Hope the year has began on a good note for you!

Here is the final report of the CTA supported KenTel workshop which was held on the 9th and 10th of 2010. We look forward to hosting another interesting one this year around February or March on Business Process Outsourcing, with hopes to encourage telecentres in Kenya to embrace entrepreneurship for sustainability.

Comments and suggestions for the next workshops are much welcome and will be appreciated.

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The workshop which was organised by the Ghana Information Network for Knowledge Sharing (GINKS) in partnership with its local partner, Savana Signatures (SavSign) drew participants from a cross-section of Junior High Schools some of which included Dabokpa JHS, Shishegu Zion JHS, Kamina Barracks JHS, Vitting SHS, NOBISCO, Dabokpa Technical Institute and other sister organization like ISODEC, NNED, BoldSteps Foundation and CALID

Welcoming participants, the Director of Savana Signatures, Mr. Stephen Agbenyo briefed the participants about the fact that the Ghana ICTAD policy is hinged on 14 key tenets which represent the vision for Ghana’s informational transformation.  He also gave an in-depth history about Savana Signatures stating among other things that the vision of SavSign is to mainstream ICT into education, research into key ICT education related issues, engage in knowledge sharing through the organization of workshops and running of ICT clubs for schools.  He also acknowledged the active partnership between Savsign and Radboud University in the Netherlands to build the capacity of teachers and students.

Briefing the participants on the activities of GINKS of which Savsign is an active partner, he elaborated the fact that GINKS seeks to facilitate capacity building for development, knowledge sharing and focuses mainly on health, gender and agriculture. The delivery was spiced with a video documentary on the Global Teenager Project, a project that interconnects schools across the globe for knowledge sharing.

The Chairperson for the seminar, Mr. Abdul-Razak Ewuntomah from the Regional Education Office emphasised that just as the private sector is seen as the engine of national growth, ICT is the foundation for effective national development in this 21^st century. He therefore, encouraged participants to take issues that will be discussed at the seminar seriously and go back to put them into practice and not rest since any unused knowledge, decays.

Making the second presentation, Mr. Ken Kubuga, CEO of BoldSteps Foundation and a lecturer at the Tamale Polytechnic dilated extensively on the Ghana ICT for Accelerated Development (ICT4AD) Policy with a focus on Education. Giving a brief background to the policy document, he emphasised that its purpose was to modernise agriculture and develop education for accelerated national development.  He examined the 14 pillars which serve as the basis for ICT4D in Ghana, the ultimate purpose of which is to enhance effective governance, health care, improve agriculture, modernize the economy, enhance education and improve national security for accelerated national development.

Focusing on the second pillar which focuses on promoting ICT in education, he gave statistical data that revealed that in 2003 Ghana had a 60% literacy rate which rose to 80.6% in 2008 even though there was a high drop-out rate of 50% in BECE within the same period. This second pillar, he said, seeks to facilitate education through ICT and promote e-learning, modernize the educational system and achieve universal basic education and basic computer literacy. The policy objectives he stated include promoting access to tertiary education and promoting technical vocational education.  In trying to achieve these policy objectives, 21 strategies were outlined some of which aim to transform Ghana into an information and knowledge-driven ICT literate nation, Introduce computers into all primary, secondary, vocational and technical schools and ensure that all universities and colleges take steps to progressively offer their programmes and courses online to broaden access to higher education to a large section of the population and to maximize the quality and efficiency of learning processes, systems and activities.

Mr. Kubuga lamented however, that while the FCUBE is on course, the chunk of the computers are limited to SHS and tertiary institutions.  Also, Technical institution and polytechnics have failed to respond and to strategically position their courses to achieve the goals in the ICT4AD policy document due to financial and human resource constraints.

Remarking on the delivery, the chairperson lamented the paradoxical situation where Ghana supplied India with rice in the 1960’s and how we are currently a net importer of rice from other countries to feed ourselves. This he said is due to our failure to fully embrace ICT into our national life as Ghanaians and our inability to modernize our agriculture. A participant regretted that even though Ghana has a well framed policy, there is no road map or time frame for achieving these well elaborated strategies and objectives.  Another participant suggested that Government should show more commitment in incorporating ICT into education by absorbing electricity bills of ICT laboratories and by allowing it to be consolidated like the street light bills.

