• The National Museum of Namibia www.natmus.cul.na |
In Namibia, high schools
have become key actors in documenting scientific collections
 Namibia’s
national museum was the first on the continent to leap into the Internet age: visitors
can walk through a virtual collection of rock art, search an online database of collections
or find out about ongoing programmes. Even more engaging are efforts to hook up the
country’s schools to the Net and heighten environmental awareness, via an annual
contest held for the first time in 1999.
The rule: students give the museum a helping hand by computerizing handwritten data
on its insect collection, the fifth largest in Africa. In return, their schools win
computers and Internet access.“We have over 1.5 million insects in our entomology
collection, 70,000 handwritten insect catalogue records, and the usual excuses—no
staff, no money and no technical resources,” says the museum’s Joris Komen, the driving
force behind the project. Museums in developing countries often have problems obtaining
data on their biodiversity because many insect specimens are kept in foreign museums,
and most records are still handwritten. “Instead of going along the tried and failed
path of seeking foreign donor support to fill our third-world museum with foreign
consultants, expertise and resources, we took it upon ourselves to motivate our local
corporate community to support us indirectly by giving them a chance to be socially
responsible,” continues Komen.
A ripple
effect
In less than a year,
organizers of the contest raised some $200,000 in computer equipment, services, media,
advertising and prizes, mostly from the private sector. A team of supporters and
volunteers—many from technical colleges—reconfigured the donated computers for the
schools involved. The Insect@thon 1999 contest involved 92 students from 16 schools
throughout Namibia, including one for children with learning disabilities. Transport
was organized to a technology training centre in Windhoek, and in just two days,
the students, aged between 11 and 19, had computerized 20,897 insect inventory records
using an innovative child-friendly capture screen designed by the museum on which
they had to fill in eleven different data fields. Despite minimal technical skills,
students scored a remarkably low 13 per cent error margin. Participants received
a string of prizes, from books and cd-roms to radio cassette players.
The contest has had a ripple effect and led to the launch of SchoolNet Namibia, a
network among schools, telecommunications and electricity service providers, the
business community and other stakeholders to promote Internet development. At present,
only 28 per cent of Namibia’s 1,600 schools have a telephone connection, and only
a handful are online. Money allowing, the museum intends to take the model to Zimbabwe
and Zambia. Meanwhile, the contest’s winning team, which entered the highest number
of records, will visit Sweden in May 2000 for two weeks—to computerize handwritten
Namibian insect records held by several museums there.
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