[Telecentres] Business Model and sustainability issues

[Meddie Mayanja]

Dear Shahid,

Thanks for your observation re: the potential of telecentres to community 
development. As you rightly noted, understanding appropriate use of ICTs in 
rural development is the key issue - and there are communities that have 
made real progress. I strongly believe that we must avoid the temptation of 
thinking....if remote communities are still struggling with water and food, 
there should is no place for ICTs at that point.

ICT must be see as tools to stimulate overall development and make 
development efforts more effective. We have seen the role ICT have played 
in emergency and disaster situations for instance. Yes, in communities in 
Africa and Asia, radios and mobile phones have been used to empower farmers 
etc. The challenge is to share such stories and strengthen other 
telecentres that find difficulties in finding a nitch...which would help 
the business model and sustainability so immensely. if telecentres are not 
relevant to communities...we can not debate sustainability. I welcome your 
thoughts on this.

In case you did not know, IDRC has been involved in telecentres for a 
couple of years now. IDRC is now spearheading an initiative to promote 
telecentre networking at local, regional and global level with a new 
collaborative initiative - telecentre.org which was officially launched at 
WSIS in Tunis.

telecentre.org is working innovators, telecentre practitioners, researchers 
and telecentre network leaders around the world to strengthen the level of 
experience sharing and support. For more information, check out 
www.telecentre.org

Regards,'

Meddie


At / À 12:41 AM 04/01/2006, Shahid Uddin Akbar wrote / a écrit:
>Dear All,
>
>Telecenter has become the most efficient tool to bring the benefits of ICT 
>in the rural areas. In many countries, we have seen enormous initatives 
>based on Telecenter model, in different names - community information 
>center, knowledge center, Telecenter, rural information center etc.
>
>But still struggling to get the Business Model which should be based on 
>local perspective, focus and obviously need based. It also needs to 
>consider the location issues, whether in remote rural areas or in semi 
>urban areas.
>
>As most of the developing countries are still fighting to alliviate 
>poverty and basic human needs, it seems sometime that ICT at remote rural 
>is really fancy for the community people. Such projects also have limited 
>scope to serve to the local beneficiary groups as local contents are still 
>a major challenge which has not been resolved yet. Only few pr! ojects 
>(mainly in India and 1/2 in Bangladesh) have made significants progress 
>and those needs to be shared and knowledge transferred.
>
>At this perspective and seeing the broader scopes to promote Telecenter 
>movement forward, it is the high time to work together and establish 
>networks among regional actors, and finally a global alliance may be 
>useful to coordinate the local initiatives and build capacity of the operators.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Shahid Uddin Akbar
>Coordinator
>ICT for Development Program, Bangladesh (ICTDP'B)
>Dhaka, Bangladesh
><http://www.sonagazi.info>www.sonagazi.info
>
>
>
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-------
Meddie Mayanja
Senior Program Officer
telecentre.org
Information and Communication for Development (ICT4D)
Program and Partnership Branch

International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
PO Box 8500, Ottawa, Canada K1G 3H9

tel:  (613) 236-6163, ext 2604
fax:  (613) 567-7749
e-mail: mmayanja at idrc.ca
skype: mayanjameddie
http://www.idrc.ca/supportnet
wsis.telecentre.org
telecentre.org




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