Overcome the digital divide - eScience concepts in Northern Africa - an example from Morocco

Ralf Löwner¹, Abdellatif Souhel²

¹ GeoschungsZentrum Potsdam, 14473 Potsdam, Germany

loewner@gfz-potsdam.de

²Université Chouaïb Doukkali, Faculté des Sciences, El Jadida, Morocco

Internet is revolutionizing the technical and economic conditions of human knowledge management and became the most important tool for data and information exchange. In Morocco, as in a lot of other African countries, the “Digital Divide” between Africa and Europe is remarkable and mainly due to the bad conditions of the infrastructure of information but not less to a deficiency in media skills as a result of limited use of information technology and a lack of trainee possibilities especially for students, not forgetting the traditional methods of teaching that have to be revised. Many qualified scientific studies and research projects are realized in Morocco each year, but their results remain dispersed and unexploited.

A first step to bridge the Digital divide was done by a “bottom up” approach: in a locally delimited area, the Sahel-Doukkala region, a “geoinformatic knowledge pool” was created, based on new technologies, especially Internet.

Between 2004 and 2005, the SaDIN (Sahel-Doukkala Scientific Information Network) project was undertaken in the centre of the Chouaïb Doukkali University, El Jadida (Morocco), with the contribution of the LIFE – THIRD Countries financial instrument of the European Community. This project was performed in collaboration between the Science Faculty of the Moroccan University, the Data Centre of the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (Germany) and the private enterprise smartcube ltd. (Germany), in order to provide a basis for any kind of environmental investigations, especially in the field of provision and protection of groundwater resources. The scientific objectives of this project focus on the evaluation of the potential of aquifers in the region, which supply an arid, yet increasingly densely populated area. These investigations are accompanied by an epidemiological study on the health situation of the local population, which would be seriously affected by groundwater pollution. Another main focus is based on environmental parameters, such as wildlife, vegetation and illegal waste dumps.

SaDIN realized a regional real-time geoinformation system with worldwide access via Internet and interdisciplinary dynamic content enabling the communication between scientists, technicians and policy makers. It is now a “knowledge pool” for the diffusion of information and of an information technology conform to European standards.

Starting from these locally restricted results, the implementation of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) in the Sahel Doukkala region and maybe in Morocco itself could be sparked. SaDIN could work as an internet based communication and information platform, which integrates all related disciplines and concerned parties, using a virtual infrastructure. Future work should concentrate on the development of this Spatial Data Infrastructure.

Keywords: Digital Divide, geoinformatic knowledge pool, Spatial Data Infrastructure

Acknowledgement

With the contribution of the LIFE financial instrument of the European Community

References

Web page of the project SaDIN: www.sadin.org

Web page of the Chouaïb Doukkali University: www.ucd.ac.ma

Web page of the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam: www.gfz-potsdam.de

Web page of Smartcube: www.smartcube.de