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Volume 16, No. 3, December 2006

Table of Contents

Content Divide: New Challenge for Rural ICT Initiatives

Md. Shahid Uddin Akbar

Coordinator, ICT4D Unit,
Society for Economic and Basic Advancement (SEBA)

shahid_ictdpb@yahoo.com
shahid@seba-bd.org

Background

The challenge to overcome the digital divide has been deepening in recent times in most developing countries. Significant initiatives have been planned and some activities have already been launched to bridge the digital divide. Most such initiatives are now facing the challenge of availability of local content, which is the key driver for any ICT for Development (ICT4D) initiative, especially for telecenter projects. The preferred language of the Internet is English, which most beneficiaries of telecenters are not familiar with. Besides, the content available on the net is not useful or relevant to the targeted users of telecenters.

Content: Basic Concept

Services available in any rural ICT center are through 'Content', but the basic question about content is, what does it mean? Content is basically 'information' that can be offered through ICT media at the telecenter. Content may be tangible or intangible. When it is obtained from a web interface or a computer, it becomes intangible or virtual; and when it is obtained through traditional media like printed copies, it becomes tangible. In terms of diversity, content can be everything and anything. Information on agricultural farming or health related advice or contact details of legal service providers or training material for youth groups are a few examples of wider diversification of content. Thus 'Services' available through the net and other ICT enabled tools may be identified as 'Content'.

Key Question: Why is Content Essential?

It is very important to understand that a rural farmer or a teacher or a student will use the Internet only if the relevant information is available in a convenient format. Only if the telecenter offers relevant local information in a convenient delivery format to the end users, will the beneficiary group be interested in using the service i.e. the center. To make the telecenter more effective and useful to local community there is no alternative to developing content in an appropriate way and delivering it through a user friendly mechanism.

Serving wider community groups through content

Most telecenters aim to provide and improve access to information for a wide variety of community people. Hence, it is indeed vital to develop appropriate services for the targeted users. In a rural setup, the target groups may vary from farmers to students, and from women to rural businesses. In order to ensure that this wide variety of groups is served, it is essential to develop comprehensive content as per their needs. Telecenters may not directly help the rural people to improve their livelihood but can create an environment wherein they may get access to relevant information, thus leading to empowerment of individuals and society as a whole.

Content: The Life Blood of ICT for Development (ICT4D)

Content is 'life blood' to the practitioners and policy makers of any ICT4D initiative in order to make it successful. Telecenters will only be effective and dynamic if adequate and useful content is developed and upgraded continually. The importance of content is increasing day by day as various ICT-related development programs are in the field for implementation.

When developing content for telecenters, the major issues to be considered are: relevance and localization. If the target group is a rural community with special focus on farmers, content should primarily relate to agriculture and should obviously be delivered in the local language. Other services should also be bundled in the line of local social and economic perspective. In order to make telecenters effective tools for local economic development, assimilating local content and services is essential.

Major Issues of Content

Focusing on the core issues of content is very important and the following should be considered during content development:

• Understanding the local requirement i.e. areas and issues underlying the content

• Using the local language

• Establishing a mechanism to update content and to collect feedback

• Using alternate technologies to develop the content

• Designing a convenient medium to deliver the content

• Developing a system to integrate diversified content or for bundling of content

• Enhancing knowledge of operators at the field level so as to enable them to understand the value of content

• Focusing on providing a robust connectivity and infrastructure

Telecenter projects are generally more focused on connectivity and infrastructure issues, instead of addressing or offering demand based services, and putting effort in developing demand oriented services and content for the web. If we see the issue from a different perspective, it reveals something alarming - that telecenter initiatives are neither addressing the core issues of rural livelihood nor ate local needs being properly assessed. Mainly such initiatives are 'supply driven' initiatives based on hypothetical models.

