World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) – Culture and ICTs in sustainable development

Dr Jenny Mbaye participated in a panel on ‘Culture and ICTs as drivers of sustainable development’ organised by UNESCO on May 28th at the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva. The objectives of this panel were to demonstrate how with the active participation of government, academic and civil society partners, as well as local communities, ICTs applied to the cultural and creative sectors have the potential to contribute to more effective and sustaiable development policies that can yield enhanced, inclusive and equitable development outcomes.

Jenny focused her contribution on examples from African contexts on the social dimension of the cultural economy, while reminding the persistent challenges regarding both creative (digital and cultural) entrepreneurhsip in such contexts. References were made to the internet-product of the Senegalese rapped TV news (JTR) that was appropriated by national TV broadcasting and then transformed into a live production touring internationally; as well as to the innovative social media/mobile airtime crowdfunding initiated by the Cameroonian filmmaker, Narcisse Wandji.

The webcast of the panel is accessible here: https://www.itu.int/net4/wsis/forum/2015/Agenda/Webcast/Archive