TECHNOLOGY-AFRICA: Frustration in the Information Age

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

MBABANE, Jan 30 2002 (IPS) - Unreliable, outdated or non-existent data is a prescription for frustration in the Information Age, and is one reason why poor developing countries like the Kingdom of Swaziland are regressing rather than progressing with efforts of social upliftment.

From the number of people suffering from AIDS to the per capita consumption of beer, statistics that determine government policy, donor funding and even the placement of irrigation pipes is faulty or unavailable.

“What we do is a lot of guess work,” says Norman Constantine, a field worker with a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that funds micro projects like small-scale agriculture schemes. “The expression goes, ‘Garbage in, garbage out.’ If we calculate on the basis of imprecise data, like how many communities will be served by an irrigation project, we end up with a project that may fail.”

In the absence of reliable data, Constantine says “anecdotal data”, relying on estimates made by people who are familiar with an area or topic, must suffice.

“Even projections done on a super computer can be an art more than a science, so we do the best we can with the little empirical data there is to go by,” he says.

Charles Simelane, a writer whose work appears in a local opinion magazine, says, “Information is power. Those who possess it in a non-democratic state, or even in some of Africa’s democratic states, tend to hoard it for their own political ends.”

“Statistics often determine where money goes, where infrastructure projects are built, and where government projects are placed,” he says. “There is a vested interest in some ministries not to make information available to the public, because armed with data, the public may become self-reliant.”

The unreliability of data in Swaziland is typical of many African countries, and is primarily a result of a developing country’s poverty. Tucked away in a temporary structure behind the Ministry of Economic Planning of which it is a part, the Bureau of Statistics is short on computers, staff, and telephone lines, most of which only sporadically function.

Privately, the government statisticians at work in cubicles lament that an information network has not been set up to bring a steady stream of data on every subject from consumer spending habits to health matters.

“For the number of tourists who visit, we rely on the hotels and the game parks, which is imprecise because tourists go elsewhere. We have to contact car dealerships for statistics on vehicle sales, and the hospitals for information allowing us to detect trends in sicknesses,” a statistician with the Central Bank of Swaziland says.

No public opinion polls are conducted in Swaziland, partly because the economy is too small for businesses to concern themselves with marketing strategy, and partly because political parties are banned.

“Government leaders do not have to worry about re-election, so they need not concern themselves with what a voter might think about their performance, or what people want out of government,” says Phineas Magagula, president of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers.

Magagula complains that imperfect statistics from the Ministry of Education make it difficult for schools to perform routine matters like knowing how many textbooks to order for students.

Unreliable statistics make economic and health planning difficult. AIDS is known to be widespread in Swaziland. Yet, how many people are affected? The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) conducted a survey that found one-third of the population is infected with the HIV virus that leads to AIDS.

Extrapolating from its data, UNICEF predicts that 35,000 children will be orphaned each year when both parents succumb to AIDS, a high figure in a population of less than one million. (Swaziland’s population figure of 976,000 is one statistic considered reliable; the result of a thorough 1997 government census.)

But the health ministry disputes the figure, and has said 20.5 percent of Swazis are HIV-positive. Critics of the health minister, whom they say is not doing enough to stop the spread of AIDS, point out that the ministry does not justify its figure on the basis of any survey.

“The minister’s low HIV figure was put out to make her look good, or at least less bad than the disaster of one out of three Swazis having HIV,” says a nurse at a clinic at the Matsapha industrial site. She believes the higher UN figure.

Politics also affects economic statistics. In his most recent budget speech to Parliament, finance minister Majozi Simelane put nationwide unemployment at 45 percent. But he was contradicted by the ministry of economic planning, which put out a drastically lower 12 percent unemployment figure that goes beyond the formal employment sector, and incorporates casual workers from the informal sector, such as car washers and street vendors.

“The low employment figure is all smoke and mirrors,” says Jan Sithole, secretary general of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions.

“People in the informal sector do not earn enough to survive, they have no pensions or health plans, and they should not be considered ’employed’ just to make government’s employment policy seem like it is working,” he says.

“Without statistics on which to base planning and policy making, decisions are made by leadership on the basis of whim and their personal prejudices,” says Ben Dlamini, recently retired as head of the school exams council.

Despite the guess work that now goes on in place of criteria informed by data, there is agreement in government and the private sector that data collection will inevitably improve.

“Just out of inertia, the number of computers in the country is growing. The Internet has been around for six years, and the Information Age will continue to impose its demands for information about everything,” says Lachezar Karadjov, president of the Mbabane Internet server Real Image.