Access to the affordances of literacy: reflections on the evolving influence of ICT in Zambia

Abstract

The literacy practices of a community draw on a set of affordances reflecting the particular speech varieties and orthographic conventions of a sociocultural system. Access to these affordances depends on co-ownership of a system of meanings co-constructed in the course of history. Individuals acquire this sense of ownership by participating in social activities such as personal correspondence, formal schooling, engagement with bureaucracies, etc. Modern information and communication technology (ICT) affords access to the system of meanings that constitutes literate communication in rapidly evolving ways. Thus, in contemporary Zambian society, social groups influence public opinion via social media accessed on mobile phones that reach a larger and more immediate audience than the older technologies of print, radio and TV. Economic and political processes influence, but do not fully control, the use of ICT in African countries. It is debatable whether the net impact of modern ICT on access to and uses of literate communication in Zambian society has been democratisation or the entrenchment of top-down, hegemonic control.