Document(s) 6 de 12

Overview: Universal access policy and implementation

This chapter examines policies concerned with universal access in Uganda, the mechanisms for implementing them, and the on-the-ground experiences across three different cases. The case study communities are Lira municipality (surrounding the town of Lira as shown in Figure 3.1), Nabweru subcounty (slightly north of Kampala), and Kabale district, including Kabale town and the rural subcounties of Rubaya and Bukinda.

Uganda is often held up as an example of success, for other countries to take note. It was able to partially liberalize its telecom market quite early and, against common convention, it introduced a second major operator before it had privatized the incumbent. Somewhat ironically, part of the reason for its relatively smooth transition was that the incumbent operator had been losing money – which meant there was little incentive for the government to try and maintain control. Three cellular operators, especially the most popular and widespread operator, MTN, have provided cellular coverage to the majority of the country's population. However, as most citizens are poor and rural, the tariffs and associated expenses of owning a phone are still beyond them. A large urban-rural divide is strikingly evident, not just between Kampala and the rest of the country, but between small towns and surrounding villages. This suggests that, despite significant progress, universal access to either phone or the Internet is unlikely to be fully achieved by the market alone.

Figure 3.1 Map of Uganda (Source: CIA)

In towns, entrepreneurial activity, not just in phone services, but also in other ICT-related services, was prevalent. The success of these businesses appeared quite mixed. Profit margins were often low and sometimes negative. As in South Africa, phone services had a ready demand and seemed to be much safer and often more profitable business ventures, although competition was high. In rural areas, information services are unlikely to spark spontaneous market demand despite a perceived need for them, especially regarding market information for farm produce. Integrating such services into other rural development and extension efforts seems the most promising way forward, and a number of projects and efforts in this direction have already been made – specifically the new agricultural extension programme (National Agricultural Advisory Service) and a climate-information programme called RANET, delivered through the Department of Meteorology.

Universal access and policy intent in Uganda

Historical context

Uganda has 26.4 million people (2004 estimate), 86 per cent of whom live in rural areas. Its history following transition from British colonial to independent rule under Milton Obote and Idi Amin was one of oppression. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, many more were exiled, and the country suffered extreme economic and institutional instability and decline.

In 1986, Yoweri Museveni seized power and established a no-party democratic system. He instigated major economic and social reforms in line with the emerging theories and practices of major multilateral institutions. Economic reform, consistent with thinking at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, focused on liberalization, privatization and reducing the role of the government in the market to one of regulator and enabler. Uganda's GDP grew by an average of 7 per cent a year from 1990 to 2000. Many exiles, well educated and optimistic, came home. Keen to help the new Uganda reform itself, donor agencies and foreign governments provided large amounts of foreign aid and loans.

Uganda has a decentralized government system composed of five levels. It is broken into regions and then districts which are further broken into counties, sub-counties and parishes. Most local government activity occurs at the district and subcounty level. All development has been guided by overarching frameworks, namely Vision 2025 and the Poverty Eradication Action Plan.

National leaders identified ICTs as a potential tool to support their national development objectives. In 1997, President Museveni attended the Global Knowledge Conference in Toronto, Canada, and requested the global community to assist Uganda in developing ICT capacities that could improve the lives of its rural and disadvantaged communities. A number of other ministers and high-level politicians championed the cause of ICTs as potential tools for national development (Ofir, 2002).

The telecom sector was privatized and partially liberalized from 1995 to 2000. During this period, some ICT-focused pilot projects were implemented by donor agencies. The most noteworthy were the Nakaseke multipurpose community telecentre, established in 1998 by a partnership between ITU,UNESCO and IDRC, and the Nabweru and Buwama telecentres, established in 1999 by IDRC. In 1999, World Links for Development, sponsored by the World Bank, began to implement school-based telecentres in partnership with Schoolnet Uganda.

Before liberalization in 1996, Uganda Post and Telecom was the parastatal responsible for providing telecommunications service in the country. Tele-density was low and concentrated in Kampala. The quality of service and speed of delivery were also low while costs were high. As part of the liberalization, the Communications Act of 1997 established an independent regulator, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC). Part of its mandate was to establish and administer a Rural Communications Development Fund (RCDF). This, along with licensing agreements and, later, full and effective liberalization, was to be the main tool for ensuring universal access to communications services.

Development policy framework

Ugandan national priorities and strategies have been effectively guided by a number of national development policy frameworks. The 1997 Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) identifies priority areas and strategies. Progress is reviewed regularly through a Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPA) which includes community-level workshops. Carried out under the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, the first PPA resulted in the revision of the PEAP in 2000.

