Hi all,
I was quite excited to see this article by Wired! Featured in it is the work I've been doing for Oxfam's Internet Now! project in Northern Uganda over the past 2 and a half years. (the guy in the photo is one of the wireless internet engineers from the local community that we have trained and equipped to bridge the last mile with low cost wireless technology).
We established a social enterprise that is using internet technologies to improve livelihoods for communities in this post-conflict regions. This is mainly through making high speed broadband available to rural communities at low cost. So far we have been able to establish points-of-presence in the towns of Gulu, Lira, Soroti and Mbale - NGOs, corporates and individuals alike have been flocking to take up the broadband services after years of poor quality and expensive services from the mobile operators who sell mainly data bundles that have poor performance. We ride on Uganda's national optical fiber network (owned by the ministry of ICT's National IT Authority - NITA-U). and from Kampala interconnect with a variety of bulk providers (Seacom, Liquid Telecom, Simbanet, BCS) who are connected to submarine networks via Mombasa. Our service approach has greatly challenged the internet services paradigm and scored greatly with our subscribers, many of whom enjoy better services in these rural towns than their colleagues/counterparts in the capital Kampala.
We also provide employment to members of the local community through a specialized form on business process outsourcing known as impact sourcing or more commonly as microwork. We have an average of about 60 young people working daily to deliver digitial jobs to companies in the USA, mostly Sillicon Valley. Most of them are based at a BPO delivery center we have established at Gulu University with 75 workstation while others work in their villages via centers that we have established in 20 sub-counties across 5 districts that offer 5 workstation dedicated to BPO.
We're very happy with the impact that the social enterprise is having in the communities and I am now in the process of winding up my programme management role and handing over the reins to a competent management team that we have established to run the social enterprise.