

Telecentres	• Home • Search Site • Publications • About Acacia • Contact Us • For Media •	Français

Conference Guide

All Conference Reports Presentations Speakers Connectivity Africa News Releases Forum
Up
Venue: Kwa Maritane

The Experience with Community Telecentres

By Florence Etta

Community telecentres are also known as public access points. The primary goal of a telecentre is the public provision of tools to enhance communication and the sharing of information. The earliest community telecentres on the continent are reputed to have opened their doors in 1998.

Key findings

Use

Undoubtedly, the telecentres have brought a large number of people in disadvantaged and under-served communities into direct contact with modern ICTs. This familiarization would not have been possible without the telecentre projects but only a small percentage of the total population use the telecentre facilities. The numbers of daily visitors ranged from about 8 to 20 for each TC.

Users are shown to have been disadvantaged on the basis of age, gender, education, literacy levels, and socioeconomic status. A striking observation is the absence of old and disabled people at the telecentres.

Fewer women than men use telecentre services in practically all of the countries and facilities.

Education appeared to be a key determinant of telecentre use. A popular belief expressed by respondents was that telecentre services were for the elite or educated

Services

The telecentres in all five countries offered similar services: photocopying, telephony, and training in computer hardware, software, Internet access, and word processing. Facsimile transmission; document design, processing, and printing; and email services. The telephone was the most popular service whereas email and internet werethe least popular especially in rural areas. TC usage is still dominated by unsophisticated purposes and motives.

Ownership, management and sustainability

Three types of TC ownership models were evident; private (individual) owned, private NGO or CBO owned and trusteeship. The franchise model seen in South Africa is regarded as a variant of private ownership. Most of the community TCs were in the category of trusteeship. This is an arrangement where the project is being held in trust by the executing agency for a specified period of time until the final owner i.e. the community is ready to take it over. None of the models was found to be consistently related to good management although private ownership models left more authority in the hands of managers unlike in trustee models.

Most of the telecentres experienced management problems, ranging from poor attitudes, to weak management, and the absence of adequate technical skills, inadequate equipment and high cost of equipment maintenance and services.

Financial sustainability for community telecentres remains elusive. Two examples of sustainable community TCs were found in Phalala (South Africa) and Guédiawaye (Senegal). TC financial sustainability was under constant threat not only from weak management but also from recurrent technical and infrastructure problems in all countries. These problems included: power failures or interruptions; poor connectivity; computer failures; printer breakdowns; non-functioning software; obsolete or unusable equipment; complex management arrangements, security failure and policy failures e.g. import duties or taxes on equipment.

Technological Environment

The greatest threat to TC sustainability was technical and technological. In addition to the generally poor telecommunications infrastructure, the overall state of infrastructure

Recommendations

On account of the huge unmet demand (need) for information and communication, levels and extent of poverty, the slow and uneven pace of development of delivery mechanisms, in particular to rural areas where the majority still reside, the telecentre has a certain and definitive role and place in contemporary development.

· Support should therefore be given to start, maintain and run telecentres because they perform a primary development function for information and education, which is considered a basic and important human right. Telecentres are to information what schools are to education and health centres to health and bodily well being.

· International Development Agencies, multilateral, bilateral and national agencies should support the development and growth of telecentres. This means, for example, extending project lifespan since shorter project lifespans are insufficient to adequately support optional development of telecentres.

· Governments and their agents must invest in the articulation and development of a clear theory of inclusiveness and effectiveness to guide the roll out of ICT services.

· Project designers should also have a similarly clear framework for the empowerment of users and non-users.

· National governments should create enabling environments through policies and policy instruments for the growth of telecentres. Laws should be supportive not prohibitive of development of appropriate technologies. For instance, import duties and taxes on information equipment e.g. computers as well as licenses to operate both equipment and premises devoted to the development and delivery of information should be reasonable, realistic, easy to get and difficult to revoke.

· Governments and development agencies should design projects to train a growing number of target categories of people and equip them with the skills requires for content development and the transformation of content into multi-media formats.

· Investments should also be encouraged into experiments in applications in the areas of health, education, governance etc.

· Government policies that influence costs and service pricing need to be implemented e.g. import duties, taxes, broadcast operating licenses e.g. VSAT etc, software and hardware prices, services which cost less to deliver e.g. Voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) should be encouraged and researched.

· Private sector IT and communications companies should consider forming creative partnerships with each other and with national governments on one hand and international development agencies on the other to create cheaper products which will respond to the needs, assets and conditions of the communities served by and through telecentres.

· Expanding access, reaching the underserved:

Telecentres, project developers and project managers need to design telecentres projects with current non-users in mind. This requires taking practical and strategic needs as well as realities into consideration. For example women, older and or handicapped persons may have inhibitions about using telecentres on account of their locations, schedules or physical layout which are insensitive or perceived inappropriate. It is therefore important to keep these people and the reasons for their non-use in mind because if the projects are so designed, use will improve and non-use decrease.

· Assuring quality, enhancing relevance, expanding choices:

Telecentre services desperately need improvement the fact that sometimes users have no viable alternative not withstanding. Areas of action include the following:

Location: - Careful choice of location taking into consideration a large number of factors that affect the use, accessibility, safety etc of public spaces.
Poor Publicity: -Awareness and sensitisation should be increased through the use of handbills, radio broadcasts of services and interactive services design and delivery.
Poor management: - Financial and technical management training should be given to staff and committee members on a regular basis as a feature of projects.
Simpler management models and, or if not, clearly articulated and supportive roles for each group of actors should be instituted.
The nature of significant relationships and responsibilities in a trustee model are still unclear and in dire need of refinement and understanding through further research.
Better service hours and arrangements should be developed e.g. 24-hour pre-paid services could be arranged public sensitive working hours should be adopted. Sensitivity to public needs is a necessity for improved use e.g. time and space should be allocated for different user types say women and younger users.
Physical facilities: - attention to public needs e.g. booths for privacy in addition to sensitivity to human functions and functioning e.g. availability of toilets, fans etc.
Equipment purchase and maintenance: - The cost of purchasing and maintaining equipment should be reduced through a number of schemes e.g. tax exemption or breaks, reclassification of communications equipment, technical training for telecentre staff, volunteers and the institutionalisation or development of village technical corps in a scheme for/of technicians on foot/bicycles/. The cost of equipment maintenance and management should be a subject of serious study and innovation.
Cost of Services: - Efforts should be made to develop subsidised services, group rates, e.g. for women, students, or members. Time banding where cheaper rates can be given for off peak periods and differential pricing e.g. for council / government offices who take services on credit or long to pay. Is should also be possible to arrange for cheaper collective rates e.g. rates for electricity, telephone etc. for TCs so that services can also be subsidised. Open source options and arrangements should be explored, researched and utilised.
Cost of equipment: - Cheaper hard ware and software should be developed e.g. thin client solutions and TCs should be used to pilot them.
Literacy and Language: - both local and official languages should be used for operations at TCs and content in local language sourced, or translations into local languages of useful and popular texts should be encouraged and supported.