[UgaBYTES] Are n't Internet cafes becoming a threat to telecentres?

[ahmed digital]

* dear friends*

* *

*Thanks to the Spanish  group, Eiko Kawamura , Sandra, meddie , sulah, sarah
, yacine  and thanks to every one who contributed.*

*I  agree cyber café are commercial but Telecentres are supposed to be  social
enterprise and provide similar services.  I do agree with Dean Mulozi (that
Cyber Cafes will never take over the services of the Telecentres). *

*And we have an examples in Gedaref digital city as a Telecentre is doing
things that cant be done by  Cyber Cafes. Generally  Telecentres are centres
equipped with ICT equipment (computers, mobiles, printers, faxes, video
conferences, ) providing e-services to the community to facilitate the life
and make it more comfortable. It is an economical key factor which save the
community a lot of money and time. Telecentres in developing countries
facing a lot of challenges which include 1- ICT is not a part of the culture
and not a priority 2- high cost of computers 3- low speed and high cost of
internet 4- poverty and digital divide 5- Monopoly of  telecommunications
companies (one service provider). 6- sustainability 7- networking  8-
quality of training and certification 9- funding (financial support)*

*In our city Gedaref there are many commercial Telecentres in addition to
cyber cafes and tey start training the community for 90 dollars for 4 basic
computer course and usually every two students saring one computers but when
Gedaref digital city Telecentre started they train the same courses for 15
dollars and every student has a computers and using a multimedia projectors
so the commercial Telecentre reduce the training cost to 40 dollars and but
they go below that they will loose , so GDCO is going to support every
Telecentre with free computers if they reduce the cost but most of the
people thing  cheap training is not good training. *

*GDCO as a community Telecentre is doing thing that can not done by cyber
cafes*

*1-  GDCO is establishing an e-agriculture to improve the crop production ,
increase yield, reduce the cost of production and to use ICT for
development. GDCO establishing with Drishtee (Indian organization) an
agro-mobile  This mobile will provide 6 e-services to the farmers including
weather forecast, crop prices, animal price and health, online support,
agric. News break and fertilizers. A great revenue is expected which will
help for financial support of the organization.*

*2- GDCO established telemedicine project (donated 51 computers to the
hospital and medical centres.)), graduate training projects (donated 15
computers) , using of ICT for disaster control. Supporting e-education (
donated 120 computers to gedaref university) , and training and capacity
building  of disabled and all these services are free (donated 60 computers
to the disable union, deaf schools and more than 40 computers to deaf –
personal)).*

*3- although GDCO as a good internet connection but it send its trained deaf
to the cyber café to demonstrate to the community learning computer is not
difficult and we pay their bill monthly.  And has a good impact on
increasing the number of cyber cafes from 2 to more than 10 in six month*


2009/3/20 Polly Gaster <polly.gaster at uem.mz>

> Hello all
>
> I think Dean and Yacine between them make the point - if all the telecentre
> is
> doing is performing as a 2nd class Internet cafe, selling access and
> photocopies and suchlike, then it could be in trouble when competition
> appears. And no doubt some of our telecentres could be in this situation.
> But
> if the telecentre is doing what it is supposed to do in terms of
> contributing
> to local development activities, involving itself in the community,
> providing
> services that nobody else is offering, then it can survive.
>
> It's also true that when the private operator appears the first thing he
> does
> is steal all the best people trained by the telecentre - that's happened in
> Mozambique on various occasions. But we know when we work with volunteers
> that
> it's inevitable that people will move on, whether to a private Internet
> cafe
> or elsewhere - that's why the training strategy is so important, and the
> sharing of information and good working methods of the telecentres.
>
> The Internet cafes have learned from the telecentres and are now providing
> more services - in Mozambique in the beginning one couldn't even print out,
> or
> copy onto a diskette or flash, and they never gave any training or support.
> Now they are doing these things. But one CMC in a largeish town with quite
> a
> few "competitors" told us that their demand for training never ends,
> because
> the word has gone round that the CMC's training courses are the only good
> ones. So quality of service is another factor where the telecentre can
> demonstrate its social goals in practice...
>
> Polly
>
> ----
>
> Polly Gaster
> TICs para Desenvolvimento/ICT4D
> Centro de Informatica da Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (CIUEM)
> Campus Universitario, Maputo, Mozambique
> e-mail: polly.gaster at uem.mz
> cel: +258-82-3264540
> tel/fax: +258-21-485779
> Skype: polly_gaster
>
>
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-- 
AHMED M. M. EISA
MOBILE       00249912331155
KHARTOUM alamaraat P.O.BOX 15021- post code 12217
WWW.GEDAREF.COM
http://sudantelecentreacademy.org
Gedaref digital city organization  is a non-profitable and NGO (Gedaref
Sudan)  It is the founder of the first digital city in Sudan (2005) and the
first national Telecentre academy in Africa (SuNTA 2008) It is the winner of
information for development award (i4d 2007) Also the winner of information
for development award (i4d 2008) It has strong partnership with the great
people of Eindhoven through the digital city of Eindhoven (DSE) were 750
computers were donated to establish many projects in Sudan.