Telecentres

Sengerema Telecentre, monday morning. The floor in front of the training room is covered with shoes of people taking an exam in basic computer skills. A corner of the reception is being transformed into a little shop: a young entrepreneur is going to repair, refurbish and sell computers.

I am visiting the telecentre to meet Mr Felician Ncheye, manager of the telecentre and board member of TTN, the Tanzania Telecentre Network. Since last October, the telecentre is not the only place anymore where people can browse the internet in Sengarema. IICD assisted the Tanzania Telecentre Network in piloting a shared wireless (mesh) community network in Sengerema, making internet available and affordable to a large number of people living in the rural areas around the telecentre.

October is months away and I am curious to find out how the wireless mesh network is functioning. Are the clients still connected? Are they satisfied? In what way is the internet useful to them? And, very important in terms of sustainability: are they paying their monthly fee?

According to Mr Ncheye, the mesh network is working fine and most clients are paying their monthly bills in time. There are some problems with hardware, and ignorance on internet use.

Lismas, the technician, spends a lot of time teaching customers how to browse the internet.

“A customer told me there is a problem with the internet. When I checked it, I found out he typed only two w’s instead of three to enter the World Wide Web”.

Lismas also teaches customers how to find information. All have anti-virus software installed. Viruses still cause problems though.

Later that morning I continue my way to  the Teachers Resource Centre (TRC), one of the customers of the mesh network. TRC coordinator Mr Mugusi and Mr Mungo, headmaster of Sengerema Secondary School tell me that the internet is working well and used extensively by teachers of the school. Both are using the internet to study at the Open University Tanzania (www.out.ac.tz), which has a distance education programme. Mugusi is doing a Bachelor in Education and a minor in Kiswahili. He just started, and it takes four years. Mungo already studied before the teachers centre got its own connection; he is doing a Master in Education.

The teachers also use the internet to find teaching materials. Sometimes they print it to disseminate in class. They use Yahoo and Google to find materials. They also like www.answers.com. They feel that they need to catch up with the internet, as the students are picking it up much faster and are often challenging the teachers! Students sometimes come to the TRC too to use the internet but also go to the telecentre. Other teachers are still discovering the internet.

Mugusi: “To them the internet is still ‘uchawi’, witchcraft; they were amazed to see videos of Obama’s speeches online.”

Is the internet also having a negative impact? According to headmaster Mungo: “The secondary school has 20 teachers for 800 students. They used to have 36 teachers; most of them left for greener pastures. The possibility of distance-learning through internet may actually increase this brain drain”..

With Lismas I visit the Centre for Disabled People. An unstable plug prevents them from browsing, and Lismas quickly fixes it. They like to use the internet for skype and email. Their favourite Tanzanian website is www.mwananchi.co.tz, a newspaper in Kiswahili. They also have been looking online for funding for their centre.

Slowly but surely, the internet becomes a reality for the Sengerema community. In April the mesh network is going to be evaluated, providing more information on how the customers appreciate it and what kind of changes come with access to online information.

What I’ve seen in just half a day is promising. To be continued!

As I am usually mostly working from the hotel or inner-city project headquarters when in Ecuador, paying a visit to a local site of one of our project partners is both interesting and a pleasure… even if it means that you’d have to get up at 4:15 in the morning to be picked op by our partners who runs the IICD supported CAMARI project.

The original plan was a two-day up-country visit to two communities that the project partner is active in. Unfortunately, one of the sites turned out not to have any connection, as they apparently forgot to pay for their electricity and had to go and fix this on the day of our visit. At least it was good to hear that connectivity problems are not only related to thunderstorms, bad equipment or political turmoil…

The adjusted plan therefore included one site about 4,5 hours from Quito. One of the persons responsible for the project and I talked about pets, favourite music and sports and of course the project itself in order to keep awake. In the meantime, scenes familiar from many Ecuador coffee table books unfolded: a sunrise over huge snow-capped volcanoes, indigenous women dressed in bright purple ponchos and black skirts and lazily grazing alpacas on the side of the road.

We passed a village with a large statue covered in different colours of bathroom tiles. “Do you know what that is?”, the partner asked. As I did not want to insult anyone, I did not dare say that the thing looked like a huge popsicle to me. “It’s a popsicle!” he said, “people here really love their ice cream.”

We arrived at the partner organisation’s office in the late morning (the project partner we work with again works with local partners in different communities). This local partner is responsible for getting certain amounts of produce, all carefully planned out on large hand-written boards, from the communities’ farmers and handicraft (wo)men to the selling point in Quito. Additionally, the information centre gives information on prices for the local produce. All tested ways to increase income of local producers and improve their decision-making on where, when and what to sell.