Major challenges in content development include the following:

• Lack of understanding of local demand among the practitioners

• Absence of a network and lack of partnership among the stakeholders

• Non-availability of resources to develop content

• Lack of availability of local and relevant contents in organized format

• Unicode format of the local language

Strategy to Overcome the Challenges

To overcome content related challenges, it is important to design and develop a strategic approach based on the field perspective. The process to resolve the issue can be outlined as:

• Understanding the local need

• Building broader partnerships among the stakeholders

• Establishing a mechanism to share resources (content) available on the net

• Exchanging experiences and learning in content development

• Mobilizing resources for research, new content development and update of content

• Capacity building of the practitioners including telecenter operators

Resource or Strategy: What is Needed?

Designing an appropriate strategy to address the core issues of content development is the key challenge for telecenter initiatives. It starts at the very preliminary stage when the program is designed, and it happens mostly due to the lack of understanding of 'local need'. Due to huge investment (and low or no return) at an early stage of content development, it is difficult for the private sector alone to invest. Hence, the need arises for development agencies to get involved with and support the private sector's development strategy. Sometimes, projects are also developed on priority and conditions where 'content' is not even an issue. But the good news is that things are changing rapidly. Awareness and understanding of both donor communities and practitioners have increased during the last couple of years and the situation will further improve if advocacy can be made continuously. Eventually, mobilizing resources for content development depends on the strategy adopted by the telecenter initiatives and commitment from the development partners.

Role of Partners in a Multi-stakeholder Environment for Content Development

In any telecenter initiative, a wide group of stakeholders is involved in the implementation of the project. Most such initiatives depend on donor money for implementation. Hence, development partners play an important role in various areas. If the roles of the participating institutions can be clearly defined, the question of 'who will do what' settled, and the core areas of support identified, it would be easier to attract development partners' investment in content. The private sector can also play an important role in taking forward the content update mechanism and in creating a competitive landscape in the content development market.

Core Issue of Business Model

If content is developed but no 'business model' exists, it will be difficult to operate telecenters successfully. It appears that sustainability of telecenters is another challenge being experienced during the last few years and most of the initiatives could not be replicated as business models. To address these issues in a structured way, and in particular to minimize the increasing trend of content gap, it is important to focus on the development of a business model for telecenter initiatives. In terms of usage of services of telecenter, the main proposition for 'sustainability' in the practical scenario is:

Content = Information -> Knowledge -> Sustainable development

Developing effective content contributes to the process of establishing an 'Information Society'. Use of the content by beneficiary groups will increase their knowledge base and facilitate increased productivity. The process of content development leads to information sharing and knowledge enhancement, which will eventually play a role in achieving sustainable development.

Content Gap is Widening and Causing Frustration: Need to Bridge the Gap Now

Approximately 80% of the web content is in English and very few telecenter projects are developing relevant and local content. Hence, the targeted user groups of telecenters are not getting the required information from the center which tends to cause frustration among them. Finally, it leads to low use of services offered by the telecenters and thus the telecenter loses its attraction among the rural people. In most of the developing countries, rural users of telecenters are facing the problem of relevant content and are still not able to fully benefit from the services offered by the telecenters. When ICT services are made available in the rural setup, farmers and other beneficiaries expect that relevant information and services would be available there. But in reality, they experience alien text and material.

As the telecenter movement is expanding, this gap is also widening, leaving the rural population frustrated. This may lead to a negative perspective of ICT tools as a media to serve the broader development perspective. This trend of content gap needs to be bridged immediately. To address the issue, practitioners, policymakers, investors, donors and activists should concentrate on the issue of content.

Conclusion

Making telecenters work for rural communities depends on the approach and services offered through the centers. These are largely related to content (main product of a telecenter) and establishing a mechanism of developing relevant local content which has to be updated regularly. It is believed that the future of telecenter movement is very promising and to keep the process on track, it is essential to develop appropriate content. We therefore need to focus on the core issue of content and end the pilot syndrome of telecenter that we have been experiencing until now.