History of Kabissa

As the internet has grown so has Kabissa, responding to problems and offering solutions to activists and member organizations throughout Africa.

Ten years ago, an activist witnessing a human rights violation in Nigeria had few options when it came to publicizing her findings to a global audience. She could fax a press release, make a phone call, send a letter. If she were lucky enough to have access to the internet, and could afford the exorbitant costs of service providers, she could rush off an email alert. Few of these activists, however, had the kind of immediate, unfettered access to the internet that their counterparts in rich countries had, even though the need for such access was arguably much greater.

Aware that the world wide web had tremendous potential to give African civil society a global audience, we founded Kabissa in 1999. Our idea was to help organizations put information and communication technologies (ICT) to work for the benefit of the people they serve. At that time, this meant providing accessible, affordable and secure website hosting and e-mail services.

The internet transformed the way many of these organizations worked. Government controlled media, poor infrastructure, and a lack of resources and training all worked against activists and development professionals and isolated them from the rest of the world. Eager to communicate with each other and with the international community, Kabissa members embraced email and mailing lists in particular from the very beginning. WOUGNET, the Women of Uganda Network, was an early pioneer, actively using its email networks and newsletters as early as 2000 to bring attention to the work of its members and to create connections amongst them. Fantsuam Foundation, in rural northern Nigeria, successfully created a global web presence for their village development project and used the web to find and connect with donors and partners.

Since then the technology has evolved and the needs of African organizations have grown. In response, Kabissa has adapted and expanded its offerings, including running a www4mail server for a number of years that enables users to request web pages by email. A training programme was also established, tailored for African civil society, and information shared on ICT through a monthly member newsletter and website. Kabissa now serves more than 1100 member organizations throughout Africa.