In Celebration of the International Day for Universal Access to Information

The world has become a global village and there is no doubt of the fact that technology is one of the contributors to this. Gone are the days where it took days for a written letter or information to reach its final destination, which really shows that access to current and fresh information has become the norm.

I would say, to a certain degree, we are fortunate and privileged in Namibia to have as much access to information compared to other African countries. Namibia is a member state country to the United Nations (UN) and as so, the UN events also apply to us.

One main event which ties well with this article is the International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUAI) and this year will mark the third year that Unesco will celebrate this event annually.

The IDUAI has a particular relevance with the new 2030 Development Agenda, and in particular with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 16.10 which calls for ensuring public access to information and protection of fundamental freedoms. The theme for this year is ‘;overcoming divides and achieving the SDGs’;.

Traditional media compete with social media these days in terms of providing real and accurate information to the masses. A simple incident that occurs now will reach social media instantly, whereas with traditional media it will take a couple of minutes or hours before it is aired. Of course this is due to different procedures that need to be followed in the normal traditional media.

I believe as a nation, we are well exposed to these two mediums of providing information. This is where we, especially the youths, need to appreciate the information we receive, but there is also a need to start to critically analyse, reflect and act in the right way to the information that we are accessing.

It is good to have access to information, but what is the point of accessing this information if you cannot critically reflect on it, analyse the validity of it and act on it to make sure that it is not just information but that it has visible results that will not just benefit and empower us as youths but the nation at large.

To all my fellow youths out there, let us continue to access as much information as we can, but let us not also forget to

AACRA: A – access, A – analyse, C – create, R – reflect and A – act.

A happy International Day for Universal Access to Information to you all.

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