Document(s) 6 of 18

It is generally acknowledged that the information and knowledge age is here, and has in-fact been with humankind since the last decades of the second millennium. This age has been characterized largely by the dominance of two movements both related and in the service of an age-old human preoccupation: capitalist accumulation. Economic globalization and the new Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) are seen as the engines of contemporary global economy driving a new information world order in which most of the continent of Africa is not faring too well. Market logic largely drives the currents in these two movements and it is a real concern that the new information and knowledge society, rather than close the development and poverty gap, might in fact aggravate it; thereby, reducing the dividends of global capitalism. The notion that ICTs are pre-eminent for faster development especially in the underdeveloped South is pervasive and momentum is gathering on a global scale to support the development, diffusion, use and appropriation of ICTs in knowledge-poor countries and regions in Africa and Asia in particular.

There is little doubt that historians of civilizations will acknowledge the information revolution of the late twentieth century as having introduced significant changes in the nature of human interactions and relations between peoples and nations. Globalization and its driver the new ICTs have taken the world by storm and their message of change or be damned (read dead) is being trumpeted loudly from a multiplicity of podiums by a growing band of important personalities and organizations. All major global organizations including the United Nations through some of its major agencies, bilaterals and even national governments, notably the group of eight most industrialised countries popularly referred to as the (G8), are extolling the virtues of new information and communication technologies. They are seen as harbingers of prosperity as they can guarantee access to global markets, enable direct foreign investment, and e-commerce. ICTs have already created a new world order of digital ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ separated by what is popularly called and referred to as the digital divide. Much contemporary effort is being geared towards reducing this divide, improving and spreading digital dividends to the information, knowledge and by extension, material-poor of the world. A multitude of efforts and projects are currently under way to bring information and communication technologies to the developing world because of the belief in their transformative potential.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, the notion and movement for ICTs was just starting a slow trickle in sub-Saharan Africa among isolated NGOs and a few nodes in universities and specialised institutions. Many development actors, governments and a sizeable proportion of social thinkers were convinced of the utter lack of wisdom (some would even go as far as to say irresponsibility) of investing in ICTs when other more deserving and acutely pressing and perhaps life-threatening areas of action such as health, education and agriculture were still in dire need. It was generally felt that the continent was unprepared, not yet ready, for ICTs; a feeling which still persists today even among very educated, well placed and arguably well informed Africans. This in a way is at variance with expressions of faith in ICTs that they can support the necessary transformation in Africa and other developing countries. In a 1999 study provocatively titled “Can sub-Saharan Africa claim the 21st century,” the World Bank President, James Wolfenson proclaims in the preface that “information and communications technology offers enormous opportunities for Africa to leap frog stages of development.” World leaders regularly espouse this position and the newest proposal for Africa’s development, the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) advanced by eminent African leaders recognises the central role of technology in the prospects for the continent.

Data to confirm these positions and affirmations is however scanty and some argue that emerging pictures suggest that far from spreading benefits, ICTs are spreading unequally and these “disparities exacerbate existing disparities based on location, gender, ethnicity, physical disability, age and especially, income level, and between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ countries,” (Bridges.org 2001).

It is this gap and absence of clarity in the data pictures that this volume hopes to fill and illuminate to some extent.

On account of its deep concern for and engagement with knowledge generation and sharing, IDRC was naturally among the first development agencies to confront the thorny issue of information communication firstly among the community of researchers and later, between researchers and others in the developing world where most projects were implemented. In the 1980s, the Centre was described as “one of the few donor agencies with programs dedicated to enhancing information and informatics capabilities in developing countries . . . with some 50 projects . . . in Africa alone” (Akhtar 1990). This engagement with information and communication evolved in the 1990s into an interest in ICTs as computer-based/computer-mediated technology became more widely available. The International Development Research Centre with its Acacia initiative, launched in 1997, is numbered among pioneer development agencies involved with implementing ICT projects in Africa.

Acacia, initiated nearly thirty years after the IDRC itself was created, was Canada’s response to the call for an African Information Society Initiative (AISI), issued by African ministers and governments in 1996 as a framework within which to build Africa’s information and communication infrastructure. Acacia is committed to empowering sub-Saharan African communities with the ability to apply information and communication technologies (ICTs) to their own social and economic development. The initial phase of the initiative was designed as an integrated programme of research and development that would use demonstration projects to address issues of technology, infrastructure, policy, and applications.

