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136 MEDIA POLICY AND GLOBALIZATION
Table 5.3 Major International organizations involved in policy-making for
the Information Society in the African continent
ECA
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
G7/8 Group of Seven / Group of Eight
GBD
Global Business Dialogue on electronic commerce
GIIC
Global Information Infrastructure Commission
ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers
IMF
International Monetary Fund
ITU
International Telecommunications Union
OECD
Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development
UNESCO
United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural
Organization
WB
World Bank
WEF
World Economic Forum
WIPO
World Intellectual Property Organization
WTO
World Trade Organization
identified by the North, such as agriculture and food security, education
and training, culture and tourism, gender and development (ECA 2003).
They point to the need for carefully planned policies in ICTs with the
aim of defining a course of action that is most suitable to the socioeconomic
reality of African countries. However, Urey (1995) suggests that
ITU is facing ‘competition’ from a more liberal global player such as
the World Bank, and has had to follow this path in its own discourse
and to modify its position over accepting the ‘solution’ of liberalization.
Nulens and Audenhove (1999) conclude that there is a merging of discourses
among international organizations that propose and make policy
for an ‘African’ version of the IS (1999: 468) despite the differences in
the attention they give to sociocultural and political contexts. We can
expand the domain of their conclusion beyond the developing countries
and their economies. Indeed it appears that the recipe for the IS of the
future is based on the same ingredients for every part of the planet and it
involves a dominant position of corporations, in particular transnational
corporations, the so-called new form of ‘public–private’ partnerships and
the withdrawal of the state as an active ‘compensator’ for market failure
but as a shock absorber for companies.
The clash of capitalisms? The World Summit
on the Information Society
As global governmental actors try to ensure favourable environments
for business investments in national territories, often, social goals are