[kictanet] Article on Digital Villages in the Daily Nation

[warigia bowman]

Dear colleagues

Here is an article I wrote which appeared in Smart Company in the Daily
Nation on Tuesday. Victor Gathara and I will be writing a more comprehensive
report in the coming months. I had put in some compliments to the ICT Board
staff and the Safaricom staff, but those were edited out by the nation.

Yours, Rigia

BY WARIGIA BOWMAN

warigia at aucegypt.edu



Plans are afoot to improve access to computing and Internet infrastructure
in rural Kenya, thanks to an initiative between the government and the
private sector.   In April 2010, the ICT Board, which is part of the
Ministry of Information and Communication, promised to connect each
constituency by setting up a digital centre, complete with five computers
and Internet connectivity, under the Pasha Centres programme.

Kupasha is Kiswahili for “to inform”. The Pasha Centre project is being
supported by $4 million (about Sh36 million) in revolving World Bank funds
administered by Family Bank.

Indeed, the Kenya Communication Amendment Act 2009 stipulates that the
Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK) should levy telecoms operators a
universal access fund of one per cent of their total revenue to be used for
rural connectivity.

Access to portals

According to the regulator, 90 per cent of Kenya’s 6.4 million Internet
users (2010) are in Nairobi and Mombasa. Both the digital villages and the
pasha centres are to offer services such as access to government portals
like NSSF, identity and driver licensing services, Teacher Service
Commission information, HELB loans and information on farming, as well as
access to e-health and e-learning.

This all sounds fantastic and exciting... on paper. Unfortunately, the
reality on the ground is different. A multi-sectoral group of academics,
private sector consultants and civil society activists have visited 20 per
cent of all pasha centres in Kenya, as well as 15 digital villages, over the
past two months.

What the group found is a matter of concern to anyone interested in rural
connectivity in Africa.

The number of digital villages and pasha centres that are actually open for
business is only a fraction of the reported total. The ICT Board provided
the research team with the list of all approved centres.

Only 37 have actually been approved, although each of Kenya’s 210
constituencies is entitled to one. Of these, only two in the sample of 10
had actually received all of the money awarded to them and had opened for
business.

In addition, Safaricom provided the research team with a list of 147 digital
villages, not 500. On the list of 147, the identifying information was
incomplete and vague.

The team visited pashas and digital villages in Malindi, Embu, Meru,
Muranga, Maragwa, Nyeri, Isiolo, Samburu, Oloitoktok, Machakos, Wote and
Mbumbuni. It was, however, yet to visit and evaluate pashas in Western,
Kisii and Nyanza regions.

Overall, the conditions in the ICT Board run pashas were better than those
in the Safaricom-run digital villages, although the pashas also needed
improvements.

Owners were, on the whole, fairly well educated IT experts, good
businesspeople and visionaries. The two pashas (Mbumbuni and Maragwa) that
had actually opened offered a range of services, including photocopying,
printing, typesetting, printing photos, browsing and IT training.

Most of the centres had heard of  e-health and e-learning, but did not
really know what these terms meant and had received no training from the ICT
Board in these areas, although the topics were mentioned at one training the
pasha owners received in late May.

Further, owners had little knowledge of what government services they could
offer other than the registration of KRA pin details and downloading of
police abstracts.  Most had received little or no support regarding branding
and marketing, and one of the open facilities was making a serious financial
loss.

However, it is easy to criticise and hard to build. In that spirit, here are
some constructive suggestions.

First, the MOIC, CCK and ICT Board should work together to implement the tax
of one per cent on all telecommunications operators this year.

Based on a quick back of the envelope calculation, this will amount to
approximately Sh4 billion per year. Part of this money should support extra
staff on the pasha centre project.Right now, there are only two people
working on the pasha project at the ICT Board.

Second, tariffs must come down. Every pasha owner and digital village
operator we spoke to said tariffs were too high. Indeed, the ICT Board had
promised pasha operators free connectivity for a year.

Regardless, operators and digital village operators must be given highly
preferential rates by telecommunications operators.

In addition, pasha owners and digital village operators need support and
training in  marketing, branding, and proper use of government portals.

Owners need to be sensitised on the wealth of information with regard to
farming and husbandry, including Kenya Seeds, www.infonet-biovision.org,
icow, and www.nafis.go.ke.

Finally, Safaricom should expand the resources it invests in each digital
village.

There are many other reforms needed, but if the government and
telecommunications operators can pay attention to these few suggestions,
Kenya can attain true rural connectivity.



Dr Bowman is an ICT expert in the American University, Cairo
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