People need to know how Internet can work for them

Edith Ofwona Adera Senior Programme Specialist at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) funded by the Canadian government was at the launch of the community wireless network launched by the Fantsuam Foundation in rural Kafachan, Kaduna State, Nigeria. The IDRC is one of the major funding organisations for the Kafachan wireless network. Just before she returned to her Nairobi (Kenya) office, Adera spoke with IT Edge on why community based projects on ICT have failed on the continent and why the WIFI project in Kafachan has high chances of success.


As a senior specialist with IDRC, What exactly is your focus?

Our focus has been to support communities to utilise information and communication technology to enhance their social and economic status. As an institution, IDRC is focused on research, it is a research driven institution; we build capacity for people to respond to some of the challenges that they face. We help them to respond to their individual challenges within their specific environment through our research works, and this is not specifically in the area of ICT. The research work is done to assist such people or communities generate the knowledge and also have the skill needed to solve their problems. In the area of ICT, we have got priority areas some of which are use of ICT in governance and this extends to mean using ICT to support governance; we also look at the use of ICT in the education sector both in terms of teaching and learning in school and increasingly supporting networking of universities so that the universities can come together and share knowledge in a networked environment. If you look at the situations in the universities, you would appreciate the level of challenges faced to do research, advance knowledge and even share this knowledge. Getting the university connected or empowered to access educational resource is very expensive and these universities are the backbone of the economy in terms of intellectual input. The universities are to supply the intellectual input to the economy yet they do not have the kind of resources that are needed to move an economy, the negative consequences of are felt within most African countries where the universities have virtually lost their critical roles as nation builders.

Are you trying to create a picture that you are more focused in the area of financing ICT Initiatives?

In terms of starting and supporting them, yes.

How about capacity building?

Yes, we do capacity building. Our technical officers including myself and others are primarily tasked with helping in the area of capacity building. Apart from providing the funding, we also work with our partners to provide support that sharpen their product or services by providing management and technical input. We work with them throughout the execution of the product to refine the project to make the original objectives achivable.

How much of your impact do you think has been felt in West Africa; let's start with Nigeria?

In Nigeria, we have been involved in a number of projects and the experiences have been mixed whether here or elsewhere on the continent. For instance, Africa has been having tele-centres over the past ten years and our experience in handling these ICT centres have been an eye opener in understanding some of the issues that have been overlooked. Most of the centres in Africa are not able to afford the cost of connectivity and lack the required management skill to keep the centres going. But the cost of connectivity is the main issue in terms of availability of service. With the Fantsuam Foundation, we are trying to work on an innovative approach were you use existing bandwidth to share with other institution so that in that way we would bring down the cost of connectivity. Our interest in this partnership is to come up with a module that will be able to demonstrate the technical input to build a community wireless network; that is the first objective, and the second objective is one is able to build a community wireless network from the bottom up so that the skills that are used to make the wireless network work are already existing within the community and need not be imported as has been the case with the tele-centres that have failed. The questions we tried to address include whether we can bring down the cost in such a way that it becomes affordable to our clients? We are trying to address the question of whether if we have a bottom up approach to establishing and maintaining a network of such nature the clients would be able to pay for their overheads – the module here is to see whether we are able to finance and sustain it all the time. The other thing that we are interested in is to bring ICT into this rural community and to do research and see to what extent that transform this community so we bring in the new business group and see what kind of opportunities are merged at the point of creating a local community network. What kind of skill comes out of a project like this? This is a leading research because a lot of tele-centres have been funded and people have to walk long distance, about five kilometers or more to access the centres. But when you have a community wireless network, then you begin to talk about the power of the Internet where you are able to bring Internet closer to the people so those who can afford it can even have it in their own homes. I think what will come more interesting is when you begin to look at application of this resource, the need to which the Internet can be put to us. Part of the questions we are looking at here is what is the use of Internet on a daily basis? To what extent has this community network respond to the need of the people? For example, for the farmer, how can we use this network to help the content of farming? What to do, how to do it, when to harvest, where the markets are? This is where our focus is. In Africa there are very few communication networks we have funded that are similar to this in countries such as South Africa, Mozambique and Angola and also in Uganda. We have reasons to believe that the community driven network is the way out to resolve many of the challenges Africa faces in terms of making connectivity accessible.

How have been these experiences?

The experiences are good and it shows that it is feasible from our technical perspective and that you do not need very high demand in terms of the personnel. You can have a secondary school student who is based within the community to be part of the technical team. Costing is not also that high especially where theses community networks do not have licensing fee issues to contend with and where licensing is also not a problem because in most countries, WIFI is not a licensed frequency.

You said community driven network is the way out for Africa. Have you taken a look at the rural community here? Do you have a picture of the people here; do have a picture of their financial capability. When you talk about Africa; you are talking about poverty, about communities where people earn less than a dollar a day and people would rather face the challenge of feeding and shelter than indulge in the luxury of the Internet. Based on this analogy, are you convinced that your model would work here in Kafachan?

I must say that people are looking for something that has value. If you noticed that when I mentioned earlier that when you have a community network that is like this you ensure that you have content and application that address peoples' immediate needs. A network like this must address the issue of poverty because really if you look at poverty, its really looking at people trying to get out of either earning nothing or something too meager to sustain them. This is the network that can allow people to access information that is very powerful. I gave you an example of farming like farmers who are growing a particular crop and get the opportunity to know in real time that the product is what the market is demanding for…

This will sell the content?

