District Commissioner Chiku GawalaDirector General of Costech Dr. MshindaDear participants of this important workshop on ICT for rural development,
I remember years ago, when I lived in Tanzania in the mid-90s, when the route to Bagamoyo was only a dust track filled with potholes and you had to doge your way around them for 60 long kilometres to get to your destination. I was told at one time that only a drunk would drive straight on that road. The road has been built and within days of its completion traffic on it was brisk. ICTs are a little different. Compared to road construction, building ICT infrastructure is quite simple and inexpensive. In fact integrating ICT into Roadside trunks or overhead power lines can be accomplished with little extra cost to those traditional infrastructure projects. But unlike road projects ICT’s take a lot more effort, to make as easy to use as a road. Using ICT for development, after the infrastructure has been built is a major challenge.
The ICT4RD project in Bunda was in essence an Infrastructure project. The project established connectivity between Schools, Government Offices and Private entrepreneurs across some 160km of Fibre Optic cable between Bunda and Mugumu. The challenge now is to get the communities to use it properly for their benefit. This is not easy. Questions prop up. “Whom does the cable belong to? Who is to maintain the equipment? Where should the technicians to maintain come from? How should the cost be covered? Who pays for the internet?” Yes some will even ask, “Why at all does this cable exist?” The secret to this lies in the availability of simple applications that are relevant locally and owned locally. Bunda and Mugumus newly established ICT boards to own the cable is a step in the right direction. Local communities are now using Voice over IP and accessing internet.
This is not enough. The Infrastructure has much more potential than these two services and it may not be sustainable if the cables use is not expanded. This is where non technical, ordinary citizens play a crucial role.
Although ICT is exciting, development cant be centred around a tool – it has to be centred around societal objectives otherwise all it will produce will be capital waste. I urge the ICT boards to listen to and adapt the existing technology to the requirements of the users. I urge you to think out of the box and work with local partners to create content that will be relevant to the development of your communities. I urge you to get schools and educational institutions involved in defining requirements and creating applications. Only a comprehensive holistic Objectives-first-approach that includes Education, Private Sector, Innovation and Research will enable Tanzania to reap the benefits of such a potent tool to achieve its development goals.
Risky as it may seem, there is little option but to utilize ICT for development if major development goals are to be reached. Look at for example at the situation in secondary schools. I heard from the Minister for Education yesterday that it is not uncommon to have only five unmotivated teachers in a school that has 16 class rooms. At any one time two thirds of such a school have children idle and unattended to. Books are unavailable.
Lets draw up a quick back-of-an-envelope analysis of the situation and lets look at how ICTs could help.
• Unmotivated teachers can be motivated if they are offered a career path that will enhance their skills. Providing each teacher with a Laptop linked to their local server that is periodically updated from headquarters with relevant materials and teaching plans will give Teachers the possibility to do research in preparation of their classes and attend e-learning programs organized by the ministry.
• Unattended idle classes can be equipped with a laptop, a projector and screen. The laptop has access to the teaching materials on the local server. Students will in the absence of the teacher go through the material and revisit it when the teacher comes into their class.
• Unavailable books can be replaced by digital libraries, vetted by the ministry with controlled access to the internet.
These may seem wild ideas but they are some of the solutions under serious consideration in many African countries. Sida is engaged in reducing the risk of untested ideas and finding the best options for ICT in Development. But there is no ignoring of the fact that world wide ICT is becoming increasingly ingrained in the way societies learn and adapt to a new economic context. Tanzania should not miss out and efforts to empower society for the new context have to start early in the education system.
You may have heard of GBS (General Budget Support) to which Sweden – based on strong and repeated requests from the Government of Tanzania - has committed itself. This is an aid modality that channels funds through the budget of Tanzania rather than through specific projects or programmes. It allows Tanzania’s Government institutions and the parliament to prioritize funds according to its own objectives rather than to what development partners want done. We believe the overall efficiency of aid delivered this way is higher in the long term. This means that in general, stand alone projects like the Bunda Serengeti Fibre Optic connectivity will not be funded by Sida anymore.
There are, however, certain conditions in which Sida will still consider pilot projects. These limited ICT related projects have to be geared to reduce risk by rigorously testing innovative technologies; they have to be endorsed by Government for up-scaling to full programs; they have to be conducted in the focus areas of Sweden’s current portfolio that includes Education and Research, Energy, Human Rights and Democracy, Private Sector Development and Local Government Reform. To reduce transaction costs Sida has signed an MoU with the Ministry of Communication Science and Technology to coordinate all such interventions through them.
As the results of the Household Budget Survey suggests, development in Tanzania has been slow. Time to achieving the Millennium Development Goals is running out fast. This is all the more reason to search for and apply innovative, yes even disruptive technologies in a sensible and controlled way. It is crucial to concentrate on Rural development since the bulk of the poor live there. ICTs in the form of mobile technology have enormous outreach and appeal and as shown in the project Fiber Optic Cable is an option. The time is ripe to unleash the potential but as I have said throughout – People and their needs first, and only then comes the technology.
Ladies and Gentlemen thank you for your attention.