The revised PEAP defines four major goals: fast, sustainable economic growth and structural transformation, good governance and security, increased ability of the poor to raise their incomes, and increased quality of life for the poor. It emphasizes the role of increased market liberalization and private sector development as an indirect strategy to reduce poverty.

Cross-sectoral objectives relevant to ICT-access issues include better public health information, sensitivity to gender issues, and addressing wide geographic disparities, especially in infrastructure. Infrastructure is also noted as important for facilitating private sector development in Uganda, which is in turn a key strategy, although indirect, for reducing poverty. Universal primary education and the Plan for Modernization of Agriculture are two major initiatives aimed at reducing poverty and stimulating development.

The PPAs suggest priorities for poverty reduction and provide feedback on the success of policy implementation. In the most recent PPA, ill health was seen as a primary cause of poverty, followed by limited access to land, lack of markets, high taxes, deaths in the family, alcoholism, polygamy, large families, and lack of women's control over productive assets. In the north and west of Uganda, insurgency and insecurity leading to displacement were identified as key causes of poverty. Access to education, skills, gainful employment (or multiple income sources), and start-up capital were all viewed as key factors in moving out of poverty. Lack of empowerment and knowledge were identified as defining elements of poverty.

Universal access policy

Three policy documents, central to understanding universal access policy in Uganda, are briefly described below.

Uganda Communications Act, 1997

The Act establishes the UCC and the Rural Communications Development Fund (RCDF). It emphasizes that the communication sector should have as little government interference as possible, including direct and indirect subsidies.

Rural Communications Development Policy (RCDP), July 2001

This is the key policy document on universal access in Uganda. Produced by the UCC, it links access objectives to development issues, and provides clear detail on implementation strategies, benchmarks and indicators. Various multilateral institutions, such as the ITU, have showcased this policy as an excellent example of an access policy. Implementation was under way but in the early stages at the time of this research.

The policy explains how the UCC intends to administer the RCDF. It aims to ensure that rural residents have reasonable and affordable access to communications services. Specific objectives are described in Table 3.1.

'Rural' is not defined within the policy. In Uganda, Kampala has a far greater proportion of ICT-related services than any other area in the country, and 'rural' is often used to refer to any place outside it. The UCC uses the political demarcation of the country into regions, districts, counties and subcounties as a basis for planning equitably disbursed services. District capitals, therefore, are the first targets for expanded services and act as hubs for surrounding areas.

As benchmarks are reached, the UCC targets counties, subcounties and eventually parishes.

National Information and Communication Technology Policy, July 2002

The Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST) spear-headed this policy. It was developed through extensive stakeholder consultation, with input from government, the private sector, civil society and donor agencies beginning in 1999. It affirms the government's commitment to ICTs as major tools in Uganda's development, serves to unite otherwise fragmented efforts, both by governmental and non-governmental parties, and creates clear links between ICT activities and overall national development objectives and strategies. While the RCDP more directly addresses universal access issues, what this policy adds is a greater emphasis on content and on the flow of existing information. It puts ICTs into the larger framework of communication systems, including both traditional communication systems and mass media. It also sets up a co-ordinating body so that all ICT-related initiatives, both within government and those instituted by donor agencies and NGOs, work together and are in line with the policy's national objectives.

The policy attempts to strike a balance between content and infrastructure. It has three foci: 'information as a resource for development, mechanisms for accessing information, and ICT as an industry, including e-business, software development and manufacturing' (Government of Uganda, 2002). While infrastructure is not sectoral, information generally is, and the policy includes health, education, agriculture, energy, environment, business, science and technology, and other areas as specific sectors. Taken together, the RCDP and the National ICT Policy identify eight broad areas in which ICT is expected to contribute to national development, as shown in Table 3.2.

Without the implementation plan, the policy is somewhat abstract. It was still being debated in Cabinet at the time of field research, although an implementation strategy was simultaneously under development. This policy is fully compatible with and cognizant of existing communication policies, including the RCDP, which fit as components within this framework. In view of the early stage of implementation at the time of the research, the policy had had few practical effects. Nevertheless, it did suggest that the government was well co-ordinated on the issue of ICTs and committed to their use as development tools. Having such a policy also allows for greater government control over international development projects using ICTs within Uganda.

Sectoral and other policies

In addition to the core policies described above, there are a number of sectoral policies in place. Again, the ICT policy is intended to act as a co-ordinating framework for these other initiatives, and the 2000-revised PEAP is also an important co-ordinating framework. The following are among the various sectoral ICT initiatives by government bodies:

• The Ministry of Education has developed a technology-enhanced education policy.

