[UgaBYTES] Telecenter staff exchange programme: SATNET visit to Uganda

[Dean Mulozi]

Dear all, 
Telecenters all over developing countries include Africa share similar challenges. There a number of challenges within the telecenter community in Africa based on country-to-country situations or regional environments such as capacity development, sustainability, telecenter management, connectivity and energy. Emergence of regional telecenter networks provides an impetus to knowledge sharing and telecenter network experiences in Africa. Such networks are the East Africa Telecenter Forum and the emerging Southern Africa Telecenter Network (SATNET). 

SATNET is a new regional telecenter network for southern African countries. Its key objective is to promote knowledge sharing and networking opportunities aiming at telecenters to facilitate social and economic development in southern Africa. 
Regional knowledge exchanges and interactions are increasingly becoming an important instruments to promote regional development in Africa. 

Through a staff exchange support initiative under IDRC/Telecenter.org, I am visiting Ugabytes Initiative in Kampala, Uganda to learn and interact on the key areas on the Telecenter development in the region. Among the learning areas on the visit agenda are: 
	How Ugabytes have grown to support telecenters in East Africa 
	Institutional development of a regional telecenter network 
	How East Africa Telecenter Forum is coping with networking challenges in the region 
	Services of a national telecenter network 
	Sustainability of a regional and telecenter network 
	Resource mobilization 
	Knowledge sharing strategies 
	And other areas of mutual collaboration 

What is currently coming out and experiences at Ugabytes Initiative is the refocusing the Ugabytes Initiative approach to service delivery versus sustainability.  Earlier Ugabytes was offering free services to Telecenters as a way of promoting telecenters in the region. The approach was realized that sustenance of the organization was hard to come by unless other measures are to be taken.  

The needs of the community based telecenters, national telecenters and civil society communities embracing ICTs for development are being taken into account through the strengthening of Ugabytes Initiative capacity. The refocusing of the services includes scaling up of technical support services, knowledge sharing management and research and development units. 

It is envisaged that Ugabytes shall, through social enterprising models, poised to sustain its support to programme activities even after the resource providers have ceased their support.  The organization is coping up with the emergence of national telecenters in 5 east African countries. During the course of the study visit, SATNET is to learn and collaborate as much as possible with Ugabytes so as to ensure that the staff exchange and knowledge sharing experiences make a meaningful impact to the development of telecenters in Southern Africa.

It is rightly to say that Ugabytes is becoming a strong institutional platform for telecenter development in East Africa and believe that SATNET is to acquire some of the methodologies used by Ugabytes Initiative to support its development.  The visit is still ongoing! 


Dean Mulozi,   
ZAA-ICT/SATNET Regional Facilitator,   
Private Bag 195x Ridgeway,   
Lusaka,   
Zambia.

Mobile:    260 978 034196
 


--- On Mon, 10/20/08, Meddie Mayanja <mmayanja at idrc.ca> wrote:

> From: Meddie Mayanja <mmayanja at idrc.ca>
> Subject: Re: [UgaBYTES] Rwanda Information and Technology Authority(RITA) announces nominees for the first Intego ICT Awards
> To: "ugabytes at lists.ugabytes.org" <ugabytes at lists.ugabytes.org>
> Date: Monday, October 20, 2008, 12:58 PM
> Thanks for sharing this, Paul
> 
> All the best to the two telecentre listed for the Award
> 
> Meddie
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ugabytes-bounces at lists.ugabytes.org
> [mailto:ugabytes-bounces at lists.ugabytes.org] On Behalf Of
> pbarera at yahoo.fr
> Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2008 3:31 AM
> To: ugabytes at lists.ugabytes.org
> Subject: [UgaBYTES] Rwanda Information and Technology
> Authority(RITA) announces nominees for the first Intego ICT
> Awards
> 
> Forty-three Rwandan companies have been nominated to
> compete for Rwanda Information Technology Authority (RITA)
> first ever Intego ICT awards. Two Telecentres appear on the
> list of nominees: Nyamata Tele-service Centre in the
> categories of bridging the digital divide and Maraba
> Telecentre in  e-agriculture category.
> Mr. Nkubito Bakuramutsa, Director General RITA made the
> announcement today during a press conference that marked the
> start of a landmark event for the ICT sector in Rwanda.
> 
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