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| Malawi Takes ICT to Rural Communities: by Lameck Masina |
10/31/2008 |
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The Malawi, government is rolling out what it describs as a ‘challenging’ program to provide information and communication technology (ICT) services to its underserved rural communities by 2012. The effort aims to bridge the digital divide that exists between the rural and urban dwellers. About half of the country’s 28 districts have been earmarked for the initial phase in the ICTs for Sustainable Rural Development Project. The districts identified for the projects include Karonga in the north, Kasungu in the central and Mwanza in the south of the country.
Under the initiative, the government is setting up tele-centers in rural areas throughout the country. This follows completion of the pilot project which started in 2006 in two districts with funding from the International Telecommunications Union. To be regulated by the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA), the telecenters will be run by the communities as a way of involving them in ICT activities.
Communications Manager for MACRA, Zamdziko Mankhambo says the tele-centers are expected to play an important role in improving lives of the beneficiaries.
“Through the internet services people will be able to get information about their businesses as well as getting education materials from the internet and you know most of these people are farmers they will also help get information on how will improve their agriculture products through. Basically they will gain easy access to communication”.
He says besides internet services the tele-centers will provide photo studio, video services; ID processing, computer lessons, fax, phone services, lamination and photocopying. Mankhambo says the communities will have the responsibility of running the centers through clubs which are formed under district development committees. Mankhambo says, to ensure total ownership, the clubs are given responsibility to choose -for themselves areas for the establishments of the centers.
There are nine internet service providers (ISPs) currently operating in Malawi through satellite technology.
Malawi’s Minister of Information Patricia Kaliati says the challenge would be to convince the ISPs to serve the underserved since most of the ISPs consider the rural areas as unprofitable.
“If the service providers are not going in the rural areas thinking that they are not going to make profits, it is a deliberate policy of the Malawi government to make sure that those who are in underserved areas should also get those ICT services. If they [the ISPs] are saying we are not going to be at Kamwendo because we are going to lose 50, 000 kwacha ($350), the government will make to provide the 50, 000 kwacha to the internet service providers to make them go to Kamwendo so that people there benefit from those services.”
Critics however say the project will be less benefit to the target communities because of illiteracy rate that is at 65 percent among the rural dwellers.
Charles Govati, Chairman of the ICT Association of Malawi says to ensure the maximum use of the services the government should have considered establishing the centers at educational institutions.
“If they were going to use secondary schools or primary schools on the on set coverage, would be much better. The core users would be there because the students would be coming in pay a fee, do email because they have got computer classes but they don’t have computers and also the surrounding communities around the secondary schools which is well development would utilize the tele-centers” He says this would also ensure maximum sustainability of the infrastructure.
But Kaliati says the schools’ infrastructure has not been the option in this project because most of the schools will soon have own computers following the new curriculum that includes computer lessons in schools.
Poor telecommunication infrastructure has held back ICT growth in Malawi. Ironically Malawi was the only country in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) region to remove duty on computers and its peripherals in 1996. Until now the country still lags behind in ICT penetration partly because of the exorbitant prices of ICT material.
In 2004 a study ranked Malawi 93 out of the 104 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Networked Readiness index (NRI) ahead of only Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia and Chad in utilizing ICT services. The NRI measures a country’s likelihood of leveraging the opportunities offered by ICT for economic development and business competitiveness. It also examines the country’s environment in terms of regulatory and infrastructural readiness of individuals, business and governments to use and benefit from ICT.
Currently the national ICT penetration remains at 12 percent the lowest among countries in the SADC region. Analysts believe that the project if successfully implemented will rate Malawi among countries who are fully utilizing the services offered by ICT.
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