entertainment as well as for a sense of social connection to wider regional and national networks. Local language broadcasting is highly valued, and could be built upon. There is the need to look much more closely at the concept of ‘access’. Looking at other information networks and needs, different combinations of media can be suggested. For example, schools in Twifo Praso as in most rural areas severely lack teaching materials while the Internet offers a seemingly inexhaustible library. How can we connect the two? One model would be to increase the access of teachers and students to computer centres so that they can directly access this information themselves. An alternative model involves integrating computers and Internet within the existing communicative ecology of the area through the use of intermediaries – teachers, health workers and extension officers. For example, teachers can send requests for information and teaching materials to a computer centre by word of mouth or by travelling along the roads (one could also imagine the use of citizen’s band radio or eventually mobile phone). People at the computer centre can do online searches to find the right materials and then process it into an appropriate form that can then be sent to the village school by road (an audio cassette, a poster, a 2-page summary). The idea of educational radio programmes developed from relevant materials online which is reformatted to meet rural informational needs is also a possibility. Access and use do not necessarily mean having one’s hands directly on a keyboard, or even having the skills to do so. In the
urban research site for example, I found some people who regularly send and receive email even though they have never personally seen a computer and would not know how to operate one directly; they may not even be able to read the email themselves. However, they can give messages to relatives or friends who do have these skills, and who can send and receive eMail on their behalf. As long as these channels of communication work, such people can be
regular and sophisticated users of e-Mail without even touching a computer. Overcoming the sense of exclusion through ICTs also extends to more directly practical information. On the one hand, while working with village households we have come across enormous confusion and disparity over even very basic information that is crucial to everyday life, such as levels and payment dates of school fees, national news directly affecting agricultural prices and procedures over cocoa and palm oil, as well as health information and programmes. This intensifies both practical and symbolic disadvantage, as well as a feeling that information is not the right of village people. What is needed, again, are extensive and effective channels of communication that combine ICTs and social networks to routinely keep people informed, as well as to convey people’s voices, problems and information needs ‘upwards’. It is significant that in the absence of local provision of such things as education and health information, local solutions are found to fill the gap. The point that this discussion hopes to present is that a range of ICTs has to connect to a wide range of diverse needs. These connections may overlap but each has to be thought through individually, creatively and appropriately, and each may lead outwards from ICTs to other technologies, institutions and arrangements. There is the need to recognise that ICTs may play little or no part in many rural issues, or there may be far better solutions even to local information needs. This is a long way from taking the attitude that computers or the Internet on their own directly bring benefits, or herald an imminent ‘information society’. It is rather a matter of thinking up very specific and appropriate connections between information needs and information means. For further information contact iConnect Coordinator John Yarney, john_yarney@yahoo.co.uk
Access to ICT in rural communities in Mali: Telecentre initiatives, CMC and LICC open rural regions to ICT By Almahady Moustapha Cissé Located in some communities, telecentres, local information and communication centres (LICC) and community multimedia centers (CMC) allow underserved communities to access new technologies December 2006 | www.i4donline.net
in order to improve their life by providing them with information on the main development areas: health, education, agriculture… Considered to be lagging behind the Malian capital - Bamako -
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