Without question, telecentres are about creating economic opportunity.
At the most basic level, telecentres focus on improving the livelihoods of individuals. Giving young people the computer and life skills they need to find jobs. Providing farmers with accurate crop prices so they don’t get ripped off by middlemen. Offering local entrepreneurs a way to make a living by offering information services to their neighbours. Day in and day out, telecentres around the world are helping individuals find and seize economic opportunity.
Of course, communities change as the livelihoods of their members change and improve. Small-scale information entrepreneurs don’t just sell to neighbours—eventually, they also hire them. A skilled local labour force also attracts investment from outside, creating new businesses and attracting more skilled workers.
Added to that, craftspeople and other small producers who gain a new perspective on the outside world eventually see the power in organizing and marketing together with the aid of technology. People with technology skills learn that there are ways to provide services remotely, to engage in knowledge work without leaving the village.
Within this intersection of individual livelihoods and local economies lies the telecentre—helping communities move into the knowledge economy.
This kind of shift—from an emphasis on agriculture and manual labour to an emphasis on services and information—happens slowly, and can often go badly. By focusing on both the individual and the community, the telecentre increases the likelihood that communities will make this transition on their own terms. Communities will see the opportunities that make the most sense, seize them and mould them to respond to community needs.
Certainly, creating a distributed, bottom-up economy is a tricky matter. It is something that requires a holistic mix of skills, resources, boldness, nurturing and big-picture thinking. Just the right environment for a telecentre to thrive in.
“Five years from now, we hope to be producing software for children all through africa,” says Nana Kwabena Sarpong. “We don’t have anything like that here in Ghana. We’re the very first in West Africa doing this.”
ghana: a big future for small business
Nana represents a new generation of Ghanaians turning technology skills into economic opportunity. Gone are the days when Ghana was confronted by instability and economic stagnation. From the capital Accra to rural villages, countless young people are embracing technology as a launching point to economic success. They join a growing circle of urban and rural Ghanaian technologists using telecentres and other institutions to make ghana the Silicon Valley of West Africa.
Two years ago, Nana and his friend Joseph Garbrah Hooper were fresh out of university and working from home to start a software business called ChildNet. They began developing a child-friendly computer training program called Squirrel’s CompuTutor, but worried about their lack of business expertise.
Soon, they read about a small business incubator initiative launched by the World Bank and BusyInternet, Accra’s biggest cyber café. Before they realized it, they were one of the very first small businesses selected for the program.
For many people, “cyber café” conjures images of businesses full of people using computers for entertainment, rather than a hub for community development. “Busy,” as locals affectionately call it, represents a new style of cyber café: a socially conscious one, rooted to both the community and the ideas that drive the telecentre movement. Every month, BusyInternet hosts numerous seminars and events, teaching technology to students and government ministers alike. It organizes cultural events, including regularly scheduled movies. And its small business incubator is helping Ghanaian small businesses plant the seeds to grow their own high-tech empires.
For young companies like ChildNet, BusyInternet couldn’t have come at a better time. The incubator provides ChildNet and other businesses with essential skills to improve their marketing, business plans and bookkeeping. The incubator has allowed ChildNet to start planning versions of its software in French and six local languages.
“Prior to this, we were working from home, which was very difficult,” Nana explains. “With the BusyInternet image, it helps us push ourselves further. Everywhere you go and say that you’re with the BusyInternet incubator, people look at you differently, respecting it.”
Training these small companies, as well as the general public, is a win-win for BusyInternet and its surrounding community. As the number of skilled people in Accra increases, so does the number starting their own ventures. The local economy grows and everyone benefits.
“It’s great being able to watch the companies grow,” observes BusyInternet director Estelle Akofio-Sowah. “It’s one thing if you try to set up your own office and are trying to motivate your small team. But there are more than 100 people working here, all motivating each other.”
As a large city, Accra has the critical mass to support a thriving community technology business like BusyInternet. Rural villages, however, face greater challenges. With limited resources and infrastructure, many towns lack cyber cafés, let alone socially conscious ones. Villages like Patriensa, though, are demonstrating how it’s possible to launch telecentres that successfully support economic development.
Patriensa’s Asante Akim Multipurpose Community Telecentre has become a training hub in which young people from surrounding villages learn to become tomorrow’s technology entrepreneurs. Founded in 2000 by Dr. Osei Darkwa, the telecentre is opening new doors for residents. Students enrol in intensive training courses, learning almost everything there is to learn about a computer, from circuit boards to software. Many students enter the course with no previous computer skills, but graduate with the tools they need to start their own businesses.
To finance its courses, the telecentre has diversified its business. It refurbishes bicycles from around the world, making a small profit while giving farmers transportation to bring goods to market. The telecentre has even opened guesthouses in Patriensa and Accra, generating income to expand its programming.
Amoah Isaac Newton Kwaning, known as Newton to his friends, is one of the telecentre’s students. With a name like his, it’s no surprise that Newton’s parents dreamed their son would have a career in science and technology. Growing up in a village with no computers though, Newton lacked the skills to create a technology business.
“Here, without computer skills, you either work in someone’s store or you do something on your own,” Newton explains. “Even if you graduate from high school you don’t have the skills to work in a big company, so you must take one of these jobs. For me, it was bicycle repair work.”
One day, Newton learned about the telecentre on a local community radio station. “Before then, I was thinking, ’How can I get into these machines?’ ” he recalls. “ And then all of a sudden, the announcement came. So I had to stop everything I was doing so I could take the course.”
Newton and his fellow students immerse themselves in their studies at the telecentre five days a week. For them, these skills aren’t about learning how to use e-mail or make friends over the Internet. They’re harnessing the building blocks to create a financial future for themselves and for Ghana—on their own terms.
“In five years’ time, I’m planning to be a technician on my own, building computers and working on these machines,” he says with quiet confidence. “I see a whole future of big things coming my way. Big things are going to happen.”
Big things, perhaps, for Ghana as well.
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Tanzania: Sengerema Telecentre Helps Small Businesses Flourish
Like so many countries across Africa, Tanzania has struggled to provide Internet services to its population; fewer than three people out of every 1,000 have internet access. But in the rural district of Sengerema, community members benefit from a successful telecentre that’s demonst rating it’s possible to offer technology resources that benefit the local economy in a sustainable manner.
Launched in 2002, the Sengerema multi-purpose community telecentre provides the community with Internet training, computer-based secretarial services, online access and desktop publishing. Unlike many African Internet facilities, where gaming predominates, e-mail is the most popular service, particularly among local entrepreneurs who use the telecentre as an extension of their businesses. The telecentre charges a modest fee for most of its services; because of its pricing structure, the telecentre generates enough profit to pay for its basic operations, including its popular community radio station.
Residents of Sengerema have made a strong commitment to the telecentre. More than 17,000 users passed through the centre’s doors in the first three years alone. In the words of one community member, the telecentre “has become part of the life of Sengerema district.”
E-mail is the most popular service, particularly among local entrepreneurs who use the telecentre as an extension of their businesses.
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