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1. INTRODUCTION
The importance of human settlements information for planning, developing and managing urban and rural settlements at national and regional levels is evident.

This report is the result of a follow-up of a documentation center project dealing with information on human settlements issues at a research institute in Nairobi, Kenya.

Included is also an investigation of the occurrence of similar centres in Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia. One important aspect both for the follow-up and for the investigation is to analyse how modern information technology, IT, can be used in the field of human settlements information in East Africa.

The project started 1983 and has now been going on for 14 years at the Housing and Building Research Institute, HABRI, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Development, FADD.
The institute changed from HRDU, Housing Research and Development Unit, to HABRI during the project period.

BYGGDOK, the Swedish Institute of Building Documentation, has been in charge of the project in cooperation with HABRI.

SIDA and to some extent also the Swedish Council for Building Research, BFR, have financed the project
.
The Documentation Centre is an active part of the Institute which is now covering all costs for the personnel at the Centre.

The follow-up and the investigation in the other East African countries were performed during November 1996.

Järfälla March 1997

Bengt Eresund
Bengt Eresund IT AB
Blixtvägen 40
S-177 70 Järfälla, Sweden
tel/fax: +46-8-58015085
Mobile:+46-(0)708-499 304
E-mail: bengt@eresund.se

2. SUMMARY
The follow-up of the HABRI(HRDU)/BYGGDOK Documentation project has resulted in an overview of possibilities and consequences for the Documentation Centre at HABRI.
If no donor money is spent on the Centre the acquisition of documents and subscription of journals from abroad will stop as no foreign currency will be available. One of the most important sources of information content will not arrive anymore. There are today no other possibilities to obtain the information in these documents than to buy them.

Modern Information Technology, IT, can be an important tool for accessing information from sources outside Kenya. The technology is not yet widely used, but in a couple of years it will be in Kenya and in the other East African countries.

The immediate recommendations concerning HABRI Documentation Centre is to continue financing the Centre for some years at approximately the same level as today but allow for upgrade of worn out equipment , training of personnel and an E-mail connection.
In order to strengthen the market value of the Centre it is of vital importance to acquire Kenyan documents on human settlements topics from other institutions. In that way the Centre will have “all” Kenyan human settlements documents. If this is achieved the charging for information services will be much easier and the negotiation position much stronger when for instance dealing with other information providers for exchange of information sources.

Parallel to the above the following should be looked into:
- Digitizing of HABRI reports and University documents on human settlements
- Make the documents available on the most appropriate media for searching, distribution, supply on demand. It could be on diskette, hard disc on a PC, CD-ROM, full text databases, Internet with www, Gopher, FTP, etc
New HABRI reports and University documents are probably produced on PCs so the digitizing process is no problem. For older document which are judged to be digitized a scanning process is necessary.

The Documentation Centre at HABRI was not very well known in the visited East African countries. HABRI as such was on the other hand known among “sister” organizations. After my visits the organizations are more informed about the Centre.

Better marketing activities combined with good and easy to use communication facilities are needed in order to promote the utilization of the Centre by other African Countries. Fax and ordinary postal service tend to be too expensive and cumbersome for maintaining an active information service.
The solution is to use modern IT as soon as possible. All visited countries have E-mail systems and Internet facilities ready to use.

The following four international organizations, UNCHS (Habitat), OAU, African Housing Fund and Shelter-Afrique presented immediate plans for the use of E-mail or Internet facilities to improve the communication with member organizations or country representatives. All these organizations are dealing with human settlements.

In this context it is possible to make available the very important human settlements information from many different sources.

My suggestion is therefore to set up an East African pilot project with HABRI as one focal point on human settlements information in cooperation with one or two of these organizations.
HABITAT has its Information and External Relations division including a documentation unit and the Best Practices and Local Leadership Programme (BLP). OAU has the Proposal for the Establishment of a Pan-African Human Settlements Information System. African Housing Fund and Shelter Afrique need to improve the communication with country representatives, etc.
Participants from the East African countries should preferably be those recommended in the report.
From Sweden LCHS , BYGGDOK and others could be engaged.
PADIS at UNEAC should be informed and/or involved in one way or an other.
The financing of such a project should be shared between donor organizations and participating organizations.

A new contact should immediately be taken with OAU to find out the definite plans for the human settlements information system.

A project proposal was discussed with Christina Engfeldt at UNCHS (Habitat) in Nairobi and she submitted a proposal after that to SIDA for consideration.

One general observation during my visit to the four East African countries was the focus on South Africa. Many of the persons I met had been to South Africa for training, international meetings, seminars, research , joint venture projects or business. The distance from an East African country to South Africa is much shorter than that to Europe or USA.

Persons within the building industry were very positive to the intermediate construction technology available from South Africa.

Some of the organizations in East Africa are via satellite linked to South African Internet providers. The University of Dar es Salaam has a link to UNINET in South Africa.

It is obvious that South Africa is already an important generator for the development of East Africa and that its importance will increase.

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Kontakta Bengt Eresund

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