‘ICT missionary’ in Tanzania Sets Up Successful Rural Services Centre

Mark Farahani laughs when he remembers the old days. “Before getting internet in Kilosa, I had to travel four hours to Morogoro to get connected, sometimes to discover that I had no new messages. I had to spend the night there as it was not easy to come back the same day because of the unreliable transport and rough road. It cost me a lot of time and money.”

 Following the long trips to the internet café in Morogoro, former district agricultural officer Farahani saw a business opportunity in providing internet in his town. Since 2004 he has been the proud owner of KIRSEC, Kilosa Rural Services and Electronic Comunication Centre, which he started with just one offline computer for secretarial services.

Kilosa is a rural town with around 20,000 inhabitants about 350 km from Dar es Salaam. The last eighty kilometres to Kilosa are unpaved road. Calling himself an ‘ICT missionary’, Farahani set up a privately owned centre with his savings and with help of a group of friends within and outside the country. He managed to connect the computer to internet by setting up a satellite connection. The centre now provides:

• full secretarial services
• internet
• bandwidth to individuals and institutions
• advisory and consultancy services for youths and women development
• market price information
• solar equipment and laptop rental.

Recently he started the Cash-on-the-Bag program with Rural Africa Venture Investment. He advises and recruits small trading farmers to become modern traders by providing marketing skills and small loans.

Market price information network

“The information most valued is market prices of nearby markets,” says Farahani. Since this information was not available online, he decided to diversify his services by providing market price information on a board outside the centre. KIRSEC is now acting as a hub for nine markets in the district, collecting and disseminating their prices via information board managers (IBMs) by phone and text messaging.

The IBMs are mostly shop owners who benefit from the board by attracting more customers and by selling advertising space at the top of the board. Apart from information services, the centre also provides agricultural inputs like seeds, fertilizer and insecticide in small quantities to fit the wallet of individual farmers.

Renting out solar equipment

“ICT is a tool and an enterprise,” says Farahani. As such, the former district agricultural officer likes trying out business opportunities for himself as well as for his community. One of his experiments is with a solar device that can feed three light bulbs and ten mobile phone chargers. He rented the device to a farmer who saw potential for a phone charging business, as his village has mobile phone coverage but no electricity. Within 16 months, the farmer earned enough money to buy the equipment.

He could not pay the price of Tsh 350,000 (about €170) at once. That’s why Farahani allowed him to pay Tsh 25,000 per month. Farahani: “I know at least ten people who would like to start a similar business. When I have the capital I will order ten more.”

Knowledge sharing and lobbying through a net work of Telecentres in Tanzania

Through the Tanzania Telecentre Network (TTN), the experiences of KIRSEC and other centres are shared between telecentres all over Tanzania. IICD has assisted the network since its launch in 2007, by building up its knowledge sharing and capacity building skills in areas like wireless internet, business plan development and multimedia for community development. TTN is lobbying for recognition and support at national level for its members’ activities. Farahani: “We can create a partnership with donors and government to learn from our experiences together and scale them up.”

More on this:
TTN knowledge sharing platform: http://ttn-tz.ning.com/