Why SA remains ICT
illiterate
IT is well known that the majority of South Africans remain
excluded from the benefits that ICT, and the internet, can bring. It is
equally well known that for President Mbeki, improving such access and
reducing such illiteracy, is a national priority. What became apparent at
the pan-African conference of the IDRC, held in the Pilanesberg this month,
is that a key obstacle to this access is in fact government itself.
Not just Telkom, a culprit in its own right, but in the form
of the Universal Service Agency (USA), as personified by the new CEO of this
agency, Dr Sam Gulube. The USA is supposed to roll out “telecentres” to
under-serviced areas of South Africa, such as the rural areas.
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'What’s South Africa doing? Well, as the CEO of the agency told us in
response to questions from the floor, we don’t know. ' |
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As the Ugandan, Tanzanian and Mozambican delegates at the
Acacia Conference were able to tell, with relatively small amounts of money,
supplemented by donor funds and private entrepreneurs, telecentres can bring
relatively isolated communities into the new world of limitless information
and virtual libraries on everything from history to health, from school
projects to career guidance, from education to e-government.
Indeed, many in the SADC region are succeeding in this,
creating islands of opportunities in a sea of under-development. Initial
government subsidies can get the ball rolling, with differentiated fees for
business users and the general public cross subsidising school pupils and
the indigent.
A telecentre also can become self-sustaining over time, with
photocopying or printing and fax revenue paying for cost-based services.
A good news story, and one that is about empowering the
disempowered, creates SMMEs and grows jobs. And South Africa, as the best
resourced country on the continent, with a leadership committed to the
process, should be a leader in the field.
What’s South Africa doing? Well, as the CEO of the USA told
us in response to questions from the floor, we don’t know. Or at least, he
doesn’t know. Why he, under these circumstances, is CEO, we don’t know.
What we do know is that he doesn’t know how much the levy on
telecommunications companies has raised since 1996, how much has been spent
on the paltry 48 telecentres we have managed to set up in the nine years
since the project was launched, or indeed, how many of these are in well off
urban or poor rural centres.
What all the conference delegates were able to decide with
some confidence, was that Dr Gulube does know a good suit
when he sees one.
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