledge projects, because donors have very little interest in the Francophone countries of Africa, especially those in Central Africa. This really hampers the development of the open movement in Francophone Africa.

Teg-wende Idriss Tinto: There are disparities between Africa and the rest of the world, and there are disparities between Francophone Africa and Anglophone Africa, and this is due to many factors. We can discuss the factors for a very long time, but I think that even in the United States, when Obama started talking about opening up the government in 2009, there wasn’t immediate global support. We had to work hard to mobilise the players and build their confidence. We need to change the way we see our work, and show how digital technology and transparency can help government. 

I’d also like to come back to the concept of the language barrier that Narcisse mentioned. The concept of open knowledge was born in an Anglophone environment, so the production of material, documentation and research was mainly in English. When we started work on the open data portal in Burkina Faso in 2014, we spent a very long time looking for French-speaking technical support, but there was none available. Even though things are improving, it is still very difficult to find documentation or technical support in French today. 

But it’s very important to have access to material that allows you to go further. Most of the material we share today when we run awareness campaigns is in English, which creates a barrier for those who are trying to go deeper and explore the subject, because of a language they don’t master, they will consider that the concept is also far from them. 

There are also many disparities in Francophone Africa. As Ivan and Narcisse mentioned, it seems that West African countries are much more dynamic than Central African countries. It would be interesting to understand the reasons for these disparities with a study, so that we can understand how to erase them.

In any case, I find that when there are disparities like these, it’s very easy to fall into a vicious circle: you’re going to try to establish cooperation with organisations in these countries that are less active, but first of all it’s going to be difficult to find partners, and then, because there’s no internal dynamic, there’s going to be insecurity linked to investment, so you’re not going to invest, but without investment it’s very difficult for this internal dynamic, this activism, to be created. 

I experienced this during a participatory mapping project, in which we were looking for a partner in the Central African Republic to redistribute funds. We tried for months to identify focal points, but we didn’t succeed. 

Ivan Kibangou Ngoy: For me, listening to the others reinforces my conviction that open data is the basis of everything, whether it’s issues relating to human rights, democracy, community development or climate change, open data is essential.

Opening up data is a way of reducing the desire for theft and corruption on the part of those in power. I believe that this is an opportunity for us: we need to convince the donors who support the fight against corruption, sustainable development and the defence of human rights that financing the opening up of data is a way of achieving their goal. It’s a bit like the idea of open knowledge as a design principle.

Teg-wende Idriss Tinto: I’m going to share our experience at Open Burkina. At the beginning, we worked a lot on openness for citizen monitoring, focusing on how open knowledge can improve transparency, the fight against corruption and ultimately help build stronger democracies.

But for some time now, since 2020, we have changed our approach a little. Good governance is of course still an aspect of our work, but we have changed the messages of our advocacy a little, focusing instead on the fact that opening up data enables the country and the public administration to be more effective. 

The argument of openness as a principle of good democracy is a valid argument, it’s indisputable, but very often it’s an argument that doesn’t move political decision-makers in our region. 

It’s also extremely important to note that it’s very difficult to mobilise partners to support transparency projects if the government doesn’t want them. Particularly when it comes to bilateral or multilateral cooperation, partners will always try to avoid being seen as the ones imposing what is good for the country and steering it in a certain direction. Instead, they will follow the government of the day.

Given this, our approach now is to promote openness in another way: by providing support for projects that are already secure. For example, we are going to propose open data components in anti-corruption projects. When the organisations see the positive effects, it is they themselves who will then apply for funding for this from traditional donors, or integrate open data into their future anti-corruption projects, because they have seen that it works.

In Burkina Faso, there are many civil society organisations that monitor public policies. They don’t necessarily use digital technology to do this, but rather conduct surveys. What we at Open Burkina can do to help them is to use our expertise to add a digital layer, or an open data layer, to their projects, and to raise awareness among the players to integrate this into their processes. In this way, we can indirectly finance open data projects and raise awareness in civil society of the importance of openness and transparency.

There are major global players like the World Bank, for example, which set aside a budget for citizen monitoring of each project they finance. We need to convince them that making data available to the public will enable them to question their projects, public procurement contracts or specific local organisations, and so get feedback that will enable a citizen evaluation to be carried out alongside the official evaluation. Opening up data creates added value in projects. We need to integrate this approach, make it an essential component of every project funded, and devote a small percentage of the budget to it internally. They did this for HIV at one point, can we do the same for open knowledge?

Opening up data can be useful for a huge number of things, it’s just a question of asking ourselves how we can use this approach to improve an existing service. A case in point? We have a national structure in Burkina Faso that collects data on product prices from all markets nationwide. Whatever the market in any village, they can give you the price of maize on a given date. There are times when certain products become very expensive, for example when tomatoes are practically unobtainable. But if the data were accessible, we could easily imagine creating, in partnership with other players, prediction models to manage food stocks. That would be very useful!

Ivan Kibangou Ngoy: Thank you, Tinto, for that speech. So I’m wondering: what can we start doing without funding in order to attract the attention of the major donors and position ourselves as experts? What are the next steps for us in Francophone Africa? How can we get organised?

Teg-wende Idriss Tinto: In my opinion, we need to develop a programme of champions. They are the ones who will fight on the ground and create change at local level, while creating a range of use cases and good practices that we can show to prove that it works. We must avoid the international trap. If you spend your time travelling to one international conference after another, of course you’ll gain in personal expertise, but you won’t have changed anything locally. I’m convinced that change happens at local level. Even in a small reality, you have to start changing things where you are and be able to show the change.

Narcisse Mbunzama: I totally agree with the idea of a programme of champions: I think it would also be very interesting to understand how to build more synergies and encourage exchanges between the countries of Francophone Africa. We are currently mapping the open ecosystem in the region, in the hope that this will facilitate exchanges. We’ll tell you more in August.

Well, it would be great to continue this discussion beyond today, but unfortunately we’re running out of time. Thank you all for your participation.