In the Democratic Republic of Congo, roads, hospitals and schools are still dozens of years behind those in the west — but the mobile phone network is fully functional,” says Etienne Rougerie, the French-born deputy editor of Radio Okapi in Kinshasa. “Communication is our strength. That’s the lever that’s going to move the country forward.”

Broadcast in four languages throughout the Congo and over the Internet, Radio Okapi has already used technology to achieve an independent, reliable news source, which Paul Wolfowitz has declared should be a criterion in World Bank funding. “Radio Okapi is like a national radio, but it costs only ten million dollars a year,” says Rougerie. “Why? Because everything is done on computers. That wouldn’t have been possible ten years ago.”

Undoubtedly, Radio Okapi has already proved its worth. In the last election, when both principal candidates declared victory through their own media channels, Radio Okapi used SMS to do a quick recount. In less than a day, they came up with a result a few percantage points within the final number confirmed weeks later. By connecting directly with citizens, Radio Okapi was able to provide some stability in a time of uncertainty, and to diffuse some of the antagonism between the candidates.

All this is great, and Radio Okapi and its major sponsors, the Swiss-directed Hirondelle Foundation and United Nations, deserve kudos for using technology to meet a clear need for a neutral news source.

But is NGO-directed media really the best solution for African journalism?

According to Rougerie, in West Africa the key criteria for journalism are

1) credibility
2) cost
3) avoiding censorship and political control

These criteria are important in the West, too, but in West Africa they are more intensely felt. “Before I came to the Congo I worked as a journalist for French public television,” said Rougerie. “There, a good story was one that our audience would enjoy. In a war zone, the only thing that matters is whether information can be verified and sourced. If you don’t have credibility, you don’t have anything.”

You wouldn’t think a non-profit’s annual meeting in Switzerland in the middle of January would be a big draw. Yet, since the World Economic Forum started the Davos Symposium in 1971, it has attracted an all-star line up of political, business, and social leaders, gathering to discuss global issues too big to be tackled by only one sector.

This year German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave the opening address, and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin threw the must-go party of the week. But what was truly different at Davos this year was that the public was also invited, and rightfully so. You were Person of the Year, after all.

“At last year’s symposium, some of the attendees were already blogging about it,” said Mark Steckel, a software entrepreneur speaking on behalf of the Huffington Post. “With that understanding, the symposium decided to open things up. The thinking was, ‘we’re not going to be able to stop this, so let’s interact, participate, and be part of it.’“

Nudged by the Huffington Post, the World Economic Forum, BBC, BuzzMachine, Guardian, and Daylife created the Davos Conversation. As Steckel explained it, the Conversation is a Web page that aggregated news stories and blogs posts about the symposium, posted videos of discussions, and hosted blogs for journalists and symposium participants. The public was invited to comment on the blogs and submit video questions. Attendees’ responses were videotaped and posted online. “It was a collaborative effort among all the partners,” said Steckel, who coordinatored two Columbia School of Journalism students to moderate blog comments.

If all of this sounds a bit ordinary, that may be the point.

In the spirit of sharing information, Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams have published the introduction and the first chapter of their new book Wikinomics online. Readers can download the first chapter now, buy the rest of the book later, and after Feb. 5, help write the last chapter themselves. Titled “The Wikinomics Playbook,” the unfortunately-numbered Chapter 11 invites readers to share their own ideas about how to use open source collaboration in businesses today.

Using the Web to improve the value of their book is a great idea, and kudos to Tapscott and Williams for putting their money where their mouth is. The whole premise of Wikinomics is that by using the principles of being open, peering, sharing, and acting globally, organizations can take advantage of human resources outside their own hierarchical structures. (More to the point, organizations that don’t embrace collaboration are doomed.)

Of course, all theory and no action is of limited use, and Tapscott and Williams promise to describe “how ordinary people and firms are linking up in imaginative new ways to drive innovation and success.” The first chapter begins with the story of a small gold-mining firm that put all their geological data online and invited the public to speculate as to where the next lode would be found. The submissions surpassed in accuracy and creativity what the company’s own staff had generated, and the business went from being a $100 million to $9 billion company.

Every year the blogosphere goes abuzz with predictions from big thinkers about how changes the Internet will bring. This year some decided to crowdsource their predictions this year. How accurate could your readers be at guessing next year’s big events? There is only one way to find out. Ask them.

As the year of YouMedia comes to a close, the crowd will probably be tapped for 2007 predictions more than any previous year. Predicting the future might be a new calling for collective wisdom, and it’s no small order.

So let’s start small and go from there. Before we dive into the territory of Nostradamus, predicting floods and war, let’s cover what the crowd seems to have already gotten good at predicting.

Online communities that rely on users, especially those that rely on the crowd for content or constant updates, are increasingly successful. For people wanting to mimic that success the initial question today isn’t “how can I get eyeballs to my site,” but rather “how can I get people engaged.”

Considering the vast majority of people participate for free, we have to assume they’re not motivated by money. As Mark Davis has pointed out, Google’s answer service, which paid experts to answer questions, failed, whereas Yahoo’s service, in which participants earn points, is succeeding gloriously.

Yossi Vardi, one of the original founders of ICQ, the first instant messaging service, posits four factors that inspire folks to participate:

A few weeks ago, MyDD.com (Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics) asked readers for help in paying its rent. The goal: $100 from 100 people. In a weekend, it raised $11,557.94 from 142. Matt Stoller said the financial support validated the site’s mission and with the extra money hired Tim Tagaris to go to New Orleans and cover the Congressional race between Karen Carter and William Jefferson.

Such support would seem to indicate that citizen-funded journalism is continuing to catch on. Two strong examples — Christopher Allbritton’s Back to Iraq, around since 2003, and Michael J. Totten’s Middle East Journal, which began earlier this year, indicate that freelancers are increasingly seeking out this model.

First the Web was chaotic. Then came Google, with a mission to organize the world’s online information. And all was well.

Then came online government databases, with all the data a citizen muckraker might want. But, as their information expanded, they too became chaotic. And along trotted Watchdogging 101, with a mission to teach users how to make sense of the chaos.

The Sunlight Foundation’s Watchingdogging 101 acts as a middle man (middle-dog), matching straightforward questions — How much is my representative worth? — with the pertinent page from somebody else’s database. Mainly it directs users to the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets, which has become kind of a government database Wikipedia, with enough knowledge to keep one person busy for … a long time. Especially if she’s not used to navigating millions of pages of informatoin.