Mr. Agbenyo, presenting a priority scale of GES in mainstreaming ICTs, showed that at the top is the Ministry of Education and at the bottom is pre-schools; an indication of who actually matters to the Ghana Education Service.  He then went further to divulge that Savsign was looking for funding support to introducing some kind of a “one Laptop top per a teacher” since teachers are the facilitating agents of every learning including ICT education.

Delivering the second presentation on the topic “Application of ICT tools in school”, Mr. Raphael McClure Adomey, an ICT instructor at the St. Charles Minor Seminary Senior High School admonished participants to always utilise any knowledge they acquire since knowledge that stays unused decays.  This, he stated, is the only surest way we can utilize ICTs to transform and change the traditional approach to data management.  He went further to elaborate on how the use of ICT tools can be of immense use for headmasters and school administrators.

He mentioned that ICT tools will enable them keep track of students’ academic data using excel which can even present a graph for easy evaluation of student’s records. Supervision and admission of students as well as monitoring of teacher’s attendance were also seen as the benefits of embracing ICT and mainstreaming it into school administration. Mr. Adomey also expounded on the benefits of ICTs to Teachers and school examination and academic board in keeping students’ records as well as registration of their students.

He lamented that in spite of the heavy importance of ICT, the GES still encourages manual record keeping at almost every level of their operations. He also cited inadequate infrastructure such as the unavailability of both computers and electricity and the lack of capacity building and inadequate financing of ICT related programmes. Mr. Adomey ended his submission by admonishing participants to lead the fight in bringing about total ICT transformation and ensure that it permeates into the educational sector.

Participants reacting to the presentations said among other things that there was the need for us as Ghanaians to change our lukewarm attitude when it comes to ICT related matters and face the realities of the 21^st century. Other participants also urged Savana Signatures to continue to provide practical training to teachers in the effective utilization of PowerPoint, Word and most importantly Excel to enable them prepare students’ reports and save time. Participants further suggested that there should be in place a follow up service scheme to ensure that teachers who are given some training go to share the knowledge with their colleagues and also impart them to the students.

The representative from ISODEC, Mr Nsiah A. Philip urged schools to form strong partnerships with their PTA’s and other organizations to help provide resources which will widen and strengthen the knowledge base in ICT. Mr. Abdul-Rashid of Savsign bemoaned the situation where some stake holders set back the clock of progress and cited an instance where Savsign’s efforts at providing a free Teachers’ ICT resource center for teachers were stifled due the inability of the District Assembly to provide a place to house the training centre. He also lamented situations where teachers who are invited to attend seminars of this nature fail to turn up because there is no T&T for them.

In his closing remarks, the Chairperson expressed gratitude to GINKS and Savana Signatures for organizing the seminar to plunge teachers into not just the policy document on ICT4D but to also let teachers identify their roles in mainstreaming ICT into education in Ghana. While thanking the teachers and head teachers for availing themselves for the seminar, he also admonished teachers to eschew laziness and build their capacities by enrolling in computer courses during holidays in other to catch up with the rest of the world.

Now is an important time in the development of the Rwanda information and communication technologies( ICTs) sector. ICTs were always a pivotal part of the Vision 2020, so to highlight their importance and facilitate their development, the government in 2000 launched the National ICT Plan (NICI I). The plan was formulated as taking place over four five year cycles. The first, from 2000 to 2005, focused on the creation of a fertile, enabling environment in Rwanda for ICTs initiatives to take hold. The second, from 2006 to 2010, placed emphasis on the development of key ICT infrastructure such as the laying of fiber optics cables. 2011 is a critical year-- not only because it marks the launch of NICI-3, but because the emphasis of this third phase is on the development and use of new services that were made possibly by phases one and two. Thus, a newly participatory phase in Rwanda's ICTs development is set to begin.

