Rural Communication Access Centres in Tanzania

Since 2000 the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) supports partners in Tanzania with application of information and communication technology (ICT) in development processes.

IICD’s Tanzania Country Programme consists of 25 projects operating at district and national level in the sectors agriculture, governance, education and health.

Access to the Internet in rural communities is provided through what is referred to in this paper as Rural Communication Access Centres (RCAs). Internet access is also provided via access points in schools, hospitals and offices of local government. Presently, via these RCAs over one million end-users are reached, directly or indirectly, amongst whom are students, teachers, women, youth, farmers, government officials, health workers and small entrepreneurs.

ICT has a major role to play in knowledge development in many areas, but also offers the possibility e.g. to improve governance. Basic infrastructure is therefore indispensable. In Tanzania access to the Internet has increased considerably in recent years, however, much has to be done to reduce costs and improve the quality of the services since affordable access is key to development.

This paper was written by Liang Tan, with contributions from Bernadette Huizinga, both working for IICD.  It aims to raise awareness and contribute to sharing knowledge about the experiences and lessons learned with setting up and managing rural communication access centres, or telecentres, in Tanzania. It builds upon the outputs of the workshop on rural access and connectivity, organised in Dar es Salaam in May 2006. This workshop was organised jointly by SWOPnet and IICD. SWOPnet is the Tanzanian national ICT for Development (ICT4D) network, supported by IICD, which aims to provide information services, raise awareness and participate in dialogues on national- and sector ICT policies.

Some of the findings that will be described in this paper are the factors for successfully running a RCA, like the necessity to have the RCA strongly anchored in the local community, sturdy management, availability of relevant local content and technical knowledge to provide support and maintenance.