Background:
Poor infrastructure, low bandwidth and related access barriers notwithstanding, the Internet is democratizing access to information and civic participation in Africa. Access to digital content has improved in Africa's education, training and research institutions (Walker 2005, Muinde 2004). Internet in many African countries is associated with institutions of higher learning having served as springboards for diffusion of the technology (Walker 2005). African universities remain important venues and test beds for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) initiatives and Internet-related policy debates, content inclusive. Initially Internet initiatives focused on infrastructure but not content despite the critical shortage of reference and research materials in institutional libraries. A holistic approach would cover both content and infrastructure.
While content is the main focus for this study, I acknowledge infrastructure is a prerequisite to content availability and accessibility. Internet infrastructure rollout in Africa has enabled electronic-content (e-content) initiatives. Consequently, African scholarship in local and 'western' outlets is increasingly accessible to African and foreign scholars deconstructing Africa as net consumer and not producer of knowledge. Closely related to accessibility of Africa's knowledge in the global knowledge flows is the question of representation and control. Copyright in electronic environment best illustrates this 'politics of information' which impacts accessibility but also distorts Africa's knowledge production and position in the global knowledge flows. Firstly, as an economic control mechanism copyright limits, or hinders, content availability and accessibility. In the Africa context, copyright then marginalizes the poor majority. Secondly, copyright with its western cultural constructs when applied to Africa's historically oral and communal context distorts culturally embedded systems of knowledge ownership and control leaving Africa disempowered and marginalized in the global knowledge flows.
Knowledge availability and accessibility in Africa's educational and research settings goes beyond general knowledge to availability of African knowledge and scholarship. In approaching access to electronic resources and impact of copyright on access in specific institutional frameworks, this study acknowledges and attempts to account for the disproportional representation of African knowledge in the global knowledge flows and how contemporary copyright discourse contributes to the inequality. The study revisits the copyright debate in the attempt to curve out an 'African' niche in what seems a settled debate. We question the notion of Africa as a net consumer rather than producer of knowledge and how western knowledge systems such as electronic databases are venues for distorting Africa's knowledge potential. Reference and research databases used in Ugandan education and research institutions are sites for knowledge control and representation.
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