While NICIs one and two were important steps, there were also significant challenges associated with them. Not only was there a low level of understanding of the programs by the general populace, and weak monitoring and evaluation, but the length and complexity of the plans meant that they had a limited capacity to change and evolve to meet unexpected obstacles and challenges. In order to address these issues, the third phase has been broadly divided into five areas-- ICT skills development, private sector development, ICT for community development, E-government and cyber security. For each of these areas, a cluster working group has been created. These are diverse groups of planners and stakeholders in each of the five areas. In the coming five to ten years, they will set goals and develop projects to be undertaken in each area, as well as identify the greatest needs and  points of intervention. By the end of February 2011, each group will present a first draft strategic action plan showing the way forward. Through this system, NICI-3 will have a degree of creativity and flexibility absent from the previous two phases.

To inaugurate the new system, members of the cluster working groups met from the eighth to the tenth of December, 2010. They highlighted key short, medium and long-term goals, identified priorities and initiatives in each area, and presented them to the other groups. Dividing the different areas of NICI-3 into working groups made up of experts and stakeholders from each field means that maximum knowledge and expertise will be brought to each aspect of the program. By facilitating knowledge sharing between the different cluster groups, flexibility and cooperation are ensured.

This cooperation between domains is key to the success of NICI-3. E-government, which focuses on the creation and use of ICTs for delivering government services, must work closely with cyber security to ensure confidentiality and safe-keeping of records. ICTs for community development, while focused on awareness, availability and affordability of ICT services, especially in remote areas, will work closely with private sector development, which includes entrepreneurial and business training for ICT providers in these areas. To ensure continued cooperation, frequent meetings will be routinely held between members of the cluster working groups.

While NICI-3 is a big step in Rwandan ICTs development, the newly created approach of cluster working groups brings a measure of cooperation and creativity to the project that was not there before. As the National ICT plan grows in scale new tools are being brought to the process to ensure its smooth running. An increasingly knowledge-based economy cannot be achieved without significant achievements in ICTs knowledge and use, and the government of Rwanda is rising to meet the challenge.

The second day of the forum focused on local content and capacity building for telecentres managers. The managers split into smaller groups to identify potential new services which would help telecentres to be more sustainable and create impact at community level. Services such as government and agriculture related were identified as key issues in transforming telecentres into real “Community service and knowledge hubs” The capacity building for telecentre staff was seen as a critical factor affecting negatively the performance of telecentres managers and was seen as an urgent issue which needs to be addressed soon.

The meeting featured several speakers from RTN stakeholders. One was a representative from the Digital Opportunity trust (DOT) who talked about community training through telecentres. The organization trains unemployed college graduates in ICTs and business skills, and then sends them into the field to offer trainings to cooperatives of youth and women through telecentres. Another speaker from the Rwanda Development Board gave a talk on the national ICTs plan. He discussed NICI and its key features, its focus areas and cluster working groups. The talk highlighted a key challenge. Telecentre managers are important players, particularly within the ICTs for community development focus area-- the speaker described them as "key salespeople" because they have the strongest understanding of the community. However most of the managers at the conference had never heard of NICI before, and had little understanding of ICTs at the national level. Their primary concerns were learning more about the plan and increasing communication between them and RDB, including Kinyarwanda translations of key materials. The RDB representative carefully noted their concerns, and promised follow-up.

The conference ended with a soft launch of RTN portal which was developed with the support of Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural cooperation(CTA).A demonstration was done to show how telecentres manager would use the portal to share knowledge For all of the individual challenges and concerns addressed in the conference, it could be said that the common theme was stronger communication and coordination of efforts between telecentre managers. If this is improved, a significant step will have been taken in the future of Rwandan ICTs development.

