Rural Development

This summary is part of a research project carried out between March and October 2006 in support of the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), one of The Communication Initiative (The CI)'s partners.

Gaseleka is situated in a very remote and rural area of Northern Province; economically the poorest province, it also has the worst access to telecommunications of any province in South Africa.

Instituted by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the South African Universal Service Agency’s (USA) mandate is to provide access to information and communication technology (ICT) services denied to the majority of people during Apartheid. The Gaseleka telecentre was established by USA in 1998 after an open invitation, sent out to communities to apply for ICT services, resulted in 500 applicants, of whom 30 were chosen based on various social, political, geographic and economic criteria. The primary objective of this project was the provision of telephones and computers to areas with poor access to communication services.

The Gaseleka telecentre is owned by the local branch of the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO), directed by a special sub-committee of 15 people, and operated by two telecentre mangers and a computer trainer. As of the writing of this case study, the centre had six phone lines, of which four are used for telephones, one for fax, and one for the internet; five Pentium computers, which are running Windows 95 and Office 97, four older 386 Olivetti computers that run on DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1; a Canon BJC4200 black-and-white/colour printer, a Mustek 1200 SP colour scanner, a Cannon fax machine, and an Olivetti 8416 photocopier.

Services at the telecentre have mostly been based on access to the above mentioned equipment. Local schools, the Community Policing Forum, Department of Health and Welfare, small businesses and local political groupings are major users of the centre’s computer equipment, but most other people utilise the centre to make telephone calls, send faxes, and photocopy. Recently, services have been expanded, in response to need and opportunity, to include computer training.

The following outcomes have been observed:

• The centre is currently used on average by 50 people a day, 60 percent of whom are women. It has become the de facto community centre, a place to hang out and chat;
• The telecentre supports 34 local students from South Africa’s two main distance education providers, UNISA (the University of South Africa) and Technikon SA;
• Local businesses use the centre for producing marketing and advertising materials;
• Training has been provided to 46 people on an Introductory Computer Practice course that is certified by the Technical College and introduces participants to the computer, typing, file management, and use of the operating system, word processing and spreadsheets;
• A team was established to develop the area’s first newspaper, launched in 2000;
• The telecentre is utilised by the Department of Home to provide services such as applying for identity documents, birth and death registrations, passports etc.; and
• In 2000, the telecentre became a postal service point with a bank of 1,000 post boxes installed next door.

The following lessons were noted:

• Embedding the project in local organisations and systems can be a time-consuming and frustrating process;
• Key factors in the success of telecentres are the energy and commitment of the local owners and managers;
• Proper training of telecentres’ managers is required in the areas of financial management, equipment maintenance, customer service, and business skills;
• Sustainability for most telecentre projects is a challenge. Due consideration should be given to issues of telecentre financial sustainability at the outset of the project, not when government, business or external donor funding has run out;
• Telecentres cannot make useful and relevant information and communication; they can only facilitate local access to it. National agencies need to distribute national information for centres to disseminate at the local level in order for telecentres to be vibrant and useful information hubs;
• Although centres to support learning, information access and delivery services are desperately needed in rural areas of South Africa, no model has been realised for self-sufficiency. Over half of the 60 projects initiated by USA are not functioning well for a variety of technical, managerial, competitive and financial reasons. Experiences from the Gaseleka telecentre project suggest that sustainability is more achievable when telecentre sites are based where supported infrastructures exist, such as at clinics, schools, libraries or post offices; and
• Clarity is needed on what telecentres are meant to offer. If the focus is simply on providing telephony, there are many easier ways of doing this, such as installing pay phones. If the focus is on supporting information services, then investment is needed more in information than in technology. Projects to find what information is most needed and to codify this nationally or develop mechanisms for local content creation are more important than getting a computer working. If the focus is on skills development and training, then developing courses, course materials and facilitation skills are more important than the technology.

The Gaseleka telecentre is currently talking to UNISA about becoming a “learning centre,” which would enable it to receive some of the course books for a training library and earn a percentage of the course fees. Effort is also underway to establish a local radio station.