Post by cjm on Oct 31, 2013 18:33:28 GMT
Although good at listing the failures, the article offers little explanation. For example: The lack of electricity may be a problem in some areas but surely not in Soweto. I have seen locally what happens the moment the * outside drivers* try and reduce their influence. On the other hand many grassroot activities (cultivating weed etc) have an irrepressible momentum.
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Why all rural tech projects in SA fail
October 31, 2013 - News, South Africa - 4 comments
On 9th March 1997 Bill Gates visited the sprawling black township of Soweto, an area catapulted into world consciousness 20 years’ prior by its mass uprising. This township, above all, symbolised Apartheid.
When Gates visited in ’97 the Spokesman Review reported that in Soweto “a computer could cost as much as a house” and few people would think of going online.
This was South Africa’s first free-access “digital village,” an initiative orchestrated by Microsoft in conjunction with local computer companies and US development organisation, Africare. The idea was that by providing a $100,000 computer package, housed in the Chiawelo Community Center, it would give the township’s poor residents a link to the information age. As part of the grand opening, Gates observed a class from the local Elsie Ngidi primary school playing with computers for the first time, before telling a crowd of 200: “Soweto is a milestone. There are major decisions ahead about whether technology will leave the developing world behind. This is to close the gap.”
Today there is little evidence of the “digital villages” across South Africa. “[They] worked well for a while but collapsed as soon as the sponsors stopped funding the activities – the community had failed to make the use of technology self-sustaining.” Adrian Schofield, Vice Chairman, Africa ICT Alliance tells me: “What should have been a model for others to follow became a failure. This is a common outcome, where there is no long-term follow through.”
The same is true of numerous online projects to get rural communities connected.
...
October 31, 2013 - News, South Africa - 4 comments
On 9th March 1997 Bill Gates visited the sprawling black township of Soweto, an area catapulted into world consciousness 20 years’ prior by its mass uprising. This township, above all, symbolised Apartheid.
When Gates visited in ’97 the Spokesman Review reported that in Soweto “a computer could cost as much as a house” and few people would think of going online.
This was South Africa’s first free-access “digital village,” an initiative orchestrated by Microsoft in conjunction with local computer companies and US development organisation, Africare. The idea was that by providing a $100,000 computer package, housed in the Chiawelo Community Center, it would give the township’s poor residents a link to the information age. As part of the grand opening, Gates observed a class from the local Elsie Ngidi primary school playing with computers for the first time, before telling a crowd of 200: “Soweto is a milestone. There are major decisions ahead about whether technology will leave the developing world behind. This is to close the gap.”
Today there is little evidence of the “digital villages” across South Africa. “[They] worked well for a while but collapsed as soon as the sponsors stopped funding the activities – the community had failed to make the use of technology self-sustaining.” Adrian Schofield, Vice Chairman, Africa ICT Alliance tells me: “What should have been a model for others to follow became a failure. This is a common outcome, where there is no long-term follow through.”
The same is true of numerous online projects to get rural communities connected.
...
- See more at: praag.org/?p=11402#sthash.mLjMzVLt.dpuf