• The Meteorology Department has participated in an international initiative (RANET) that uses Worldspace technology to transmit seasonal forecasts to rural farmers, especially in drought-prone areas.

• The Ministry of Local Government, sponsored by the World Bank, is implementing a database across the districts that will allow for greater tracking and transparency of local facilities and activities. This will eventually be networked for better information flow between local and national government and across local levels.

While many sectoral activities are not concerned with universal access per se, the decentralized nature of government and the largely rural population necessitate a decentralized ICT infrastructure. Thus, the activities of the UCC to encourage this are highly relevant, just as innovative efforts within sectors (like the health 'personal data assistant' project) to achieve far-reaching connectivity in a low-density rural environment are of potential significance for other access initiatives. Those initiatives concerned with reaching farmers especially would directly benefit from widely accessible public access points in their own strategies.

Other related policies and actions of note include the scrapping of import tax on ICT-related hardware (computers, etc.) as an incentive for ICT adoption in Uganda, and the 1992 liberalization of broadcasting. Broadcasting is classified as separate from point-to-point communications and is licensed through the Broadcasting Council, outside the mandate of the UCC. Radio Uganda, the state-owned station, broadcasts countrywide in 28 languages. According to a 1998 field survey, it is the major source of information in Uganda (Government of Uganda, 2002). Liberalization has resulted in an explosion of FM stations across Uganda – 119 were operating at the time of research. Thus, most districts now have at least one such station broadcasting over a more limited range in local languages. Only about four community radio stations exist, primarily because licenses are almost impossible to obtain. FM stations have often linked with, promoted, used and sometimes started Internet cafés in mid-sized Ugandan towns, including Mbale, Lira and Kabale

Implementing universal access

'It costs us US$300 a month for the connection, compared to $70 a month for the same service in Kampala. We break even and make money on other services. The equipment is 30 per cent subsidized by UCC'.

Joseph Elotu, cybercafé owner in Mbale

Uganda's national strategy for universal access to ICTs has focused on stimulating the market wherever possible and avoiding subsidy (see Figure 3.2.). This applies mainly to infrastructure or mechanisms for information transfer as well as many value-added services. The market will not be fully liberalized until the exclusivity period of the two major operators – MTN and Uganda Telecommunications Ltd. (UTL) – ends in July 2005. Until that date, the licensing obligations of these operators are another tool for encouraging the growth of infrastructure and services in areas that the companies otherwise view as too unprofitable. In addition, the RCDF is being used to subsidize specific infrastructure and services in areas designated as 'unprotected' due to the stated lack of interest of the incumbent operators in doing business there. Of the three case study areas, only Lira was a direct beneficiary of the RCDP at the time of research, a 'point-of-presence' subsidized by RCDP having been established there in May 2003.

Locally relevant development-related information is a separate matter. The government sees itself as a large producer of relevant information and the overall intention is to freely distribute it. This falls largely outside the mandate of the UCC, although it is also subsidizing the creation of local content via district portals.

Regulation, licensing obligations and enforcement

The UCC, the telecom regulatory body in Uganda, drafted the RCDP and is implementing it. This policy is widely seen as innovative and progressive, a potential model for other countries (see Box 3.1).

Figure 3.2 Regulatory strategies for achieving universal access

At the time of research, the market was limited because only two major operators were licensed: MTN and UTL. The companies are permitted to provide a full range of telecommunication services, including fixed line, cellular and international data gateway. This legalized duopoly is seen as a necessary incentive for the companies to invest in expensive infrastructure. Uganda was generally not viewed as a favourable place for such investment due to the high level of poverty and low levels of electrical and road infrastructure. Retrospectively, it has turned out to be very lucrative for both companies, but especially for MTN, which dominates the cellular market. As part of the licensing process, each was also required to pay US$200,000 at the beginning of the license, to pay 1 per cent of annual gross revenues, and to install basic telephone services on a geographically determined basis.

The other cellular operator is Celtel Uganda Limited (which was actually the first mobile operator, licensed in 1995). It was originally not recognized as a major operator, since it was licensed before the Act was passed and the terms had been clearly defined. Its license was later changed to recognize it as a major operator, giving it greater rights, the most important being the ability to operate its own international gateway (Tusubira et al., 2003). MTN has the largest number of cellular subscribers, estimated at over 300,000 in 2003, while Celtel had about 10 per cent of that. MTN also has the broadest network coverage in Uganda. By the end of 2001, MTN was serving 85 towns covering 65 per cent of the country and 75 per cent of the population (Government of Uganda, 2002). By the end of 2004 the coverage had expanded to 120 towns and over 90 per cent of the nation's urban population.