The original objectives of Acacia included:

• A demonstration of how information and communication technologies can enable communities to solve development problems in ways that build upon local goals, cultures, strengths, and processes; and
• The construction of a validated body of knowledge and a networked dissemination process around effective approaches, policies, technologies, and methodologies.

Acacia’s original vision was focused on disadvantaged, mainly rural and remote communities, isolated from information and communication networks.

A key dimension of this vision was to use information and communication technologies in the search for solutions to local development problems and especially in support of women and the youth.

The specific outputs from Acacia were expected to include:

• Pilot projects that tested different approaches to providing community access to ICTs.
• Models that showed how community voices could be extended to reach and impact local planning and governance through the use of ICTs.
• On-the-ground applications that met local health, educational, natural resources management, and other development needs.
• Technology (software and hardware) that was adapted for local use in rural and disadvantaged communities.
• Innovative infrastructure that could extend networks at low cost.
• Research that showed how to make ICT policy, regulation, and practice friendlier to those currently disenfranchised.
• A system of continuous learning and evaluation that would demonstrate how communities could use research results more effectively.

Acacia’s initial implementation strategy, informed by limited funding resources, revolved around working in a select group of countries to guarantee concentrated learning. Between 1997 and 2000, Acacia concentrated its work in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, and Uganda although a few opportunistic projects were implemented in other countries, e.g., Mali, Benin, and Tanzania. Acacia supported a total of thirty-five telecentres in seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa, five of which were jointly funded with other international partners such as UNESCO and ITU (See Table 1).

Since its inception in 1997 the Acacia initiative has executed close to 300 individual projects in ICT policy, connectivity, content and applications in health, education, commerce, agriculture etc. More information about Acacia projects can be found on the website: www.idrc.ca/acacia. To date the most popular of these projects have been Schoolnets and telecentres.

Table 1. Acacia-supported telecentres in sub-Saharan Africa

* Jointly supported by IDRC, ITU and UNESCO. Source: IDRC, Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office.

Purpose

In the late 1990s, the telecentre movement was just starting a slow trickle in sub-Saharan Africa after having been born a little over a decade earlier in Sweden. Few development actors were implementing ICT projects and a large number of people felt that investing in ICTs was inappropriate.

The primary aim of the studies reported in this book is therefore to inform. Most contemporary observers of the subject would admit that research on the impact of new ICTs on African development is not extensive because of their recent introduction and the rapid evolution of computerbased technologies. The book presents the results of a series of studies that examined the setting, operations and effects of community telecentres.

The studies reported in this book were planned and conducted as evaluative research to make a contribution towards illuminating the situation of ICT and development in the continent. In the conduct of the research, the advice and exhortation of Anne Whyte was heeded and the research was done “according to scientific practice so that it can withstand the scrutiny of governments and . . . sceptical public and private investors” (Whyte 2000).

The design and conduct of the studies were geared towards evaluating and examining how well the African telecentre experiment was working in light of the scepticism that greeted their introduction. The studies were an attempt to establish what had been learned since the launch of the Acacia Initiative in 1997 and to identify the improvements needed to guarantee success. Whereas the rationale for the studies was the consolidation of learning from telecentre and telecentre-type projects in Africa, the rationale for this book is to share this learning widely and contribute to an understanding of the issues and prospects for telecentres on the continent.

The book describes the experiences of local and often rural communities with telecentres exploring the management structures and mechanisms that have been established to support them and provides pictures of telecentre usage. The potential and challenges of setting up and maintaining community telecentres in the context of poor information infrastructure and limited human capacity are also discussed. The contents will be useful for researchers, policy and decision makers as well as development practitioners and professionals with interests or active programs in the area of “ICT for development” and in particular those with a focus on universal access, universal service or public access centres. It will also be a very useful reference tool for academics. This book is neither a cookbook, nor a handbook. It is not a manual, which tells the reader how to run or market telecentres nor does it provide recipes for financial sustainability. For these, readers are referred to other texts e.g., Cornell University’s Handbook for Telecenter Staff at http://ip.cals.cornell.edu/commdev/handbook or UNESCO’S Telecentre Cookbook for Africa.

For IDRC and Acacia, as well as for all the partners involved in the projects, the studies also provide an opportunity for extending and expanding discussions on the concepts, underlying assumptions, theory and methodologies for telecentre research. Particularly pertinent and potentially valuable would be examinations of the instruments used in the investigations reported in this book.

It is the hope of the writers and contributors, IDRC and Acacia, that this book will provide answers to some of the questions that are currently being asked or those that will in the future be asked about this area of development action and generate others.