Yes, the content is important, we are beginning to develop the content and the content we are developing is content in health, content in agriculture and what we hope to have is a network that supports a multiplicity of needs so that anyone a member of the network will be able to make call, will be able to communicate within the network virtually free of charge or at very minimal fee that is one thing we are looking at. The other thing that we are looking at is to able to download very critical website content so that we can meet the need of the people by making it available within the local server so that each time somebody uses part of the network and wants to access something they will not have to use the international bandwidth to go to the website, that saves on cost; so that is the idea. The other important thing, in terms of execution, is to ensure they have adequate knowledge of the local content. The locals or indigenes have things which can be incorporated into the network so we are not only considering content from elsewhere we are talking of being able to use the local content and share it within this community and with other communities. Another thing that is important is that we want to recognise that this is the network owned by the people. The people will have a say in whatever applications they want. We need to create awareness so that people understand how this thing is going to help to meet their needs so through dialogue with the people one will be able to come up with applications and once they see the benefit of this network, believe me they will begin to pay for the services.

If this thing has to fail, why do you think it will fail?

That's a very good question, very unexpected. One of the things that's our big challenge in Nigeria is power. I think you have gone round and seen what we have put in place in terms of investment just to address this problem alone. The battery is a fall back system and we also have a generator and all theses systems are supposed to operate this centre and the network on a 24 hour basis and assume there no NEPA for 1, 2, 3, 4 days that will make the network breakdown from our technological point of view but from our own point of preparation, that scenario is the worst that we expect and which is unlikely to happen. I mean where there is no generator and no NEPA for four days and so the system would run on battery alone for four days. Another area that we need to look at is the application that can address the needs of the people. It is very difficult when it comes to describing what I mean by things that are enhancing our community economic data. The network must not just bring communication value, it must also carry some weight of relevance locally and this issue centres on providing local content. As a farmer if you give me content, it will only make me knowledgeable. If I do not have the means to apply that knowledge assuming its new cropping that I have to do and I do not have the means -I do not have the money, I do not have the feed and so on, you only have changed my life as far as the knowledge is concerned but you have not changed it from an economic perspective so they need to look at the other factors that will make the entire project to be successful. We need to look outside to help the people in order to apply the knowledge they have acquired. Information is not the only solution, when you provide information and content to people you will find out that they will change and become more knowledgeable and therefore they demand for more knowledge so if you do not have a means to keep on responding to their need, you will soon cease to be relevant to them. Once you have activated the change process, you must continuously appeal to the changing thinking of the community. You must also make sure that the content you are delivering is in the right language and the right format because the content at one point in time might have need to be changed so you have to be able to dynamically respond to these changes. Another area is the area of management but I think here in Kafachan, you have an advantage because it is integrated into an NGO that can run it very successfully. Where I have seen such community projects fail is where you have a management coming from the part of a local government administration trying to manage a network like this. So you begin to have infighting and half of the community or even the whole community no longer sees it as being owned by them. Another thing that may be challenging for this project and this is what we were discussing earlier is that one has got to recognize that the huge investment like the power backup, creating the network and the backbone will not immediately attract the kind of revenue to keep the place going. The revenue that will be generated for the time being will not meet the entire cost so one could see this as a subsidized project so I think the challenge is to find the model that will be able, at least, maintain the network and be able to service other users. That is one thing that is encouraging us through the foundation. We appreciate that this network is targeted at a people that are cut off from the rest of the world in terms of communication, people who are faced with serious economic plight but who through this work have been made to benefit from an initiative that ordinarily they may not be able to afford. We have come to appreciate that the benefits do not have to necessarily have to be monetary but there are other benefits that are far beyond making monetary profits.

You have been here for about three days now, what's your impression about this community?

What I have seen mostly is that a lot still needs to be done to get to the common person in the community. But from my impression and what any body may have seen during the launch, there's a lot of interest and a sense of pride that this is ours. So it shouldn't be a big issue winning acceptance within the community. This must be taking into consideration in other countries. People are seeing this network, all they need to do is to understand how do they benefit from it? what does it take for me to benefit and I think we have to do a bit of marketing and marketing at a very low level in terms of bringing the technology closer home to the people, that is to say simply demystifying the technology, demystifying the application to the people to a point where they can see why they need to get connected to the network. That is the area where the foundation need to do much more so that the people can see how they can benefit from this network. But I really like the level of ownership that I see at work during the launch.







The IDRC
The IDRC is a semi-governmental institute, founded in 1970. It's mandate is to initiate, support, and conduct research into the problems that developing regions of the world face and the means for applying and adapting scientific, technical, and other knowledge to the economic and social advancement of those regions. IDRC aims to assist scientists in developing countries to identify sustainable, long-term, and practical solutions to pressing development problems; mobilize and strengthen their research capacity, particularly the capacity for policies and technologies that promote healthier and more prosperous societies, food security, biodiversity, and access to information; develop links among researchers in other developing countries; provide them access to the results of research around the globe, particularly by developing and strengthening the electronic networking capacity of institutions that receive IDRC funding; and ensure that products from the activities it supports are used by communities in the developing world and that existing research capacity is used effectively to solve development problems. IDRC funds the work of scientists working in universities, private enterprises, government, and nonprofit organizations in developing countries and provides some support to regional research networks and institutions in developing countries. This support is designed to build a corps of researchers in each country and develop a network of people and institutions that can undertake effective research and use the results of research to effect change.

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