MTN and UTL are using the exclusivity period to strengthen their hold on the market, especially with regard to the Internet services. UTL is also an Internet service provider (ISP) and there is evidence that it is using its monopoly position to squeeze out other ISPs, for example by offering a Freenet service. While UCC is 'technology neutral' in its policies, VoIP is illegal in Uganda unless one of the two major license holders is included as a third party. Likewise, no more international data gateway licenses will be issued during the exclusivity period. Afsat is one company that held such a license predating exclusivity and it is the only company that was marketing VSAT services in Uganda in 2003, through a service called iWay. An iWay VSAT terminal cost about US$4,000 and monthly service was in the range of about US$200 to US$300. This price was much cheaper than what had been available a few years earlier, when a satellite cost tens of thousands of dollars. However, this accommodated a data transmission rate of only 64 kilobytes per second and did not allow for bandwidth resale.

By 2003, 17 ISPs were licensed, with most offering services only in Kampala. However, Bushnet offered wireless services to many areas outside of Kampala, via line-of-sight transmission along the MTN GSM towers. And Afsat offered VSAT, which could be installed wherever there was electricity. Neither of these was a cheap option. The alternative was a long-distance phone call to a Kampala ISP, which provided Internet service that was both expensive and of poor quality.

Internet cafés previously required licenses but the UCC waived this requirement to encourage growth. Likewise, telecentres do not require licenses and the UCC had no formal manner of tracking them.

Non-governmental initiatives

Uganda has a high level of donor and NGO activity, since it is seen as a stable, well governed but poor country where development dollars are likely to make a positive contribution to the country's advancement. In addition, some of Africa's first telecentres were in Uganda, with donors often working in collaboration with the government and local NGOs. Four of the telecentres included in the case studies – the Nabweru telecentre, CPAR Community Learning Centre (CLC) in Lira, and the African Highlands Initiative telecentres in Kabale – were funded by IDRC. The UCC estimated there were about 14 non-governmental telecentres supported by outside donors (excluding World Links telecentres), although nobody had exact figures.

World Links is an international NGO set up by the World Bank. Its main activity has been to set up school-based telecentres (SBTs). World Links Uganda, run by former Nakaseke co-ordinator Meddie Mayanja, had established 15 SBTs in 12 districts. Most were connected via Veristar C-band VSATs, except for four in the area around Kampala that were using wireless broadband (via microwave). These telecentres were computer facilities set up in secondary schools and opened up to the public after-hours. The school is the core client, and the students contribute to the telecentre through a fee of Ush5,000 to 10,000, paid as part of the school tuition fees each term. World Links provided basic equipment and satellite connection, and subsidized the running costs for the first three years of the programme. It also provided ongoing training to the teachers running the SBT, some management and technical support, and networking and informational support including a quarterly newsletter. Schools underwent feasibility assessment before being accepted and were required to develop business plans for the SBTs.

The whole system was working well, according to the national co-ordinator, and with many schools making a surplus, sustainability was not a pressing issue. But then, in January 2003, Veristar went bankrupt. Because the equipment was proprietary, it was not easy to find another service provider and much of the original investment was lost. The schools were off-line for almost eight months while this was being resolved (they eventually went to Afsat). Fieldwork for the research reported here reported here coincided with the sixth month without connectivity and with the end of subsidization looming. While it was not the best time for a researcher to get a proper feel for the full potential of these telecentres, two of them (in Lira and Kabale) were visited during the course of the case study work.

Review of the three community case studies

Lira

'I joined the computer club because the computer is important: without it one can't make a better study [in other school subjects]. I can get extra material via Internet and get connected to friends outside'.

Student at Lango College, Lira

Lira District in northern Uganda has been subject to ongoing insecurity and civil war, which have been especially hard on rural civilians. The town of Lira has been a place of refuge and stability and has grown quickly as people flee the countryside. Traditionally, though, it has had a subsistence economy with very little local industry. It lacks adequate health facilities and food shortages are common.

From about 1998 to 2003, Lira town went from having virtually no ICT services to offering a whole gamut of them: local FM radio stations, Internet cafés, computer training, computer business services, and landline and cellular telephone services (private and public). With the exception of radio and, to a lesser extent, telephone, awareness and use of most of these services remain very limited and drop off quickly as one moves farther from the town. Except for the MTN cellular network, services do not extend into the district beyond the town because of poverty, poor infrastructure and insecurity. In town, local entrepreneurs are enthusiastic about ICTs both as a community service and as a livelihood. They have shown some creativity in marketing their services and are willing to provide high levels of user support. Many of these people are university-educated locals who have chosen to return to their home town. Their ability and desire to create a livelihood in Lira benefit the district.

