I got home June 3rd, but I hadn't written anything about the remainder of my trip to Senegal. I try to revisit now in my mind, before memories become more dilute.

I had worked very hard on the presentation, and then taken a break and ended up in the suburbs, with an interesting journey back to Dakar centre, as told earlier. I shift verb tenses willy-nilly, and I am sorry about that. I need a coruse in travel-writing, I think.

During that week, the team from the States arrive. I am at Hotel Nina on my tiny laptop, wearing a bright orange scarf like a bandana or turban, which came with the sunscreen I bought and I am using to protect my head from the sun. This is how I introduce myself to the head of MERLOT, who I recognize instantly from pictures as he enters the hotel. Moustapha Diack, who I've been collaborating with for a year comes in shortly after. It's the first time we met in person!! Moustapha has been the train conductor and much of the engine for the Pan-African Forum on OA and OER, and he still has a million things to do. I have been trying to edit down my presentation to 10-15 slides, and figure out how we will do the thing together in French and English.

By Wednesday night, I still have work to do on the presentation. Two Canadians arrive who run Markbook, a software for teachers, one lives in the States. We welcome them at Nina, and have a meal together. I move from the dining area to the bar, and excuse myself from a pleasant convo to continue the presentation editing and revising.

I had arranged to meet with Mous at 6:30 am Thursday, the day of the presentation, to go over it. I had finished after midnight Wednesday, tried to sleep but didn't succeed and arrived at Nina early. The pres was reduced from nearly 40 slides to 15 including intro and conclusion. It was completely bilingual, or occassionally favors French text, and text is minimal. It was as strong as it could be. Mous and I have agreed to treat the collaboration like Jazz imporov, I will speak mostly English and he will speak French.

We arrive with the full team to UCAD at the newer building with a very large auditorium. The architecture seems brilliantly designed to cool the outdoor corridors naturally with the way the wind comes through them. Students seem to study by sitting or pacing outside with their study notes, with a lot of focus!! We get a decent turnout, including some high school classes, UCAD students and Faculty, and some guests who will be honoured later with awards such as ERNWACA-ROCARE . I meet the Rector of UCAD and other dignitaries.

Mine is the first presentation. Mous is really the energizer of the Forum however, and it plays out perfectly as a mix of academia with a panel structure of presentations based in research and theory, and a more vibrant and interactive, and spontaneous, conversational delivery led by Mous - more African maybe! I prepare my opening remarks to make sure the audience hears of Mous' achievements of late - Educator of the Year, completing his tenure as President of Louisiana Academy of Sciences, first in history of African descent. I mention there are too many others that it would take up my whole presentation, and that he is the driver of this forum, and one of those people who make the world go round (like the Stylistics song, but no one got the reference!).

In my presentation, I try to demonstrate that we are in a period of change in the university sector, and that change is driven by communications, the new technologies of the communications revolution - ICTs. The change in technology requires new investment in infrastructure, but it also has provoked policy change with regard to what is perhaps the universities' most significant inputs - research and curriculur materials, and I try to demonstrate the scope of this change in terms of what becomes available without charge, but with internet connection.

However, materials themselves don't appear to be sufficient, and universities can make the greatest gains in knowledge development through partnership. International Partnership of course can evolve a great many new dimensions when the geographic distances are made less relevant, again by communication technology. Finally the greatest gain, are where the access and the technology lend themselves to greater production, creativity, innovation and power in the hands of students and Faculty of the institutions of the South, and where this translates to gains in human development through the impact of knowledge development and dissemination on human development. The communicative space of the internet in the context of these policy changes, is one where the greatest gains come from the not new, but revisited paradigm of openness.

We try to present a basic theory of the significance of this change for universities in the South, and by virtue of their position, development in the South. This we call the Development Equation. We have posited five fingers to this approach, but as you can see below, we really had four pillars. Very recently, I had suggested the fifth as Openness itself, influenced by Matthew Smith's article Open ICT4D. I had the chance to speak with Matthew just before leaving for Senegal.

ICTs necessary but not sufficient for access to research and teaching materials.
A2K - open access and open educational resources necessary but not sufficient for development of learning and knowledge
K4D - development of learning and knowledge necessary but not sufficient for human development
NPs - networked partnerships facilitate translation of knowledge to development
0? - openness - universal/unrestricted (open access, open source etc.) places emphasis on removing the barriers to communication, production and sharing of knowledge distributing the 'power of knowledge' more equitably, as opposed to benificient development that allows the barriers to remain with the expectation that the wealthy will continue to 'make concessions' by controlling the way info is passe over these barriers to the info-poor (our current model that ignores to our peril how much the 'info-wealthy' stand to lose from these barriers).

So what is sufficient, is really if this translates into participation opportunity in knowledge development and how knowledge is used for development, authentic self-determination in development, that people have power to change their own circumstances and to bring about political change in their societies(and when the work is done they say 'we did it all by ourselves'-Tao Te Ching).

Ok, so that's that! The presentation was fairly well-received, though there is never enough time and Mous jumped in half way through to redirect in his way of speaking very spontaneously to the audience! I still need to revise it so I can publish it, I need to add my reference list which I didn't complete in time for the live show. A guy from the UN requested a copy, so I need to get on that.

After the pres, I get to relax, right? No! I am still full-time sort of, with my research internship back home. I got an email the day before the pres, saying I have two assignments overdue! oops. Very difficult to maintian these foci. Anyway, I did what I could for the intership job but I needed to fulfill my second objective for coming here and experience the music of Dakar.

I'm going to have to split this up, therefore, and reserve my last blog for the journey I took in my last few days in Dakar. Quite an adventure. I played with a reggae band, visited Isle Goree, discovered the going rate for sex work (without partaking) and went to one of Dakar's best music clubs, but that's just the itenerary. It was pretty wild, so I'll try to get it down soon.

arif