Posted June 1997
University of Guelph, | Food and Agricultural Organization | International Development | Southern Africa | SADC Centre |
Harare Zimbabwe
18-20 February 1997
By Philippe Van der Stichele
FAO Extension, Education and Communication Service (SDRE)
The idea for the Rural Connectivity Workshop grew out of interest in a programme of the Canadian International Research Centre (IDRC) to help transform African societies through the use of information and communication technologies. Better known as The ACACIA Initiative, it is an IDRC-led international effort to empower sub-Saharan African communities with the ability to apply information and communication technologies to their own social and economic development. The workshop marked the start of a partnership between IDRC, FAO, the FANR Programme of SADC and the University of Guelph, Canada. It brought together 25 participants from Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, representing a cross-section of organisations working with rural communities, and especially with smallholder farmers. The major output of the Workshop was the formulation of a project proposal "An Integrated Pilot Programme for Participatory Rural Connectivity in Southern Africa" submitted to IDRC for possible funding.
As part of an overall framework for further activities, the Workshop recommended that a Rural Connectivity Forum should be established as a matter of priority. This would require that all participants be connected to the Internet if they did not already have access. This Forum would ensure a continuing process for the development of projects as well as assisting them to identify sources of funding and in particular allow them to monitor progress in establishing the Acacia Initiative programme. The Workshop asked the SADC Communication Centre to prepare Web pages and other resources and warmly welcomed the offer by Zamnet to host the Web pages and set up a listserv discussion forum.
The Workshop noted that rural communities in Africa were greatly disadvantaged in relation to the telecommunication infrastructure (including telephone lines and electricity supply). As a result the participants felt strongly that rural connectivity initiatives would require significant investments in infrastructure before rural areas could participate fully in the new information and communication technologies.
The participants made the following recommendations:
The three-day Workshop on Promoting Food Security through Rural Connectivity and the Internet brought together 25 participants, including one observer, from Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and ICRAF in Nairobi. A core team of 10 organisers from FAO (the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations), IDRC (the International Development Research Centre, Canada), SADC (the Southern Africa Development Community), the University of Guelph (in Canada), and the SADC Centre of Communication for Development also participated in the Workshop.
The Workshop was convened to look at the potential benefits of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs), in particular the Internet and electronic communication networks (ECNs), for rural communities in Southern Africa. It also aimed to gauge the likely level of community interest in ICTs by testing the perceptions of organisations working closely with small farmers, and to explore the potential for developing pilot rural Internet projects.
The theme of the Workshop was "Rural Connectivity: Promoting a Participatory Exchange of Information, Knowledge and Experience at all Levels".
The idea for the Rural Connectivity Workshop grew out of interest in an IDRC programme to help transform African societies through the use of ICTs. The Communities and the Information Society in Africa programme, better known as the Acacia Initiative, is an IDRC-led international effort to empower sub-Saharan African communities with the ability to apply information and communication technologies to their own social and economic development.
The Rural Connectivity Workshop marks the start of a partnership between the International Development Research Centre, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Programme of the Southern African Development Community, and the University of Guelph in Canada.
The Workshop was organised on behalf of the partners by the SADC Centre of Communication for Development, assisted by the FAO Regional Communication Project. It was financed by the IDRC and FAO. The University of Guelph provided the conceptual framework for linking the Internet to rural and agricultural development.
The Workshop was focused on achieving the following key objectives:
The Rural Connectivity Workshop aimed to bring together a cross-section of organisations working with rural communities, and especially with smallholder farmers in the region. These were selected from among farmers organisations, relevant government departments, NGOs, umbrella organisations, and Internet service providers (ISPs).
The overall criterion for selection of NGOs and government departments was that they should be those working closely with grassroots rural communities. The participation of two individual farmers also helped to add value to the Workshop. In addition to the organisers, one regional and one international organisation also participated in the Workshop.
A breakdown of the numbers represented by each category of participants is as follows:
In terms of the country origins of participants, there were eight from Zimbabwe (including one from a Harare-based regional organisation), seven from Zambia (including one observer), five from Mozambique, two from Namibia, two from South Africa, and one from an international research organisation with headquarters in Kenya. A gender breakdown shows 18 men and 7 women participants, of whom one woman was an observer.
The Workshop Programme was designed to encourage the highest level of participation. This was considered essential to ensure that the follow-up programmes envisaged should have a 'bottom-up', rather than a 'top-down' approach. These terms themselves were thrown into question by the Workshop, which was concerned about the phrase "Last Mile of Connectivity', and instead adopted the expression 'First Mile' to describe connectivity between farmers and their communities and the first level of organisational infrastructure. Within this framework, a 'top-down' approach starts with the farmer.
Presentations by participants themselves thus formed the backbone of the Workshop agenda. Each participant was given 10-15 minutes to present a brief report on their organisational structure, networking experiences, and connectivity constraints and opportunities. Morning and afternoon sessions were chaired by participants, while small-group discussions were also chaired and reported by participants. Zamnet gave a visual presentation on all aspects of managing and providing Internet services at a national level, as well as on efforts to reach rural areas. The overall Workshop facilitator was the SADC Communication Training Advisor, Titus Moetsabi, an expert in participatory approaches.
Other key presentations were by Kate Wild and Mike Jensen of the IDRC, Dr. Don Richardson of the University of Guelph, Philippe Van der Stichele of FAO Headquarters, Rome, and by Jonathan Villet, Titus Moetsabi and Jim Holland of the SADC Communication Centre.
Additional inputs by resource persons included a visual presentation of rural electronic communications by Belgian telematics organisation Gondwana, through their regional centre in Harare, and a presentation on the practical aspects to setting up a rural network by the Zimbabwe Ministry of Health & Child Welfare electronic network, Healthnet.