In Lira town, the radio stations and public Internet centres have in some sense grown up together. Radio presenters were some of the earliest users of the Internet cafés, going there to find news and music for their broadcasts. Radio stations and cybercafés support each other by exchanging free on-air promotion for free Internet access. Radio Lira opened its own cybercafé and also became the sales point for Afsat's iWay VSAT services in northern Uganda.

Lessons

Lira town has seen immense changes in the availability and use of ICTs over the last three years. It demonstrates the potential of radio as a way to directly promote and popularize ICTs among people who might otherwise be unaware of them. This can be sufficient to spark initial interest, although in Lira it was still too early to say what the long-term effects of these promotional efforts would be.

Lira's experiences also show that, although ICT skills are sometimes seen to promote brain drain away from areas with limited employment potential, they can also provide an impetus for staying within a community. This has been the case for a number of entrepreneurs who started ICT-related businesses, focusing on popularizing their use and providing broad access. These businesses have faced challenges, especially because of limited access to capital and because of their dependence upon long-distance dial-up services for Internet access. The availability of local points-of-presence and the opening of the market to a greater range of technologies offered competitively can make a huge difference to these smaller businesses. Otherwise, those larger businesses or externally supported non-profit initiatives able to procure more expensive but satisfactory services such as VSAT (currently expensive, in part because of the single operator and illegality of resale) will be able to out-compete local entrepreneurs based simply on their access to larger amounts of capital. This limits the potential role of competition to the detriment of both the smaller entrepreneurs and their potential customers.

Lira's experiences also indicate that local businesses learn quickly from each other, can respond to their customers' needs, and are capable of providing strong support when they understand that such support is necessary for their own sustainability. In other places, there is a greater tendency to provide minimal support – to count on users already knowing the technology or being able to learn it on their own. In Lira, the low levels of capacity and awareness in the population have made this strategy less viable. Local businesses have recognized the need to grow their customer base.

Despite the outreach efforts of businesses in Lira, there are obvious limitations to the uptake of ICTs there, particularly computer-based technologies. One is the relatively high cost of services given the very low incomes of the rural majority, compounded by transportation and security issues. Many rural people rely on radio. The use of the Internet by radio presenters increases the listeners' access to international and national news and other information, and most programming is in local languages. Information on local security, relayed by reporters in the villages, is the prime concern of most listeners. And where phones can be used, these too facilitate the speedy communication of security information.

Nabweru

'Our marketing happens on a very small scale. We give introduction letters to neighbouring schools, mainly to the teachers. We haven't done more because we don't have the capacity for more customers'.

Owner, communications centre, Nansana

'Those with less education will sometimes come for computer training to get jobs because they don't have money to continue with their studies'.

Attendant, computer training centre, Nansana

Nabweru Subcounty is just north of the city of Kampala. Its largely rural population depends mainly on small businesses in trade and retail, services and production. A third of households also grow food. Depending on where they lived, people had reasonably easy access to services within Kampala and en route to it. However, there were no ICT services within the subcounty proper until 1998. At that time, a telecentre offering a full range of ICT services was established at the subcounty headquarters, funded by IDRC and managed by the UNCST and a local management committee. In 2002, the pilot phase ended. The telecentre stopped receiving funding and was turned over to subcounty authorities, which took full ownership.

The telecentre never had high usage levels; at its peak, it had about 300 users a month. Outside competition gradually increased, especially in telephone services. Dial-up Internet services were stopped in 2002 because the telecentre could not compete with cybercafés using wireless.

The telecentre never had the sort of community ownership and input that were hoped for, and it did not manage to make services widely accessible to the public. One reason for this was simply the low level of public awareness of ICTs within the subcounty. In addition, incomes and ability to pay were generally quite low, although the subcounty was prosperous relative to most of Uganda. Per-hour user fees deterred the merely curious, while computer training also was an investment too high for most to justify without a very clear notion of the benefits. Another factor has to do with the telecentre itself: its poor location. It was beside a jail and far from other shops, amenities and convenient transportation.

Meanwhile, Nabweru is home to a large number of entrepreneurially minded people. Small ICT-related businesses, especially those offering basic computer training and business services, numbered about 15 within the subcounty, not including phone bureaus. Most of these were clustered within the trading centres of Nansana and Kawempe, while similar businesses were also found just outside of Nabweru in Bwaise, including a cybercafé. Many of these businesses struggled to find adequate start-up capital, did not have a clear idea of the kind of demand they might expect for the services offered, and invested little in marketing. Many had gone out of business, although the sector as a whole was expanding.

