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@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