Hard Work Online Pays Off in Azerbaijan

On behalf of IREX, I am pleased to announce that 22 diligent Azerbaijani students and their mentors won netbooks and flipcameras in a recent national contest for the ‘Best Research Essays Using Internet.' One hundred and sixty nine candidates entered from all over the country, notably Sumgait, Guba, Shirvan, Imishli, Ganja, Gazakh, Sheki, Zagatala, Ismayilli and Mingachevir. Plagiarism was penalised, with positive results.

The winning students wrote passionately about global and local issues such as war and refugess, patriotism, gender, information technology, tourism and national cuisine. For example, in her hard-hitting essay about environmental pollution, Eltaj Hasanova from Zagatala contrasted Azerbaijan’s national ‘Forest Day’ with Baku’s ‘dead bay,' showing both sides of the issue, and urging readers to do their best to protect nature and ‘make it smile, not punish us with its anger, heavy rains and hurricanes.'

Most candidates tended to rely on government statistics or Wikipedia for sources, although the best excelled by citing facts and figures from a wider field, including English-language sites.

The social context of the competition is significant. Facebook activity in Azerbaijan has increased by 40 percent in 2011, and 90 percent of Facebook users are under 34 years old. Given that Internet penetration is only 11percent, this suggests great potential for online development and social media.

IREX is well positioned to help and has already installed Wi-fi in cafes and libraries at three Baku universities where hundreds of students regularly check email, do online research and participate in social networks. This serves a growing need, given the prohibitive cost of domestic access and the fact that commercial Internet cafés tend not to appeal to Azerbaijani women and girls.

So, the future looks bright, and perhaps the IREX essay competition represents another milestone along the way. We are proud to play a part in Azerbaijan’s future. Thank you to all entrants and congratulations to the winners!

I’d like to end with this quote from a winning candidate, Farid Hajiyev, who wrote in his stirring essay on Information Technology: “Communication technology is one of the main indicators of the intellectual and scientific potential, transparency in state governance and the development of democracy in each country.”