Nakaseke has figured in a lot of stories about using ICTs in Africa. One of the original flagship UNESCO community multimedia centres, supported by IDRC and several other donors and now deriving most of its income from its own activities, Nakaseke illustrates how hard it is for even a well resourced telecentre to survive and thrive. Peter Balaba has been the coordinator for five years.
During this time the Radio station at the heart of the centre has continued to thrive and he has built up the computing resources, earning revenue through access charges and training programmes. Peter established the cost sharing scheme with local institutions for expensive internet bandwidth and invested heavily in solar power. Nakaseke is also branching out into self-sustaining agricultural demonstration schemes such as a small piggery and organic farming methods.
Peter and his team have been engaging directly with the farming community around Nakaseke. Local Content is central to the work of the radio team. In this video Peter and his colleague, Jimmy Ssenabulya describe how they work with local farmers to gather relevant content and share it through the radio. They also confirm how difficult it is to use some external content and how information from trusted sources has greater impact.
Janet Frances Asaba is an information scientist in CABI, based in Nairobi. In this video interview Janet describes how although CABI doesn't explicitly focus on Local Content it is an integral part of their approach to their work. A summary of the interview is below for those who can't easily play the video.
CABI promote both externally generated content and Local Content from extension workers, researchers and farmers themselves, especially during their programme of Farmer Field Schools. They capture the content in various forms and re-package it for wider distribution. Jane emphasises the importance of sharing content that is often known only to a small group of people, such as scientists or researchers, that can be of wider use. She uses the example of work around Cassava Brown Streak disease where they gathered material - experiences and practices - from stakeholders including farmers, researchers, and scientists in order to prepare multi-media training materials.
But even these materials aren't used wholesale, for distribution. As Jane says, "people have their own indigenous solutions that have been tried and tested for a long time and they are comfortable using those solutions" And when, in working with livestock specialists in Tanzania, they were distributing their materials extension workers and others pointed out the gaps in the materials and suggested new solutions from their own experiences. So Jane emphasises that, "there is content out there that can be collected and properly organised and disseminated" and which would be more easily used because the source is trusted. Jane suggests we should rise to the challenge of finding, collecting, re-packaging and disseminating Local Content.
Jane then describes their work with other stakeholders on the development of KAINET, Kenya Agricultural Information Network. 'Harvesting' from other collections, KAINET will be a repository of relevant content. KAINET will provide an opportunity to promote and share Kenyan research, research which has been going on, as Jane says, "for over 100 years". Yet many people don't even know what is happening in other research institutes, while KAINET will also be a global resource for people interested in Kenyan research and content.
The Southern Alliance for Indigenous Resources (SAFIRE) is a non-governmental organization that was established in 1994 to assist rural communities diversify and enhance their livelihood options through sustainable management and utilisation of natural resources. SAFIRE provides support and training to community based natural resources management programmes with emphasis on benefit-driven natural resources management and use of participatory development methodologies.
Information for Development
The objective of this programme is to empower rural communities to make more informed choices for a better livelihood through targeted information generation and exchange. This is achieved through:
Rural information centres: Six rural information centres with a potential reach of 29,100 people are supported. These are Chimhanda in Rushinga, Nyamaropa in Nyanga, Nyanyadzi in Chimanimani, Mutambara in Chimanimani, Nyamazura in Mutare and Madzivanyika in Masvingo. The support given to the information centres include strengthening the capacity of the information centre management committees to effectively and independently run the information centres, equipping the centres with televisions and DVDs which increase access to information by rural communities as they are both audio and visual thus can be used even by those who cannot read or write, and distributing reading material on various topical issues.
Benefits to community: Computer literacy levels have increased among the communities around the information centres as a total of 1500 people received training in computers. Those that are now computer literate are able to do their own typing, access internet facilities thus broaden their knowledge base on a number of subjects. Three people secured jobs after receiving training from the information centres. Nancy Mataure a beneficiary of the project is now a volunteer worker at Mutambara Information centre where she assists with computer training and managing the information centre
Acceptance of ICTs among grassroots people has increased as a high number of people went through the information centres for different requests that ranged from sharing and gathering information, seeking computer services, documenting local content in local language.
Use of traditional herbs resurfacingThere is now improved health among the communities that are visiting the information centres as there is improved and increased information on medicinal plants uses. Mr. Chingwaru of Mutambara information centre is now offering courses in herb gardening and use in schools and to individual around the information centre. Some people who have tried using the traditional herbs have given testimony to their performance.
While it was the aim of the project to connect the information centres to the internet, none was connected during the year under review because of connectivity challenges. Some of the centres do not have telephone lines, where there are there, the costs are prohibitive and getting connected is very difficult as most of the rural telephones are not direct lines. As such these rural centers work off-line.
Capacity of rural communities to generate and exchange local content strengthened
Towards strengthening the capacity of rural communities to generate and exchange local content, sixteen representatives from the 6 SAFIRE supported information centres and one partner organization- EKOWSA visited the four information centres in Manicaland for information exchange and learning. The participants were trained in basic writing skills. This was aimed at improving the articles produced by communities. 
Currently the information centers produce local newsletters covering issues on agricultural production (crop and livestock including gardening, and poultry), nutrition (indigenous vegetable recipes, use of herbs) and HIV/AIDS, natural resources conservation (soil and water), group dynamics and development in general were generated for the newsletters. The communities also played a key role as generators of information for documentation on experiences in SAFIRE work and indigenous knowledge. The knowledge has been documented on DVDs, duplicated and shared. Theatre and drama was also used to raise awareness of issues of nutrition and HIV/AIDS. This has been documented for wider circulation.
Projects come and go, organisations continue. Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) has been working with women in the Apacdistrict of Northern Uganda since 2000. They have been involved in a variety of projects since then. Janet Achora, Senior Project Officer in WOUGNET describes in this video clip the impact of the work they did with the Open Knowleldge Network (OKN) on Local Content.
In summary, Janet describes how for OKN they began to ask the women for stories and information about their lives and ways of working, for other people to hear. At first the women were uneasy, saying 'why would anyone want to listen to us, the stupid ones' (meaning uneducated). The WOUGNET team encouraged the women to recognise the value of their knowledge about farrming, health and other aspects of their lives. They began contributing stories and in the process gained confidence in themselves and their abilities to communicate. As well as entering the information into the OKN system, the stories, ideas and questions were broadcast on the local Community Radio, Radio Apac, as part of the wider WOUGNET programme. This has continued to develop and some of the women are now comfortable talking directly on the Radio.
The UNECA led Africa Knowledge Network (AKN) has aims that in many ways pick up from where OKN left off. Janet is on the Steering Committee and she also describes how she would like to integrate Local Content into the AKN, seeing it as,"the engine that drives the portal". As the African Knowledge Netwoork she believes it is important it shows African content online.