Background

The diffusion of new ICTs on the African continent is not extensive because of the recency of their introduction. The continent’s entry and participation in the information society (revolution) that can be said to have commenced in the mid-1990s is currently hampered by weak infrastructure and by material and especially policy poverty.

As a pioneer in the area of ICTs for development in Africa, Acacia was operating in largely uncharted environments. This reality informed the adoption, by the initiative, of an integrated system of research, evaluation, and learning as a central strategy and tool through which development lessons would be identified, extracted, and widely disseminated within the short lifecycles of projects. This strategy was also adopted partly on account of the nature of information and communication technologies themselves, which change rapidly and more importantly because the information was urgently needed. The luxury of long five- to ten-year experimentation periods before research or evaluation could be mounted and lessons extracted was not feasible. This embedded system for evaluation and learning was considered very innovative at the time.

The main objective of the integrated evaluation and learning strategy was to simultaneously and continuously capture learning from implemented projects and activities. These lessons were to be fed back into project processes and products. The modality for realizing this objective focussed on regular and systematic data collection along with analysis and periodic evaluations within each telecentre project, articulated at the start of the programme and was based on four pillars:

• the establishment of ‘pictures’ of the community that surrounded the telecentre from baseline surveys conducted at, or close to, the commencement of the telecentres;
• the development of a common set of indicators and similar evaluation frameworks for the telecentres to allow for the measurement of progress and impacts across projects;
• the institution of a system for continuous learning; and
• multi-stakeholder interaction at all levels and at regular intervals to facilitate lesson sharing, adaptation, and adoption of the telecentre model.

The evaluation and learning strategy was the method through which Acacia attempted to demonstrate the potentials as well as challenges involved with using ICTs to solve development problems in disadvantaged communities in sub-Saharan Africa. The strategy, conceptualized as a system in which learning was a central project by-product for principal implementers of the telecentres, including staff as well as users, was to bring about a significant shift in the practice of project evaluation away from a policing exercise to one in which learning, participation, and greater sharing were the principal elements. To ensure this, a sizeable proportion of each project budget was allocated to evaluation.

A number of factors operating in concert accounted for the emergence of the unique manner in which Acacia conceptualized and operationalized research, learning, and evaluation. Some of these factors included: the growing disfavour with post-hoc, externally conducted and donor-driven evaluations of development projects, the rising rhetoric for stakeholder participation, and the increasing emphasis on learning, epitomized by the preoccupation with lessons learned and the search for good practices in development discourse. The underlying philosophy of the approach was to guarantee learning by a broad spectrum of individuals within the telecentre: the staff as well as beneficiaries, the target audience, and the communities within which the facility is located. It was envisaged that the intermediaries, i.e., those institutions that act as telecentre overseers, could also learn from the projects. These institutions often represent powerful local or national interests, and because of this, learning by this group was considered an important vehicle for transforming them into knowledgeable local champions for telecentres and the telecentre movement. Donors, the international development community, and those organizations currently investing in telecentres are all looking to the outcomes of the first generation of African telecentres as a pointer to possible future fortunes or indeed misfortunes. It was therefore very important to capture learning from processes and outcomes, which were either successfully unfolding or failing.

In keeping with the spirit of the times in which learning and stakeholder participation are key elements, the studies commenced with an interactive and participatory research-design workshop. This workshop was attended by representations from a broad spectrum of stakeholders and interest groups. While it is common for experts and consultants to conduct research quite independently, using only the terms of reference drawn up by the commissioning agency as the point of contact and reference between the researcher and the institution, in the studies reported in this volume, the participation of key interest groups was maintained throughout the major stages of the research process. This accomplished two goals. Firstly, it ensured that the principal stakeholders shared their understanding and expectations of the evaluation and research process, and secondly, it helped guarantee buy-in for the research results. Ownership and buy-in were considered important because the results were to be ploughed into the management and practices of the telecentre projects. Development actors, e.g., the World Bank are currently showing a major concern for the conduct and use of evaluations by evaluated organizations, especially in Africa, and some observers have pointed out that a major determinant of the use of evaluation results is the participation of the evaluated (users) in the evaluation process (Patton 1997).

The research-design workshop, the first significant stage in the research, was held in Nairobi in August 2000 with twenty-nine participants. Participants included research associates from the Johannesburg, Dakar, and Nairobi offices of IDRC, coordinators from the multipurpose community telecentres (MCTs) in Mali and Uganda, project managers from the participating countries, representatives of donor and development institutions (UNESCO and IDRC), and representatives from the executing agencies for the projects and senior evaluation specialists, researchers, and representatives of institutional as well as individual beneficiaries of the projects. The wide array of participants was arranged to ensure that the various interest groups were directly involved in determining the evaluation issues that would form the basis for the investigations. So although in principle all the major interests were tabled at the workshop, some received scant attention during the data-gathering stages.

