UN ECA

Posted by Heather Ross for Helen via email

We had a chance to visit the UN Economic Commission for Africa today. The trip to the UN compound alone would have been worth a trek across Addis. That side of town in many ways is different. Lots of construction going on; large shiny new buildings going up, which is perhaps a good thing in a city that clearly needs development. But, why do they all seem to be banks? Along the way though, you still see people trying to do their laundry in the broken water mains. It is still tough to survive on the streets of Addis even in the high rent district. Lots of security at the UN gates but we pass through to the library easily enough.

The library itself is in rather modest quarters, though they seem to have enough space for their needs. They serve the diplomatic and UN office staffs first, but also reach out and try and serve other constituencies like NGOs and national government policymakers. They also reach out to university students and scholars in Africa to make their resources accessible. For the UN this is a fairly broad view of what their mandate should be.

They have some fairly aggressive programs in place to digitize materials as well and are actively working on a digital repository that will be open access. There is clearly a desire to make their materials more widely accessible. In Africa this is difficult because the limited availability of broadband means electronic is not necessarily the best solution. Yet paying for both print and online is enormously expensive. They are doing a lot in difficult circumstances and like any big organization it takes time to get things done when you fight against a bureaucracy all the time.