In response to feedback from participants who requested a practical demonstration of Internet usage, the final-day programme was revised to incorporate a one-hour demonstration by Mike Jensen of browsing the World Wide Web to show the variety of information that can be obtained from it.
A questionnaire was also devised and circulated among participants, with the aim of providing a snap survey of the existing technical capacity of participant organisations. Of the 24 people who filled out the questionnaire, 21 had computers, and all but one had at least one phone line. Twenty-one respondents indicated that they had more than one phone line, 22 had faxes, 10 had e-mail, and two had Internet Web sites. One of the two, ORAP, has no access to its own Web page, which is hosted by a Canadian organisation. All data from the questionnaires will be fed into a database, as part of the follow-up activities.
The Workshop attracted considerable media attention. The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) ran the story as a top item in its evening television news broadcasts, while correspondents from ZBC radio, BBC Network Africa, the Herald newspaper, AIA and IPS also conducted extensive interviews.
Workshop participants were asked to examine a variety of issues and identify priorities relating to rural connectivity and make their recommendations.
The Workshop broke into four working groups to explore possible scenarios for projects for rural connectivity. Their scenarios are listed below.
Group 1
Group 1 envisaged a development agency interested in providing information services to a rural community in a manner that met the community's own requirements, to enable them to become more informed and able to communicate with the world outside. They proposed establishing a Rural Telecentre managed by an Information Services Committee elected by the community that would provide both e-mail and full Internet access.
The agency would carry out a community sensitisation exercise, followed by the election of the above committee. This committee would carry out a full needs assessment, as well as any other surveys and investigations required. The telecentre would be connected to a local ISP. Training of users and operators would be required. An initial grant would be required to fund the establishment of the telecentre and its operation over the first two years, after which it would be sustained by a combination of user fees and local contributions (as is the case with rural libraries at the moment).
A key issue not resolved was that of who would be responsible for content preparation, to ensure that it was of a format that met the users' requirements.
Group 2
Group 2 envisaged a more efficient way of passing information to extension workers involved in the Zambian Southern Province Household Food Security Project. They were concerned about the need to improve the flow of information about research results, availability of inputs (e.g. seed) and draught power, and market information. They proposed the establishment of a national Information Centre, linked by e-mail to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and to related agencies such as FHANIS (Food Security, Health and Nutrition Information System), PAM (Programme against Malnutrition) and SADC.
The Information Centre would primarily pass required information downwards to extension workers connected by e-mail. The extension workers would be responsible for identification of information needs through a participatory approach with farmers' associations and groups.
Group 3
Group 3 envisaged the establishment of an Agricultural Information Centre by the Zimbabwe Ministry of Agriculture in consultation with all stakeholders. This would focus mainly on marketing opportunities, market prices and the availability and price of farm inputs. Information would be disseminated to farmers through electronic communication networks established by the Ministry and by the Zimbabwe Farmers Union (initially reaching the provincial level and later the district level).
Group 4
Group 4 proposed a locally based information centre where farmers would be able to access external databases and be able to send and receive e-mail. While initially established with a grant from an NGO or CBO, it would ultimately be able to be self-supporting by virtue of being able to charge for services that resulted in improved income or cost savings for users. These would include Agritex extension workers, traders, councillors and rural authorities.
Conclusions
The Workshop participants concluded that the participatory process used in identifying and developing these scenarios would be important for rural communities to be able to produce their own connectivity scenarios.
Three groups considered the problems of ensuring that any facilities provided for rural communities should be sustainable socio-culturally, technically, financially and in terms of human resources. Some key suggestions were:
As part of an overall framework for further activities, the Workshop recommended that a Rural Connectivity Forum should be established as a matter of priority. This would require that all participants be connected to the Internet if they did not already have access. This Forum would ensure a continuing process for the development of projects as well as assisting them to identify sources of funding and in particular allow them to monitor progress in establishing the Acacia Initiative programme. The Workshop asked the SADC Communication Centre to prepare Web pages and other resources and warmly welcomed the offer by Zamnet to host the Web pages and set up a listserv discussion forum.
The Workshop noted that rural communities in Africa were greatly disadvantaged in relation to the telecommunication infrastructure (including telephone lines and electricity supply). As a result the participants felt strongly that rural connectivity initiatives would require significant investments in infrastructure before rural areas could participate fully in the new information and communication technologies.
The participants made the following recommendations:
The Workshop achieved the following results:
Participants expressed concern about the commitment of IDRC and other donors to address the needs of rural communities for connectivity with actual funding. For this purpose they called upon the IDRC to fund the Rural Connectivity Forum to monitor the IDRC's actions closely.
A strong groundswell of support and expectations has been created as a result of this Workshop, with a keen desire to be part of an ongoing consultative and participatory process to move forward the concepts of connectivity for the grassroots. Participants left with a motivation to immediately start networking with related organisations to try to build larger initiatives in their own countries. Prior to leaving Harare the Zambian participants developed the constitution for a new NGO specifically for this purpose. The organisers therefore have a major responsibility to ensure that they follow up on the proposals made and provide feedback as soon as information becomes available.
The SADC Communication Centre has already committed itself to informing participants by the end of March of the outcome of the recommendation to link all participants to the Internet.
The participants were all keen to see that the momentum that has been created by this Workshop would have an impact on other initiatives in the region that involve provision of connectivity, and that the need to include the rural sector was not overlooked. At the same time as work was being carried out on moving the infrastructure out to the rural areas, efforts should also be made to bring the rural communities closer to that infrastructure by means of ensuring that they participate in the whole process, with a focus on ensuring that the content and interface is appropriate to their expressed needs.
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