MCT pilot projects

Nakaseke, Uganda

A project in Uganda further illustrates some of the principles and benefits of MCTs. The MCT was opened in March 1999 as a three-year pilot project, with the aim of introducing and testing new technologies and applications, and demonstrating the impact of such technologies on the development of rural and remote areas. It is located in Nakaseke in the Luwero District of central Uganda, with a population of 31 000. Nakaseke has a relatively good educational infrastructure, although schools are short of facilities and materials. The Nakaseke hospital serves the entire district of Luwero, employing radio connections to the Department of Health in Kampala. Crop and livestock farming are the dominant economic activities carried out mainly in smallholdings and, to a lesser extent, on a commercial scale.

The Nakaseke MCT provides access to telephones, facsimile machines and computing facilities, including Internet access. It also offers training, technical support and professional guidance enabling users to produce electronic information reflecting local knowledge and requirements. Furthermore, the new Nakaseke public library is an integral part of the telecentre, whose activities are also being targeted at specific user groups within the community. The MCT is used as a centre for telecommunications, computing and information production and as a point of access to the local college. It provides support to teachers in local schools through computer back-up for school libraries in the area and computer training for teachers and distance-learning links with Makerere University. The staff of the local hospital uses the MCT facilities for telephone communications to the Mulago Hospital in Kampala, consultations with specialists, trial telemedicine applications, continuous training and access to medical resources on the Internet. Other categories of users targeted include small businesses and small farmers, local councils, a women’s vocational training organization, non-governmental organizations, and the general public.

Through an “Indigenous Knowledge” programme, the centre staff is building a resource of local health and crop experience. It shows some of the challenges of “infusing” high-tech equipment to a remote location. Overcoming the problem of power supply and other infrastructure problems, the experience of this centre shows how plans must be flexible in responding to local needs and conditions.

International partners in the Nakaseke project are ITU, UNESCO, IDRC and the British Council. National partners are Uganda Telecom Ltd, Uganda Public Library Board and Uganda National Commission for UNESCO.

A comparative evaluation by IDRC of the Nakaseke centre, and of two smaller MCTs sponsored by the IDRC Acacia programme, showed that Nakaseke had made good progress towards community involvement, and that its strong combination of library and telecentre services had been particularly successful. A draft business and sustainability plan was developed, which foresees formal ownership of the MCT by local government and the supervision of a technical committee with the autonomy needed for management decisions.

In June 2001 a fire ravaged the MCT in the course of a burglary, substantially damaging the building and resulting in the destruction of four of the seven computers and 1000 books. The community helped mitigate the damage by evacuating materials and extinguishing the fire.

By year-end 2001, services had been nearly fully restored through temporary repair of the building and provision of five reconditioned computers by UNESCO. The priority now is to complete the new MCT building, which has been under construction since 1998, to replace the present premises intended initially as a community hall.

A major problem of the MCT has been how to ensure the maintenance of ICT equipment. The MCT suffered another set-back in mid-2001 when a microwave link, installed in Nakaseke in early 2000 with ITU assistance, was struck by lightning.

Power supply

Like other telecentres, the Nakaseke MCT relies on the government supplier (Uganda Electricity Board) as their main source of power supply. This MCT depends on batteries whenever there are power failures. Batteries are continuously charged by an inverter whenever there is power supply from the mains and the system seamlessly kicks in once there is no supply from the mains. So far, this has worked out well.

Usage of telecentre services

Overall, usage of telecentres by potential users is still slightly below average (44.2 per cent out of 507 respondents). Nonetheless, it is interesting to note the high percentage of rural Nakaseke survey respondents (61.1 per cent) who claimed to be using the telecentre. Because the Nakaseke telecentre is the only ICT facility in the area, its services, especially the library, are widely known to the user communities. According to the survey, some 34.7 per cent (out of 101 survey respondents) and 15.6 per cent made and received calls, respectively, from the telecentre, while only 14.8 per cent watched television, 2.2 listened to the radio and 10.9 listened to an audiocassette from the telecentre. Furthermore, Nakaseke telecentre was observed to be the most heavily used compared to other facilities. This was basically attributed to the usage of library services both by students (reading books) and adults (reading newspapers). For example, during the four-day observation of the Nakaseke telecentre, 77 school children under 16 years, representing 54 per cent of all cases observed, accessed library services.

A resident of Nakaseke, Joyce Namayanja, who specializes in designing school badges, banners and signposts, had this to say:

“Before I attended computer lessons at the telecentre, I was using the freehand style to design my work. This was taking a lot of time and was not very neat. When the telecentre opened, I enrolled for computer lessons in word processing, Excel and other packages. With this knowledge, I can now design using the computer. Computer knowledge has helped me improve on the quality of my work, making it faster and easier. This has also increased my clientele base.These days we also just call (our suppliers in Kampala using the telecentre phone) and give them specifications of the goods we need.The suppliers collect the money from our local taxi drivers whom they give the goods. This has saved the business money and time, which would have been incurred on transport.”

The Nakaseke MCT has put together a directory of useful website addresses which it avails to the users on request. It also makes newspaper cuttings of important events taking place in the country.

Among the major challenges cited by those trying to develop local content are: lack of funds needed to collect and put together the required information, lack of relevant skills and expertise needed to do this kind of work, and putting in place a cost recovery system (pricing) for these services.

One of the major issues dealt with in the study is the question of sustainability of community telecentres. Closely linked to this question are the issues of ownership and management. Nakaseke has three different committees namely: a local management committee a local steering committee, and a core-user group committee. However, each of these three committees has clearly defined roles and responsibilities as spelt out in their terms of reference in the project implementation document. The Nakaseke steering committee is mostly composed of local representatives of the donor agencies such as UNESCO, IDRC and UTL. These are mostly concerned about whether the technology is working. The local management committee is mainly concerned about policy issues, and is composed of high-ranking representatives from the various stakeholders such as UTL, UNESCO and IDRC. The core-user group committee, on the other hand, consists of the local community members ranging from farmers, traders, doctors to the youth. Their major responsibility is to articulate the information and communication needs of the community, as well as its concerns and views about the telecentre and the services which the latter provides.