The principal objective of the workshop was to chart the contours of the evaluation research exercise. Consequently, it was participatory and iterative, using the ‘expert’ knowledge of the participants to guide the conduct and direction of the evaluation research. The major research issues and the key research questions were elaborated, as were the sample, sources, and methods of data collection. The broad design guidelines drawn up at the workshop were later used to prepare the research instruments, which the research teams used in three of the five countries. In South Africa and Mozambique, the studies were well underway when the design workshop took place, consequently, their research design differed from that used in Mali, Uganda, and Senegal. This accounts for some of the differences and similarities in the types of data and analysis presented.

National research teams in each of the countries adapted the centrally developed instruments for their local use. Training workshops were conducted for researchers and project staff in Mali, Uganda, and Senegal during which the instruments were reviewed and adapted for local use and application. Initial findings were discussed at dissemination workshops to enrich the interpretations of findings. The workshops also served to validate the research results.

Research issues

The telecentre is a relatively new institution in Africa, and indeed the world. Although still surrounded by many unknowns, it is believed that as a delivery model for ICTs, telecentres have the potential to transform the lives and livelihoods of many in the developing world and even those in remote locations in developing countries. But, the high rate of telecentre mortality witnessed in Mexico, for instance, does not evoke great confidence. The principal issues of concern for the studies were therefore related to sustainability and the social and economic benefits that can accrue to communities within which telecentres are situated. The studies addressed four major issues:

• Access
• Relevance
• Sustainability (ownership, management, etc.)
• Environments (technological, social, economic, and political).

Research questions

The major research questions addressed by the study were the following (see Appendix II):

• What is the nature of access to ICTs within the telecentres?
• How relevant (i.e., useful and appropriate) are the services and content offered or available at the telecentres to community members and how well do they meet community needs?
• What economic, infrastructure, social, educational, or political factors contribute to, or are important to, the sustainability of telecentres?
• What is the nature of the social, economic, political, and technological context within which the telecentres operate?

Methodology

The studies used a robust methodology that included both qualitative and quantitative methods to collect rich data from actual and potential telecentre users in the communities. These methods included focus group discussions, naturalistic or realistic observations, in-depth case histories and key-informant interviews, user interviews, document analysis, and photo documentation (see Appendix III).

Sample

The primary sample consisted of the telecentres themselves whereas the secondary samples included respondents. The population from which the primary sample was selected included telecentres in Senegal, Mali, Uganda, Mozambique, and South Africa. A proportion of the IDRC-funded telecentres in the five countries, some jointly funded (ITU –UNESCO –IDRC) telecentres in Uganda and Mali, and some private cybercafés or phone shops were included. This mix was important for the sake of making comparisons and for ensuring that a variety of experiences and models were captured. The criteria used for selecting the telecentre sample included: a location that included both rural and urban telecentres, ownership type, services offered, and telecentre maturity. Telecentres that had been operating for less than 12 months were not investigated. Thirty-six telecentres and cybercafés were involved in the studies (5 in Uganda, 3 in Mali, 2 in Mozambique, 6 in South Africa, and 20 in Senegal).

The survey samples were drawn from the population of the catchment area around each of the telecentres, that is, the actual population of users and “potential users” of the telecentres constituted the sample. The total number of individuals who provided information was 3,586.

Instruments

A number of different instrument types were used to capture the rich variety of information. These included a telecentre layout and usage observation guide, a focus group discussion guide, a document analysis guide, an individual case-study interview schedule, a key-informant interview schedule, a user exit-interview schedule (exit poll), and an individual questionnaire. In Mali and Senegal, in addition to the individual questionnaire, an organizational questionnaire was also administered.

Key concepts

IT or ICT

The acronyms ‘IT’ and ‘ICT’ are commonly used in contemporary discussions of computers and computer-based communication and information technology. The term ‘IT’ (information technology), which entered the lexicon earlier, appears to have been overtaken by a preference for its new relative ‘ICT’ (information and communication technology). The usage of the acronym ‘IT’ now appears to be restricted to the more technical components or elements of the subject matter.

What are ICTs?

