Establishing Information Centres - Ghana

IICD is supporting this project since January 2008. This project establishes a multi media centre at the headoffice of the Association of Church Development Projects (ACDEP) in Tamale that will create audiovisual and visual information. This information will be disseminated to five rural information centres that will be established within five member organisations of ACDEP. In this way the rural communities have access to relevant agricultural, educational and health resources.

• The multi media centre has purchased and installed 5 computers, a printer, a scanner, a LCD projector and a digital camera
• he five rural information centres have purchased 2 computers, a printer, a scanner and a digital camera for each centre
• 10 Project staff has been trained in basic ICT and content creation skills

ACDEP considers the use of ICT a catalyst for rural development in northern Ghana. A needs assessment highlighted among others that:

• Access to development information by field level staff is very limited.
• The drive to seek new information and knowledge by staff is generally limited. This is largely due to lack of access and high cost of obtaining this information. (time and distance)
• ICT knowledge and skills among development staff is low
• There is a high level of interest and desire for new development information for ACDEP’s work with rural communities in the areas of health, agriculture, small-scale enterprise development, community mobilization, small- scale credit management, and gender among others
• Poor communication between ACDEP members and the Secretariat affects implementation of joint and agreed activities
• Discussion group has been established to enable the five centre to collaborate and share experiences
• 1 day training in video and photo recording for 12 persons
  

Read more about IICD’s Ghana Country Programme.

• To contribute to improved standards of living in rural communities through access to development information and innovation
• To use ICT to meet the communication and development information needs of ACDEP members and their beneficiaries
• To establish an active information exchange and network station at community level for 5 member organisations
• An improved, efficient and cost effective information and communication system in place at membership stations
• To improve knowledge, attitudes, adoption and dissemination of innovations by stations
• To develop ICT based strategies for documenting, processing and disseminating development information and innovations in place and in use
• To build the capacity of ACDEP Secretariat and its members to use ICT for development

In the pilot 5 stations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) will be targeted, but in total 42 NGOs are member of ACDEP. The staff of these stations will be the users of the system and the farmers that they work with the beneficiaries.

Read more about IICD’s approach towards Livelihoods

• High degree of enthusiasm beyond the expectation of the project team from the five sites to embrace ICT as a novelty for community empowerment for accelerated development
• The successful deployment of ICTs with connectivity at the five sites has sent positive signals to other development organisations that depending on the choice of technology, it is feasible to deploy ICTs in rural communities
• The milestones at the five sites have triggered interest among development organisations and individuals to explore the possibility of deploying similar technologies for communication and information sharing in communities where they operate

• It is also interesting to note that as a result of the deployment of ICTs in Chereponi amidst the surging challenges of rural setting, the public image of EPDRA among its development partners including the District Assembly has been enhanced over the period

• High potential of comparative research via the internet on the causes, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of certain diseases 

• Though mobile telephony was not part of the ICT tools that were deployed in the project implementation phase, the use of the technology to arrange meetings with farmer groups and also occasionally deliver important messages has saved some of the stations significant cost in terms of fuel and staff time

• Some farmer leaders are now able to use the computers to generate reports on their group activities and communicate with other farmer organisations.

• The equipment in one way or the other has enabled us streamline data collected from our day to day activities such as health insurance and general office documents.

• Adolescents are more interested in the use of the equipment since they are not available at their various schools f study. They therefore use the centre as the only opportunity available to them to acquire basic knowledge on the use of the equipment. They however need constant monitoring to ensure that the equipment are used according to the setup rules of the centre.

• Management now supports the activities of the projects since they themselves have started benefiting from it in one way or the other. They have even given us a container to enable us expand the project’s activities

The Association of Church Development Projects (ACDEP) operates in partnership with a network of about forty Church-based non-governmental organisation (NGOs) in rural areas of northern Ghana. Communication and access to relevant information is low among these NGOs and poses a major challenge to them.

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Interview with Mr Norbert Apentibadak