An analysis of communication policies in Kenya.

Although Kenya's current 5-Year National Development Plan cites communications as a public policy issue in terms of the establishment of basic infrastructural facilities, little attention has been given to this area. At the national level, a more specific approach to communication policy demands the formulation of coherent policies and their implementation through adequate institutional bodies. However, most policymakers are poorly equipped to deal with communication questions since they are interdisciplinary, technically complex, and politically sensitive. Policymaking must be based on a database that allows a minimal level of resource assessment, an inventory of locally available resources, a projection of needs for imported resources, and a scenario for resource development. The institutional location and accountability of communication need to be defined. Moreover, in promoting the strategies of self-reliance and decentralization, communication policy must consider the 4 aspects of a national information system: function, resource inventory, structure content, an control. The 1st task is to carry out a needs assessment exercise that determines what is required from a communications policy. A related task is audience analysis. Also essential is the analysis of policies that guide and constrain system development and the distribution and nature of political and economic power. Finally, feedback mechanisms must be devised for the determination of policy impact. Methods helpful in analyzing policy impact include systems analysis, resource assessment, trend extrapolation, the Delphi technique, and brainstorming.