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 And
YES! It has made a difference to the economy through tourism; animal
husbandry, agriculture and trade. Other benefits include support for
education, health and the monitoring of weather and the environment. In
tourism, guides and small firms have direct contact with tour operators at
large. Some have their own web sites.
For Birama provides statistics that show that his 7-purpose
house of modern technology has 180 000 hits in its 3-year lifespan –
individuals some of whom come back again and again who use the centre for
its modern technologies and 60% of whom have been trained to use the
facilities and most have their own email addresses.
An ICT literacy project for women in small businesses uses
transformed keyboards in the local languages of Tamacheq and Songhai. They
develop their own data bases for finance and communicate with women in other
countries and share business ideas.
 Health
projects include the training of rural doctors in ICT, while teachers and
students are also catered for as well as a ‘Kids teach Kids’ project with
children regarded as ‘innovators’ providing new levels of expertise through
computer games from CD-Rom
Radio is used for an interface with nomadic tribes people who
live mostly in groups of 800 to1000 people. Most are illiterate.
An important part of the ICT programme is working with
Islamic leaders in the community. The centre is an Arabic literary centre
and trains many people to use computers.
The Quran is available on CD-Rom. It is used extensively for
among other things, pronunciation.
Birama is the co-ordinator of the Timbuktu Multi-Purpose
Community Telecentre, that provides a cyber café; telephone and fax
facilities; radio;, a training room; a news room with newspapers and
magazines; a maintenance and repairs department and television and video,
mainly for children. A local correspondent produces a newspaper Annoura (The
Light) at the telecentre from email from correspondents and internet news.
The centre is funded by Unesco, IDRC, ITU and the community
itself.
He said 60% of the users of the centre are under the age of
40, and 28% are women despite this being a predominantly Muslim society.
Birama says a survey of the 2000 regular users of the
telecentres showed that 95% of respondents were using information at a
practical level in areas such as HIV/Aids treatment, nutrition, cattle care,
agriculture, economic issues and control of the desert.
Birama Dialio has been on the project for four years having
taken up the job with interest. He is formerly from the south of Mali. He
said:” Timbuktu is very isolated. ICTs put us in touch with the world.” The
telecentre is 2 000km from the Algerian coast and 1700 from the from the
coastline of Ivory Coast.
“New proposals for the telecentres include developing a
library network and scanning old manuscripts, as Timbuku was the site of the
oldest university in Africa.”
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