Strengthening the heart of a community: the eSociety programme in the Apac district of Northern Uganda

Outreach to the community

The community information centre in Apac is situated right at the heart of the community, in an area of town where you’ll find the offices of NGOs and local government. The centre is pivotal in the everyday bustle of the town and the programme identified it as the best place to reach the citizens of Apac. Ongom Odell, member of the Board of Trustees of the eSociety programme, says. “This place is highly accessible for the community and, at the same time, our contribution boosts the potential for cooperation.” The different target groups have been alerted to the services offered by the centre through flyers, meetings, radio announcements and are using the centre for career guidance, ICT training, as well as livelihood skills training via DVDs. Users are retrieving information to keep abreast of planned projects in order to have an insight in the ongoing work in the districts. Farmers use the internet services to access market information on current prices and new crops.

Alongside these everyday uses, project stakeholders and community leaders find their way to the centre, as the venue has become the logical place to hold meetings. Lucy Orech, another member of the Board of Trustees recounts: “All of them are interested in the new ICT centre and we just show them training materials on livelihood skills, agricultural information, health information etc...”

By the end of the first two months, 120 staff members from the local NGOs and Local Government offices had enrolled for courses in computer literacy which will immediately enable them to start using the District Monitoring Information System and the Financial Management Information System (FIMS).

Mr. Odell went on to say: “Cooperation helps people to endure times of social difficulties and problems. By working together, we find support from each other.”

Bridges of support

Uganda is one of the poorest countries in the world. Per capita income in 2005 was estimated to be US$250. Both Hivos and IICD have been working in Uganda for a long time: Hivos supporting a wide variety of civil society organisations and initiatives focussing on democratisation, rural emancipation and improvement of livelihoods; IICD working in eGovernance with several (district) government institutions focussing in particular on eAdministration.

It has been observed that in the rural areas many of the informal support structures for citizens are far from adequate. Civil organisations and local and district governments are unable to work together effectively and yet there is great demand from the rural population as a whole. Moreover, local government struggles to deliver services that encourage participation, and thus cannot absorb the results that would feed into democratic processes. A significant reason for this comes from practical obstacles particularly a lack of equipment, capacity and the human and financial resources needed to support it.

Civil society in Uganda is relatively young and inexperienced. Even though they have been included in a variety of development processes, their contributions tend not to address the more complex areas like service delivery to citizens, poverty reduction strategies and funds. However, these groups do wish to play a more active and meaningful role. Unfortunately, corruption and nepotism still plague many parts of society and this has the double negative impact of destroying the effective implementation of development processes and discouraging the type of participation that would bring about change.

A real need for collaboration

Hivos and IICD and their local partners, Wougnet and I-Network, have learned from experience that simple support structures can address themes of mutual interest. Using a mixture of digital and analogue media, rural civil society and government can work together to formalise and facilitate this cooperation. This is referred to as eSociety. eSociety can promote and develop transparency, improve the effectiveness of service delivery, and create more open and interactive debate between civil society and government. It also helps to sidetrack the dangers of nepotism and can thus contribute to the strengthening of the democratic role of both the civil organisations and local government.

The eSociety project followed a participatory process in which the key stakeholders of the district were able to clearly indicate their development priorities. The pilot, “Improved Service Delivery and Citizen Participation through Improved Local Government and Civil Society Collaboration”, will be implemented over a two-year period with financial support from Hivos, IICD and Spider. It will be closely monitored and evaluated to extract lessons which will feed into the next phase during which the project will be expanded to other districts in Uganda.

The key components of the Apac pilot can be summarised as follows:

• Improved communication within the district through radio and email services.
• Increased availability of information services for the specific target groups in community information centres at central and sub-county level.
• A publicly accessible Financial Management Information System (FMIS) showing the influx of government and donor grants and tax income.
• A District Monitoring Information System (DMIS) showing the progress of development projects at various levels.
• Capacity development, training and change management in the community information centres.
• A community wireless network in Apac town, enabling all organisations to access the internet.

Facing the future

There will be challenges during the implementation phase of the project. Internet connectivity in the rural areas is still a limiting factor due to poor infrastructure and high connectivity costs. However, local Internet Service Providers do have solutions that are affordable.

Another challenge is the limited awareness in the rural areas about the use of ICT. Implementing ICTs in rural areas is a change management process. It is important to give the end-users time to accept and appreciate the value of ICT in their daily life. It will take time for people see the positive and relevant role that community information centres can play in development. However, optimism is clearly apparent when Jimmy Okello said at the start of the project’s implementation: “Even a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step”.