Lessons

With the clarity of hindsight, it is easy to see that the design and implementation of the Nabweru telecentre could have been better. A more accessible location, attention to marketing and pricing, and earlier local input into substantive management issues, including expenditures, are all measures that could have helped. Still, it is not obvious that there was 'one best way' for the telecentre to address local needs. Even with the suggested improvements, the situation would have remained a major challenge, especially with regard to providing affordable services and building local demand.

It is interesting to speculate what might have been achieved had the original funds been used not to set up a telecentre per se, but to support local entrepreneurs in setting up their own ICT-related businesses. Perhaps local demand was not sufficiently high at the time for this to have been a viable option, although for phone services at least, it should have been. A loan or small-grants programme could have enhanced the viability of entrepreneurs' early efforts and increased their reach, achieving many of the same objectives as the original telecentre. The money could have been used, for example, to capitalize start-ups, train maintenance technicians, market services, network with other local entrepreneurs and share knowledge in other ways. Nevertheless, it would still have been quite a challenge for such entrepreneurs to provide truly affordable access for those on very low incomes.

Kabale

'One problem we have is that people don't know how to handle the phones, especially rural people. They have problems with timing and handling the receivers. We also have problems with people stealing phones'.

Attendant, privately owned public phone booth, Kabale

Kabale is a mountainous district in southwestern Uganda, bordering Rwanda. The research focused on Kabale town, the district's capital and business centre, and on two rural subcounties, Bukinda and Rubaya. Kabale is a densely populated district and farmers face environmental threats related to soil erosion. The area attracts a modest number of tourists because of its natural beauty and the fact it is home to endangered mountain gorillas.

The Kabale case study highlighted the vast differences in ICT provision between towns and rural areas in Uganda. While Kabale town had one cybercafé, two telecentres (neither of which had Internet access at the time of research) and numerous public phone and computer-related services, the types of services offered by these centres were absent from rural areas. The exceptions were private cellular phone ownership (but at low density) and two or three ICT projects incorporated into broader development programmes. In these areas, most people depend on subsistence agriculture and their disposable incomes are small. Moreover, roads, water supply and electrical infrastructure are generally in poor condition.

The experience in Kabale town was parallel to but also distinct from that in Lira. Both towns had early attempts to provide Internet access via long distance dial-up which proved to be of poor quality and difficult to sustain. In Kabale, a business centre at a large hotel and a subsidized telecentre had managed to provide such services, but at a loss. Both towns had school-based telecentres located a few kilometres from the town centre. Both towns had business sectors that had been fairly active in experimenting with ICT provision.

In Kabale, there were no businesses offering maintenance and repair services, and most of the business support services such as typesetting and printing had grown out of existing stationery shops. Businesses had responded to the tourism market and often communication services were located within or beside hotels. There was little emphasis on popularizing ICT services beyond the small segments of student and professional groups who already knew of and used such services. The exception to this was the African Highlands Initiative (AHI) telecentre, since it had a mandate to serve rural populations and contribute to local development. However, its staff did not have any clear strategies for attracting the general population, had at that time no resources for a marketing or advertising campaign, and had found that few local farmers and non-professionals made use of their services. Money, distance, interest and awareness were all widely noted as important factors that restricted use of the telecentre.

Bukinda and Rubaya are rural subcounties that depend heavily on subsistence farming. Each hosted a rural ICT project. The World Vision office in Bukinda hosted RANET, a project in partnership with the Ugandan Department of Meteorology and the international RANET consortium, which delivers climatic and other information via a satellite. Rubaya had its own AHI telecentre located beside the subcounty headquarters, linked to the telecentre in Kabale town. Both of these had experienced technical problems that limited their service offerings. In Rubuya, for example, the telecentre could not establish a wireless Internet link as originally intended and the cellular phone network worked poorly. Insufficient local technical capacity also meant the telecentres had to depend on relatively inaccessible external support which tended to be slow in coming. Nonetheless, as far as these centres had been able to integrate with other development activities, they had provided interesting extra capacity. In Rubaya, such capacity was due more to the organizational skills of the staff than to any ICT use. In Bukinda, the RANET site allowed for the reception of climate forecasts and other information of use to local farmers.

