Policy Development

This summary is part of a research project carried out between March and October 2006 in support of the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), one of The Communication Initiative (The CI)'s partners.

This case study was part of a broad study launched by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC)'s Evaluation Unit in 2001 to determine if and how IDRC-supported research has influenced public policy. Dr. Zenda Ofir, who evaluated how Acacia South Africa projects have influenced policy in the country, conducted this study.

According to the study, the transition from an authoritarian apartheid rule to a democracy in the mid-1990s brought about the creation of new governance systems and policy frameworks in South Africa. Policy needed to reflect a new set of values, including transparency, a change in decision-making processes and a commitment to the development of the needs of the economically poor. The new Government of National Unity implemented the Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP), which necessitated the need for communication and information systems to support planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation activities. This helped to bring the need for ICT policy renewal to the forefront during the transition period.

The IDRC was one of the first international agencies to establish an office in South Africa during the transition to democracy, and one of the first to focus on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for development. The IDRC established the National Information and Communication Project (NICP) to support the government’s efforts at creating an enabling policy environment. According to Dr. Ofir, this project is considered one of IDRC’s most successful contributions to ICT policy in South Africa. “Mechanisms and activities that contributed to its policy influence included the appointment of knowledgeable and respected key IDRC advisers and staff who could provide technical expertise where required; the support of research studies that raised policy issues and informed policy process; the support and facilitation of, and participation in, policy formulation process; and the support and facilitation of meetings and forums where policymakers and representatives of various sectors could meet to discuss policy issues.”

The South African Acacia Advisory Committee (SAAAC) was created in 1999 to assist the IDRC’s Acacia programme. Acacia was aimed at determining the potential of ICT to empower economically poor African communities. The programme looked at a number of different models of community access through facilitating four areas of development: policy, infrastructure, tools and technologies and applications to stimulate demand at a community level. Cross-cutting issues that were reflected in the South African Acacia projects were gender, human resource development, technology research, social policy research, youth, and the Evaluation and Learning System (ELSA).

According to the study, IDRC had a significant policy influence during the early 1990s. The IDRC focus on the support of both policy formulation processes and content development provided scope for pioneering interventions that set the tone for policy formulation processes during the crucial first years of the democratic government.

Acacia - projects were implemented in four main areas:

• Policy (Examples of projects: South African Government Internet Policy; Broadcasting Policy; The Cybercity Project)
• Education/Schools (Examples of projects: National Survey of ICT Education in South African Schools; Regional School Networking Project; Empowering People’s Organizations with Internet Access; School Networks)
• Gender (Examples of projects: Support for the Women’s Net Information Strategy Team Workshop)
• Telecentres (Examples of projects: South African Telecenter Development Project - through the United States (USA); Pilot Telecenter Monitoring, Impact Assessment and Learning System - through the United States; Msundusi River Catchment Community Information and Communication Network; Workshop on Harnessing ICT for Tourism - Local Economic Development)

NICP - Although the IDRC was one of a number of role players in the ICT policy arena, key contributions highlighted the NICP role in influencing ICT policies and programmes. Among these are the national Position Paper at the Information Society and Development (ISAD) Conference, the parallel Helderfontein Workshop Empowering Communities in the Information Society and the National Telecommunications Policy Project (NTPP), which became a model for the subsequent development of White Papers due to the participatory nature and credibility of the policy formulation process.

The IDRC, through the NICP, is given credit for having promoted the concept of universal service. This helped to bring about a strong focus on universal service in the Telecommunications White Paper published in 1996, the establishment of the Universal Service Agency (USA), and national telecentre and Multipurpose Community Centre Programs (MCCPs).

SAAAC - Among the vast majority of the key informants, there was consensus that the SAAAC, during the 27 months of its operation, had not played a significant role in influencing ICT policy initiatives in South Africa. Its main instruments for dissemination of information on lessons learnt through Acacia were to be the ELSA studies and a project called Acacia: Disseminating the Fruits. The policy influence of the ELSA studies still need to be determined, as it is still too early to consider their possible impact.



IDRC positioned itself in partnership with many organisations in order to exert some policy influence. These included the National Government, academic and research institutions, labour unions, the private sector, the media, stakeholders, foreign governments, private donors and international organisations.

SAAAC - the SAAAC did not play a significant role in policy influence in the ICT sector. One reason for this was that the environment in which the SAAAC had to operate was complex, with many role players and a variety of policy agendas among stakeholders. Though the SAAAC was set up to coordinate national ICT-related development activities, the organisation did not pursue the issue of an overarching information society policy. There was also tension between Committee members’ belief in a more grassroots focus and IDRC’s promotion of a role in high-level advocacy and assistance with planning.

There are indications that the SAAAC had only limited engagement with gender issues and that the lack of a clearly articulated gender strategy in Acacia might have lessened the impact of both Acacia and the SAAAC in this respect.

The NCIP exerted substantial policy influence and is perceived as one of the IDRC’s most successful contributions to the ICT policy arena in South Africa.

Over the past decade, IDRC has been seen as a leading voice on gender and ICT for development in Africa, promoting gender-sensitive approaches to policies and projects.

A need remains to develop a sustained base of policy research expertise in South Africa, for example through the provision of a long-term, secure funding base to relevant academic or research centers rather than to individuals. This will help such centres to obtain sector results for policy implementation strategies through longitudinal, comparative long-term research studies that can assess whether models have failed or succeeded.

Dr. Ofir suggests that the IDRC could play an important role in creating awareness and in
improving understanding of the gender dimensions of development policies and projects.