Over sixty participants mainly Telecentre managers and other ICT4D stakeholders gathered at La Palisse hotel in Kigali  on December sixteenth for a  2 days workshop . Items on the agenda were potential improvements and the shifting role of telecentres in the development of rural Rwanda, The Thousand Telecentres  project in Rwanda and challenges faced by the telecentre movement  . The important topics under discussion and strong participation from all involved combined to make the first day a success.The Telecentre meeting is a partnership between The Technical Centre for Agriculture And Rural Cooperation(CTA) and Rwanda Telecentre Network(RTN)

            The meeting began with introductions, during which participants expressed their expectations . A number of these were voiced, but two that came up frequently were the needs to debate on favorable regulations for telecentres, and subsidized internet service to off-set its high cost. After introductions Paul Barera reviewed the Thousand Telecentres Handbook, and two United Nations speakers discussed plans to introduce the concept of knowledge  and Tele-inovation centres into Rwanda. In these knowledge centers, the needs of a community in diverse areas of life would be assessed, and the community telecentre would be designed to fill as many of them as possible. This would be particularly relevant to telecentres in Rwanda, given the government's efforts to change the country into a knowledge based economy, in large part through increased reliance on ICTs.

            During the conference, we were lucky enough to have a representive from the Rwandan Utility Regulation Agency (RURA) present. This became relevant during a question and answer session. The concern was voiced that while networks are very important for telecentre managers in Rwanda, they are both expensive and frequently unreliable. While the representative assured the telecentre managers present that RURA was always available to help them with their problems-- they are currently working on running fibre optics cables from both Uganda and Tanzania so that if one is accidentally cut there is still network access-- it was also clear that RURA is the source of some problems. For example, to have a licensed telecentre under current regulations, one must have a minimum of ten computers-- an extremely difficult standard to reach in Rwanda, and one that RTN is hoping to see relaxed.

            During the introductions, one concern voiced by several managers was seeing ICTs used to help people in the most rural areas. When given a chance during the conference to answer the question of whether or not ICTs can ultimately be of use to people in the countryside, an overwhelming majority of them answered yes. Their enthusiasm was not shared by all however, and those who answered no or were uncertain had some valid concerns-- despite strides that have been made in ICTs, a large majority of Rwandans still do not use or understand them. One manager pointed out that because ICTs are almost entirely used by wealthier Rwandans, they may not seem accessible or relevant to those with less money.

            After lunch, the managers split into smaller groups to discuss internal and external challenges that are currently faced by telecentres. They also offered suggestions on how to address some of these problems. There were strong similarities in the lists compiled by the different groups. The most common internal challenges were lack of management training and specialized ICTs knowledge, such as computer maintenance and networking. Telecentre managers frequently lack the ICTs that they would like-- more computers, printers, digital cameras-- and because they also lack the money that they would need to hire staff with strong ICTs skills, they continue to have problems, and their customer service suffers.

            The internal challenges listed  were also frequently exacerbated by other external factors. One of the most common concerns was poor service and high monthly rates from internet service providers. Another was high taxation. While the government encourages telecentres, one manager suggested, they still do not treat them as the small businesses that they are, taxing them at the same high rates that larger businesses pay. Many managers also do not own the buildings in which they operate their telecentres, instead paying rent on them to landlords. But these landlords are free to unexpectedly raise their rent, which they frequently do. Not only do all of these factors hurt the quality of service that is delivered, but they force managers to charge higher prices than they otherwise might. The people most affected by high prices are of course poorer Rwandans in rural areas, and this becomes another potent barrier to their increased use of ICTs.

            Despite their many challenges, the managers offered a number of different potential solutions to them. Most of them involved increased government support to telecentres regardless of the ownership. The government could lower its taxes or use the universal access fund  to support struggling managers. Another suggestion was to mandate that all government  services to be accessed  electronically to. This has already been done in parts of Kigali, and it has the potential advantage of creating considerable added incentive to learn about ICTs. One other commonly cited challenge was the lack of awareness of ICTs on the part of many Rwandans. Any effort to enhance awareness, therefore-- be it through formal trainings, adding incentives to learn (as in the example above) or informal announcements at public events such as Umuganda(monthly public work)-- was viewed as welcome.

            If the number of challenges faced by telecentre managers was imposing, their passion, creativity and drive to overcome them was an encouraging counter-balance. The first day of this conference sparked fresh thought, ideas, and perhaps most importantly a renewed interest in continuing to work together and support one another while charting the way forward.