Lessons

Arguably, the most important lessons from this case study relate to rural awareness and use of ICTs. While the ability to communicate and interact with people in other locations is often highly valued in isolated rural areas, many factors inhibit use of ICTs. Information-seeking behaviour does not occur spontaneously if people are not already accustomed to the availability of information and if they have their own methods of decision-making based on custom and habit. Creating an access centre, especially a multi-purpose centre, in a rural area thus implies much more than simply overcoming the great obstacles to building and maintaining an infrastructure in an environment where supports are few and far between. It also implies creating new organizational and social structures, and encouraging new behavioural patterns that allow rural residents to seek out and gainfully apply information. Starting such a venture from scratch is a complex, long-term proposition that may also be expensive and risky. Predicting the venture's specific gains to the local community can be rather difficult.¹

The experiences in both the Bukinda-RANET and Rubaya telecentres support the argument that a more organic, gradual approach is needed, namely one that builds on what is already there (in terms of both organization and physical infrastructure) and uses ICTs to augment it. The experience of both telecentres also supports the argument that user-pay systems are completely inappropriate for rural ICT projects, at least in the early stages. This is because rural people cannot afford to pay – and cannot be expected to pay for what they do not yet value. This is especially true for information-related services, as opposed to human communication services, like the telephone, which rural people tend to value highly.

RANET has focused on a specific informational need and has trained farmers how to apply the information. When the system is in place, farmers notice tangible benefits to themselves within one season. They are better able to plan for and cope with climatic conditions, resulting in more plentiful harvests.² But an additional, higher-level benefit is that they have learned how to obtain, value and apply practical information delivered via ICTs. This is a skill, a behavioural change, that can help them improve many other aspects of their livelihoods.

Comparing the Ugandan cases with access-related development objectives

Table 3.3 gathers observational evidence from the three case communities and relates it to the eight development benefits that Ugandan policies indicate ICTs can provide. Overall, it shows mixed movement towards the intended benefits. In many instances, these observations are tentative without further economic data – for example, on the contribution of ICTs to local business.

Another important overall observation is that this situation was clearly dynamic. There was a clear divide between towns and villages in the level of awareness and use of telephones, but many village families had relatives working in town. These people would often introduce their rural relatives to telephones or even buy them cellular phones, and this trend meant the divide might be transitory. With computers and the Internet, this was much less likely, since these required a reliable source of electricity, maintenance, and literacy to use.

Learning from Uganda's experience

Liberalization, cost and technological availability

Uganda's decision to introduce a second national operator before completing privatization of its state-owned operator has meant that it has had more competition in its telecom market than most other African countries. Under these conditions, fixed-line service has improved greatly although cellular penetration has increased much more quickly. The spread of fax and the Internet are both limited to fixed-line penetration. Wireless broadband use has been very popular as ISPs can offer it directly. However, it can only be practically used within a relatively small distance of an international data gateway. Its use, therefore, is widespread in Kampala but rare in other towns.³

Opening the market has created relatively more opportunities than in South Africa. However, many technologies, such as VoIP, are still effectively unavailable or only available through a limited number of operators, under certain conditions. And prices remain high. Cellular phones and public phones are affordable in the sense that a single service unit can be purchased at a time (ie, pay-as-you-go). Nonetheless, the tariff rates remain high, and for the rural majority, phone isn't affordable.

The expense of connecting to the Internet through international gateways limits bandwidth availability and keeps costs high. Some people are working around this by maximizing the within-country connectivity, which is potentially much cheaper. Bushnet, for example, has a system that manages traffic to maximize the within-country speed and bandwidth and reduce international bottlenecks. Others have spoken of creating within-country broadband networks that minimize their use of the international link.

In Uganda, radio and telecommunications were liberalized during the same period. This has had some interesting outcomes, especially in towns far from Kampala, where there has often been a convergence of ownership and interest between the two. Specifically, some radio station owners have introduced on-site cybercafés, promoting them through their broadcasts.

Reach of centres and the urban-rural divide

In Uganda, the decentralized government structure, including the wide spread of district capitals, encourages a broad but superficial distribution of ICTs across the country. This has been further encouraged by the relatively high level of liberalization and by explicit UCC policies that set reach targets by district and subcounty. Despite this spread, there is a big gap between towns and even the closest surrounding villages in terms of awareness and use. This gap has not been bridged, although in some places, such as Lira, people are trying. School-based telecentres, often located on town outskirts, also increase accessibility for the neighbouring populations.

Providing access in rural areas is a big challenge. On the supply side, limiting factors include infrastructure, maintenance, equipment supplies, staff capacity and transport. On the demand side, several things are lacking: money, awareness, client transportation to the centres, and clarity (sometimes on the part of the centre itself) about how the services can be used to improve livelihoods.

