Honourable Guest of HonourOrganizersDistinguished Guests,Ladies and Gentlemen
It is an honour and a pleasure to be invited to this event. And I would like to thank the organizers for that and for letting me lend your ears for a few minutes.
A couple of weeks ago I attended the inauguration of the Jambo Mozilla Fire Fox at the University of Dar es Salaam. The Jambo Mozilla web browser is an important step of the efforts to localise Open Source Software into Kiswahili, the KiLiNuX. This year the Tanzanian KiLiNuX initiative was awarded the Stockholm Challenge Award 2006. I would again like to congratulate all those who have contributed to the KiLiNuX initiative for the Stockholm Challenge Award 2006. You have done very well and we applaud your success.
The Stockholm Challenge is a well established global networking program for Information and Communication Technology entrepreneurs, which have existed for more than ten years. The Programme aims to demonstrate how information technology can improve living conditions and increase economic growth in all parts of the world. More than 3000 projects from all over the world have participated in the contest over the years. The knowledge developed around the world has been collected in a database, to be used as a resource base for the international community.
This year, out of the selected group of finalists of 151 teams from 53 countries, Tanzania was selected as the winner of the Education category. The winners were announced during the prize celebrations in the Stockholm City Hall on May 11. Again a remarkable accomplishment!!
Today, the 27th of October 2006, I have the honour to be present at the awarding ceremony of the Tanzania ICT Challenge Award at the Mövenpick Royal Palm Hotel. This event has a similar objective as the Stockholm Challenge Award; to promote best practices of the usage of ICT for development to contribute to the fulfilment of the Millennium Goals. Through the Challenge Award attention is given to the opportunities and the possibilities that ICT can provide for development in Tanzania. The Challenge Award is a forum for entrepreneurs to present new ideas, share experience and also, equally important, a learning platform for all stakeholders in society. Project experience presented through the Tanzanian Challenge Award will contribute to the general knowledge base of ICT for development.
This is certainly a time for celebration and well deserved celebrations, but we should not loose sight of the next steps and the road forward. Tanzania is in a transition process of economic and social progress. Together with its development partners Tanzania is trying to make poverty history by accelerated economic growth that will benefit the poor. Reaching the Millennium Development Goals is one important step on the way. In this process there are many challenges to be met and problems to be solved. Let me mention one – just one of very many - such challenges or problems:
With the expansion of Primary & Secondary Education, more schools and more teachers are needed in ever more remote areas of Tanzania. I know that many of them have to travel very far each time they want to - for example - draw their salaries. They have to be away for a couple days to get to a Bank or to a District Office. Too often the salary transfers have not been made in time, so they have to wait or maybe go even further to Dar es Salaam. There are endless stories of the hardship they have to suffer with the expanded mobile telephone coverage, and with more and more people using mobile phones, I am sure a problem like this can and will be solved. In a number of places in Africa today, people use airtime credit as a mean for transferring money and even as a substitute for cash. Within a few years Mobile-Banking or M-Banking will completely change the concept of cash management. For the teachers, instead of travelling to draw salaries, they could receive a message saying his/her salary has been put into his/her bank account on pay day. The hand set could be the main tool to transfer money or for smaller payments in the market or in shops.
Isn’t this a challenge to us all? The ICT people in Tanzania should put their minds to challenges like this. If successful I am sure future Stockholm ICT Challenge Awards will again come to Tanzania.
There are other challenges. We do not have to go far away from this hotel to identify them. Go there particularly to rural areas and see for your self and try to identify where ingenuity and applied ICT can make a difference in the every day life of people.
This brings me to the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate of this year - Mohammar Yunus, who by the way is a member of the Stockholm Challenge Advisory Board. Mohammar Yunus was the founder of the well known Grameen Bank and Grameen Phone in Bangladesh. As you know he started providing small credits from his own pocket to women as he was so upset with the established banks that could not serve poor people or provide credits to those who needed them the most and could invest them in small income generating activities. Many women have become traders in communication. We know the success story. Let’s be inspired by what the Grameen Bank and Grameen Phone has accomplished and let’s see if applied ICT could be used even more effectively in developing Tanzania. Eradicating poverty in Tanzania and Africa is worth more than a Nobel Peace Prize.
With this I thank you all for your attention.
Asanteni Sana