What are your IT needs?

Before coming to Ghana I’d never really thought about the uses of information and communication technology (ICT) for rural villages. But after visiting nine ICT business centres around Ghana for three months, I feel like I know quite a bit more! Some things may surprise you so I thought I share some information related to our project.

Phones
When you live in a rural village, you still need to make phone calls! You may have sons and daughters at boarding school in the city or relatives in other West African countries or even in Europe or North America! You may need to call one of your friends to ask them to bring you something from the city the next time they come home.
Also, you may have friends that need to get in touch with you. They will call the local business centre and inform the employee when they will be calling back. Then the employee will bike to your house to tell you that you should expect a phone call from your friend in half and hour.

Typesetting
People need typed documents pretty often. Teachers need to print school examinations, people need to write their resumes, write church programs and send letters to their friends, business owners have to apply for loans, the market needs receipt books for the stall owners etc. With these types of documents, people will not compromise; with no business centre in their town, some will travel two or three hours to get these items printed.
One interesting thing that we saw was in Battor in the Volta Region. Battor has a big hospital and so people came from all around southern Volta to go to the hospital. One woman came to the centre because her father was undergoing treatment and she wanted him to be released early. The hospital required her to present them with a typed document explaining why she wanted him released early. Except she could not write. So she went to the business centre, dictated a letter, and signed it by using ink to stamp her thumbprint.

Desktop publishing
Funeral posters. They are one of the most requested-for services at rural business centres. Funerals in Ghana are quite different than at home. They will sometimes last for days and are even more important that weddings! People will ask for big poster to be designed announcing their family member’s death, when and where the funeral will be held, etc. Family will fly in from all corners of the earth and the festivities and both very sad and mournful and also big celebration of the person’s life. Funerals are a big deal and so these funeral posters are also pretty important.
They of course do more than just desktop publishing. A lot of churches advertisements or flyers, bread sellers need their logos printed on papers to give out with their bread. Also, churches and school like to get certificates printed for graduations or events and invitations for weddings are pretty popular also. One of the things that all of the successful centres that we saw had in common was that they were providing desktop publishing.


Seeing all of these business centres and learning about the services that they provide was pretty exciting. While there are many problems with the project that we are working on, it seems clear that people in rural communities would benefit tremendously from better access to information and communication technology. Without this kind of access people spend a lot of time and money traveling to have things printed and typed. They also can’t communicate with others outside of their own community as well. This is incredibly important because seeing new things and learning about new ideas is what helps individuals, and in turn their communities to grow and change. This is made difficult for people in rural communities because they are often far from major cities and have very bad roads leading to the community.

I think before this trip I had really underestimated the importance of a good road, but for many communities, they want one more than electricity, running water, health clinics etc. In Canada, it’s frustrating when politicians don’t seem to understand the people they are representing, but here it almost seems like there is more of an excuse. If no one can even access these communities, how reasonable is it to think that politicians will be able to understand the challenges that they face and make good decisions that will most positively impact them.

I guess m point is that if there was a way that the eCARE project could harness the demand for ICT services and successfully provide the opportunity for business centres to operate in more rural areas, they could do a lot of great things. The challenge, of course, is to figure out exactly the best way to provide that opportunity. The things that we have seen and learned this summer have given us a little insight into the solution but we definately don't have the magic formula. But the project is slowly on its way there and it's been exciting to be a small part of getting it there.