This was the theory. Walking around the community and talking to users of the projects I not only found out that the theory seemed to work (also proved by the encouraging evaluation data that had been coming in from the projects’ users for the last two years now), but that there was much more to it. In the first place: I probably had never before seen such an industrious village in my life! In a 2,5 hour walk I met cheese makers, sausage makers, mushroom dryers, furniture builders, football producers, nougat makers, chocolate makers, workers from the thread-factory and a group of women that knit sweaters from the thread produced in the factory. All of these micro businesses use the same communications network originally installed for the info centre for a nominal fee, which in turn helps coving a part of the info centre’s cost. The cheese factory communicates with surrounding communities that produce part of the cheese that they distribute all over the country. The chocolate factory sends e-mails back and forth about orders and packaging with Italian buyers.

The sheer existence of the info centre has over time sparked many of these initiatives. They are currently preparing to set up a VOIP-telephone, to compete with commercial (expensive and low quality) telephone provider Porta. And a Virtual Aula has been set up to provide all community members with internet access in an internet café setting. Contrary to international trends, the activity and communication possibilities have actually resulted in people moving into the community, rather than out of it, towards the city.

Talking to one of the “community economy”-founders, an Italian priest who has been in the village for over 35 years, it became clear that the effect of the network goes much further even. When asked about the most substantial changes for the community, he became really enthusiastic. Instead of elaborating on economic success or export, he talked about how the project opened up surrounding communities, till recent almost completely shut from the outside world. How young people there were seeing new possibilities, talking online with their friends in other communities. That, claimed the priest, was what was amazing about the new technology.

Every day, behind my desk in The Hague, I’m busy with the impact of our programmes: the statistics, the percentages, the lessons learned. The real life impact as seen in the community will probably always be impossible to capture….

Mr. Paul is running a telecentre in Katesh, in the north-east of Tanzania. His telecentre provides computer training, the only one in the region. His customers need information from the internet, like market price information. But the internet has not yet reached Katesh. Mr. Paul is planning to have an internet connection and an email address soon, but he needs information on how to go about it. 

I met Mr. Paul last week in Mwanza. He was one of the participants of the first Tanzanian Telecentre Network workshop. Together with many others, I have been planning this workshop for months. Meeting Mr. Paul made again clear to me why a telecentre network is needed. All participants came with questions and all came with answers on: How to improve their services to the community?. Where to get ICT support? Telecentre puzzles were solved in the workshop and its grapevines. Still many need to be solved. By sharing and by joining forces. 

In a speed geek session, every telecentre presented its approach to provide services to the community in a sustainable way. Some provide market price information to farmers; others provide computer courses to students, women, elderly, disabled, helping them to get a job. Some provide a community radio to inform the villages on burning issues like HIV-AIDS prevention, others provide library services. Some are entirely financed by the community; others share their internet connection with nearby schools. Some use VSAT connections; others have switched to recently available broadband. The telecentre leaders advised Mr Paul on all the available options. 

Through a mapping exercise, the telecentres present were indicated on a Google Earth map. Mr. Paul found out that other telecentres actually were not that far away from him! He now knows who he can contact for support. 

Then, after two days of workshopping, it is 4pm. It has been an exhausting day; participants discussed a vision, mission, objectives and organisational structure of their network, and made extensive use of the left part of their brains.

Would there still be anything wise to do, apart from calling it a day? Yes. Let’s use the right part of the brain and create a logo for the network! I was amazed by the sudden energy and creativity burst and tried to grasp it in a picture: the designers, including Mr. Paul standing in the middle, present the winning logo. 

Mr. Paul went back to Katesh, connected to a whole new network of colleagues through his mobile. With confidence he told me that the internet connection will soon follow.

This week is my first visit to the IICD country programme in Uganda. Within IICD, I am changing position and will be taking over the responsibility for project management in Uganda. In this trip a colleague is introducing me to the programme. So far the projects are really exciting. It is impressive to see how committed people are towards the projects. This weekend we visited the Health Child project, a new project which we are implementing together with Cordaid. Last week the project coordinator identified two rural communities to start Information Centers where women can be trained on Health prevention. The coordinator was a young woman, like myself. She quit her job in Kampala to live in the rural area to set up the centres. During the visit she and the rest of the implementing staff took us to one of the communities. The people were really keen on meeting us. They raised interesting questions, like how we would make sure that the elderly women of the community wouldn’t be excluded from this ‘innovative’ project. This shows that, fortunately, our end-users dare to be critical towards IICD.