Modern technologies pivotal in African parliaments

Lazarus Sauti

Thomas Hughes, executive director of Article 19, an organisation with a specific focus on the promotion of freedom of information, says quality, current and accessible information is crucial to establishing the scope and nature of development challenges faced by any country.

He also believes that this information empowers people to hold their leaders accountable and to effectively participate in decisions that affect them.

Quality information, adds Hughes, plays a vital role in safeguarding development and it makes the right of access to information a fundamental and universal human right.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

This right to receive and impart information takes in freedom to access parliamentary proceedings because parliamentary information belongs to the public.

Sadly, Africans are not able to receive parliament information because of many reasons, chief among them being lack of investment in modern technologies and digital platforms.

Only Zambia, South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe are taking action in ensuring live broadcasting of parliamentary proceedings in the Southern African Development Community region.

This is despite the fact that the value of broadcasting and live streaming is recognised by the SADC-Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF), a regional inter-parliamentary body composed of members of parliament from SADC member states, representing over 3 500 parliamentarians in the SADC Region.

“Through broadcasts of plenary and committee meetings, citizens shall have access to parliamentary business using multi-media including the Internet, and live television and radio,” notes SADC-PF.

Zambia started radio broadcasts around 2006 and later went into live television broadcasts on a trial basis.

However, the latter ran into financial challenges, resulting in halting of the pilot run recently.

South Africa has both radio and television airing; the Botswana parliament passed a motion to do the same in July 2013; and recently Zimbabwe joined the crusade in broadcasting live parliamentary proceedings.

However, little is being done to provide live streaming of parliamentary proceedings.

In this era of technological advancements, African parliaments must embrace modern technologies to stream live parliamentary proceedings and to enable a culture of parliamentary openness.

Streaming live parliamentary proceedings allows inclusive citizen participation in issues to do with national development, and this will also enhance effective policy formulation.

Furthermore, embracing digital platforms to broadcast live parliament debates can help members of parliament to behave, remain awake and make meaningful contributions to debates because they know every detail is being captured and aired.

A United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation supported survey by the Commonwealth Broadcasters Association notes, “Members of parliament are aware of the fact that they are constantly being watched by their electorate and tend to play a more alive role in the proceedings of the House, which benefits the functioning of the legislature.”

The same survey further states, “Live parliamentary broadcasts ensure accountability of elected representatives…and also live transmission brings on an awareness among the people on how the legislature is dealing with issues pertaining to public and national interest.”

Veneranda Langa, a senior Parliamentary reporter with a Zimbabwean daily newspaper, agrees and says digital communication is pivotal for parliaments and other governments as they are responsible for the day-to-day running of their countries.

“People are interested in knowing how the country is governed and such institutions like parliaments which play the legislative, oversight and representative roles should be very accessible to the people, especially through online communication like the Internet and social networks, for example Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp,” she says.

Thus, efforts should be made to provide citizens with real-time and on-demand archival access to parliamentary proceedings through radio, television and the Internet.

This means parliaments in Africa must invest heavily in modern technologies to ensure effective communication with citizens and to encourage high quality debates.

They should make use of websites and blogs in order to expand the reach and impact of key events, meetings and messages, and to enable communication with citizens even in societies with limited Internet penetration.

Brian D Anderson, Reference Librarian and Assistant Professor, Ohio Northern University, says: “Websites should carry parliament information in multiple local and working languages, and the information should be released in open and structured formats that allow citizens to analyse and reuse it using the full range of technology tools.”

Anderson goes on to say, “Parliamentary websites should further seek to use interactive tools to engage citizens and offer alert or mobile services since parliament has a duty to ensure technological usability of parliamentary information, while guaranteeing the privacy for those accessing the information.”

African parliaments should also create public-private partnerships with radio and television stations and online companies to cover both plenary sessions and committee hearings live.

To further extend availability to citizens, these broadcasts should be available throughout the country at regional resource centers.

Without doubt, modern technologies and digital platforms present an opportunity to provide value-added information services and access to a wide variety of digital based information resources to people.

Therefore, African parliaments must embrace them for effective handling and dissemination of parliament information.