African Community Telecentres: In Search of Sustainability

Meddie Mayanja examines the definition of sustainability, how to achieve it, and methods for measuring it in the context of multi-purpose community telecentres in African countries. "After almost three years of bold telecentre pilot projects, concerns about sustainability of such initiatives are growing day by day." From the community telecentres reviewed, almost all are donor-funded including: Namaacha and Manhica in Mozambique, Timbuktu in Mali, Sengerama in Tanzania and Nakaseke, Buwama and Nabweru Community Telecentres in Uganda.

The paper demonstrates that "sustainability is a process and not an end in itself and that it is much more complex than how it has been understood or measured by evaluators..." In Africa, information and communication technologies (ICTs) are coming in to places "where more than half of the population has yet to make a first telephone call and most people in rural communities are illiterate in mostly the English language, which is the biggest medium of communication in the modern ICTs." The author refers to the digital divide "in the sense of a gap between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels" in relation to opportunities to access the internet.

Decentralization in some African countries like Uganda provides local governments the opportunity and resources to moderate the environment in favour of telecentre development. In all the three community telecentres in Uganda, local governments provide limited support or subsidies towards the operation of the telecentres.

The author puts the major issues and variables for understanding the community telecentres sustainability into the following sub-sections:

• The Dimensions of Sustainability
• Sustainability of Infrastructure and Equipment
• Sustainability of Services and Service Relevancy
• Sustainability of Human Resource
• Financial Sustainability for Community Telecentre

In conclusion, the author makes several points:

The concept of sustaining community telecentres requires "planning and close follow-up from the design, implementation and monitoring" of their performance. The responsibility of staff and management of the community telecentres must take place every day. There is also the ongoing issue of finding funding for services that cannot be paid for fully by the community. Meddie Mayanja also points out that the donor community needs to be more patient with African communities who are shifting from an "oral bookless society to an information digital society." She also states "it is no longer valid to assume that mere provision of ICTs will translate into human development." According to Mayanja, aside from the expense of ICTs and the fact that they are often not affordable to communities with limited income levels, the underlying issue of ICT relevancy is an unresolved issue.

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