Generally speaking, ICTs include all those instruments, modes, and means both old and new through which information and or data are transmitted or communicated from one person to another or from place to place. Listed among ICTs are: the telephone, facsimile, video, television, radio, print material (e.g., newspapers and books), and computer-based or computer-mediated modes (e.g., email, chat and news groups, list-serves, electronic conferencing, CD-ROMs, etc.). Even early technologies for communicating information, such as the talking drum ought rightly to belong on this list. Increasingly however, when ICTs are discussed, the notion is of computermediated forms and modes, yet these are only the newest ones. A reality, fast gaining prominence and power is that of convergence meaning a combination of IC technologies or formats for delivering information and communication. This is manifest in the complexity in the capacities of new generation mobile phones for example which have audio, print and video outputs or services. To a certain extent the telecentre concept operates on the basis of functional convergence.

What is a telecentre?

A telecentre is an integrated information and communication facility that houses a combination of both new and not-so new ICTs (e.g., television, video, facsimile, telephone, computers with Internet connectivity, and sometimes books). This type of facility in which a number of different information and communication technologies are housed and used in an integrated manner is seen as the modern telecentre and is called a multipurpose telecentre. There is, however, a certain variety in the form, facilities, and functions available at telecentres, from the simple telecentre with only one or two telephones and no link to the World Wide Web, to a centre with numerous telephones, facsimile machines, printers, and computers connected to the Internet. Telecentres provide public access to communication and information for economic, social and cultural development or telecommunication and information services for a range of developmental aims. The notion of universal access, which is based on Article 19 of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” has provided fodder for the expansion of information and communication services to all without discrimination. Telecentres are seen as potent instruments in the struggle for universal access especially in poor countries and environments.

The nomenclature of telecentres is coloured by differences in geography, purpose etc. Telecentres are also known as Public Access Points and a large number of other names: Telecentre, telecottage, telekiosk, teleboutique, phone shop, infocentre, telehaus, telestugen, digital clubhouse, cabinas puiblicas, multi-purpose access centre, community technology centre, (CTC), multi-purpose community telecentre (MCT), community access centre, multi-purpose community centre (MPCC), community media centre (CMC) or community learning centre (CLC), community multi-media centre, electronic village hall, tele-village or cybercafé, and the list goes on.

Ownership and management patterns in addition to primary purpose also confer other layers of differentiation on telecentres and on the taxonomy. Simple telecentres are popular in Senegal, whereas multipurpose (community) telecentres are a recent creation of development agencies and, although their financial sustainability is an ongoing concern, their validity and utility have become firmly rooted. To date the telecentre idea has been generally adopted in the United States, Canada and Australia, whereas in Africa and Asia the notion is still only taking root having commenced in the latter half of the 1990s.

What is Schoolnet?

The term ‘Schoolnet’ is a shortened version of ‘school networking’. School networking is the electronic connection of schools and students for purposes of enhancing teaching and learning. The physical facility and organizational entity that builds and maintains this connection is what is referred to as a Schoolnet. There are currently efforts to start Schoolnets in many African countries and there is a continental version called Schoolnet Africa, currently located in South Africa.

Structure

The eight chapters in this book comprise three broad sections; the introduction, findings and conclusions. Chapters 1 and 2, which constitute the introductory section, provide the institutional and continental contexts as well as the rationale for the studies and projects whose findings form the bulk of the book. While chapter 1 introduces Acacia, the programme initiative within the International Development Research Centre charged with the responsibility for ICTs, chapter 2 attempts to place Africa on the global ICT landscape. Chapters 3–7 provide details of the country case studies, with each chapter devoted to one country. Chapter 3 describes findings from the Timbuktu telecentre in Mali and showcases the benefits of partnership between international development agencies and a national telecommunications company with technical expertise and political support in a materially well-resourced and technically competent facility. The utility of multi-donor collaboration is sharply sculpted by findings reported in chapter 4, which show that despite operating in a particularly challenging environment, the Mozambique telecentres made good with comparatively less financial and technical support in comparison with the case in Mali. In Uganda, the tale as narrated in chapter 5 is like one of three cities with findings from telecentres that mirror the conditions of Timbuktu, and Mozambique’s Manhiça and Namaacha as well as private experience. Chapter 5 therefore provides the reader with pictures that allow useful comparisons. Chapters 6 (South Africa) and 7 (Senegal) show glimpses from a large number of telecentres, which suggest that telecentre mushrooming is a reality, although failure and collapse are ever-present. In chapter 8, using the research questions as organizing nodes, a summary of key findings is given. The chapter concludes with the notion that the telecentre, like the school or the health centre, which came before, is here to stay.

Document(s) 6 of 18