The experiences of access centres in this study suggest that user fees are major barriers in popularizing services. Within rural areas, one of the best ways to overcome inhibiting factors is to embed access to and use of ICTs into existing development processes. RANET is an example of this. It helps to absorb the costs and complications of supply and to address demand limitations, by using existing programme delivery mechanisms, relationships and organizational structures. In developing access centres, especially in rural areas, small steps are best. The more remote and difficult the situation, the more important it is to build on what exists and to break down and deal with complexity in stages.

Strategies for the short, medium and long term

Strategies to increase access to ICTs must run along a number of different timelines and be harmonized with other efforts. Infrastructure development, especially fixed line and electricity, are important factors that can limit the effective supply of telecommunications. Lack of awareness and capacity amongst the general population limits both supply (ie, people able to develop, offer and maintain services) and demand (people aware of and able to use services). The UCC is already using its funds to sponsor development of vanguard ICT-training institutions within different districts as a way to build this capacity. Over the long term, equipping schools, training teachers, and developing appropriate curricula are important strategies that are being pursued by both the government and NGOs (such as Schoolnet Uganda).

Within the different timelines, the specific role of shared access centres, and specifically those that are subsidized, is dynamic and requires some careful thought. Where centres are set up under the most adverse conditions, they often fail because they do have the vast resources needed to confront those conditions. But attempting to surmount the obstacles may not actually be a top priority for the communities in which the centres are located. So we have a conundrum: since community members are unfamiliar with ICTs and their potential uses, they are unable to make an informed decision as to how valuable a telecentre-type service would be. Arguably, at least some of the inhibiting factors, such as lack of electricity, should be first addressed by separate efforts so that the complexity and expense of introducing ICT services is reduced to some manageable level. At the other end of the spectrum, some development-funded efforts have established public access centres in places where the market was already effective. Or they have subsidized or donated expensive equipment to local organizations, including businesses. Such anticompetitive behaviour is unfair and as likely to inhibit local development as to support it.

This dilemma has no magic solution. But it does stress the need for reflection before the establishment of funded centres. Feasibility has to be balanced with need, and in practice the two often have a strong inverse relationship. The purpose, target users, differentiation from other services, and the longer-term vision for the centre all require forethought, with the understanding that the ICT sector is dynamic and that some 'rural' areas, although far from Kampala, nonetheless host entrepreneurial centres.

Developmental impact and potential

That the developmental impact of ICTs depends entirely upon how they are used is almost a truism. Yet it bears repeating. Use in turn depends on the needs, capacity, inclination and awareness of the user, plus the larger organizational and social structures in which the ICT is embedded. The Internet can be used to find pornography or to find information useful to basic food production. The telephone can be used to make a life-saving call during an emergency, to contact Short Message Service (SMS, which allows messaging to mobile phones and other wireless devices) for current market prices on food commodities in Kampala, or as an expensive social status symbol. One use does not preclude the other; indeed, even if a phone was purchased to make a social statement, it still opens the potential for uses with tangible value.⁴

In Uganda, trends in Internet use favour it as a tool for sending e-mail, especially internationally. The World Wide Web is most often used as a source of entertainment, music, pornography, education, information on overseas educational opportunities and scholarships, job opportunities and international news. Some professionals also use it in their work-related activities.

F.F. Tusubira, a commissioner of the UCC, has noted that cellular companies found the peak use of phones was between 4 pm and 9 pm, strongly implying social use. This further implies that most phone use does not create economic value for the user, but rather produces profit for the large companies at the expense of poor Ugandans. This research also found that social use of the telephone, especially to contact family members, is the primary use. However, because economic interdependence amongst family members is such an important part of most people's livelihoods, such use is not necessarily non-economic. It is very difficult, however, to judge the economic value of telephone use versus cost – there is no clear linear relationship. It is also apparent, in both South Africa and Uganda, that social factors, as much as or more than economic factors, motivate people, particularly young people, to acquire a cellular phone. It is very rare, for example, to see a Ugandan owning the cheapest model of phone available in the shops; indeed, many people own higher-end models.

Public access centres remain the main vehicle for ICT use for most people in Uganda. They can also be important sites of socialization around ICT use. Pure public use (where the centre sells a service) tends to mirror the patterns people have learned in using ICTs at university or in work settings, which often include entertainment-related uses. Purpose-driven ICT projects, such as RANET or specific online collaborations amongst students at an SBT, are rarer and generally target users who have not been socialized to ICT use in other settings. They also tend to embed the use of ICT in activities that have a specific, intended value.

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