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"Senegal is one of West Africa's leaders in telecom infrastructure. But, with an Internet penetration rate of barely 16%, you have to wonder if online information resources and social media can make a difference in February 26th's presidential election.\r\n\r\nSenegal's penetration rate for fixed phones is less than 3%. For mobile, it's 80%. A little more than half of all internet connections are over 3G. 650,000 Senegalese \u2013 5% of the total population \u2013 are on Facebook, which represents more than 70% of the online population. 85,000 more joined in the last six months.\r\n\r\nThese numbers were given to me by Olivier Sagna, the founder of Osiris.sn, l'Observatoire sur les Syst\u00E8mes d\u2019Information, les R\u00E9seaux et les Inforoutes au S\u00E9n\u00E9gal (Observatory on Information Systems, Networks and Information Highways in Senegal).\r\n\r\nOne of the first watchgroups of this kind, it's the most complete independent source of information on ICTs that I've seen in Africa. It's even more remarkable as an innovation, because it dates back to 1998 and continues to become increasingly useful. Sagna, a historian of education and archivist, is \u201Cdefinitely not an IT guy.\u201D\r\n\u201CThe most important word in 'information society' is 'society,'\u201D he says. He wants to be civil society's \u201Csentinel\u201D for everything concerning ICT. To better succeed, he gambled before many on a \u201Cmulti-actor\u201D site, which counts on the participation of public and private sectors, media and universities. \u201CWe're anything but neutral. We're for open source, Creative Commons, open access, volunteerism\u2026 all that.\u201D So, he says, \u201Cinstead of our computers being in the cloud, let's put them in our savannas. We need to build the infrastructure and exercise a certain sovereignty over it.\u201D\r\nDuring an interview in Dakar last October, Sagna told me that Senegal was succeeding better than its neighbors, \u201Cthanks to a well-managed public telecom operator\u201D and quality human resources.\r\nSome people have tried to give a good part of the credit to Orange, the French telecom operator that owns 42% of Sonatel, the main Senegalese provider.\r\nBut if the infrastructure is pretty good, the colonial heritage has a fairly negative effect on innovation. There's less dynamism than in countries under Anglo-Saxon influence. \u201CWe inherited Colbertism; they're more pragmatic,\u201D Sagna says with a regret I've seen elsewhere. \u201CWe have to get beyond the fact that everything is prohibited. This takes time to set up,\u201D he says.\r\n\r\nFebruary 26th's campaign has seen notable advances. With no Internet presence during the last election, the major candidates this time around have a web site and Facebook page. Some even blog and post YouTube videos.\r\nThe most well-known citizen initiative is S\u00E9n\u00E9gal2012 and its Facebook page. It is useful for the diaspora and for younger mobile users.\r\nInformation accessible on the Internet plays \u201Can important, but not decisive\u201D role. In an email he sent me this week, Sagna says that \u201Csocial networks don't play a determinant role in mobilizing Senegalese citizens. Political messaging is done via radio, private TV stations, and mobile phone. On the other hand, social networks play an important role as an inexpensive addition to news provided by the independent press, which lacks the means to have people everywhere. This helps relay and amplify the information that only a minority can access on the web.\u201D It's an alliance that we've already seen at work elsewhere...\r\nRead all of Francis Pisani\u2019s posts\u00A0here on The Next Web.\r\nKirsz Marcin\u00A0via shutterstock"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/africa/2012/02/24/will-social-media-influence-senegals-presidential-election/>