Experience of Providing Wireless Access to Rural Communities Gertjan van Stam Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre (SIRDC) Harare, Zimbabwe [email protected]

Abstract. This is the text of the address at the policy dialogue hosted by the South African Department of Science and Technology and the European Union in partnership with the HSRC, on ’Extending access and connectivity across rural communities in South Africa’, 12 February 2013, in Pretoria, South Africa. The address takes the position that the provisioning of wireless access to rural communities being constrained in both ’the World of Things’ and ’the World of Humans’. Access to Information and Communications Technologies in rural communities challenges paradigm, institutions, regimes of knowledge and social practices that influence choice, constrains meaning and influences identities and communities. This presentation positions itself from a rural African perspective, a position often restrained or ’out of reach’. From 12 years experience and ethnographic study of engineering activities in rural Zambia and rural Zimbabwe, the author introduces some general observations that require to be addressed in the introduction of ICT in rural areas.

1 Introduction Ladies and Gentlemen, could I start this time together with seeing whom is in this room? Can I ask those who live full time in rural areas to raise their hands? And, how many of you live at least half of your time in rural areas? And, who in the room has a rural home, and visits that home regularly? You can understand that the outcome of this poll affects the experience-base we have in the room in view of the subject matter: ”How to extend access and connectivity in rural communities”. The BBC Clicks’ documentary on Macha Works [1] shows where I have been residing the last 10 years. Recently, I read a quote: in Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) for Development 10% of your time and money should be focused on the technology, with 90% invested on people, process and politics. [2]. This proposition was validated in the development of a great African internet application: Ushahidi [3]. Of course, this is not new to you as policy makers. However, the practitioners are known to be so engrossed in the great technologies they develop, that they easily forget this [4] [5].

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I have been asked to provide an international perspective with my experience of providing wireless access to rural communities. This experience is based upon activities in strategy in telecommunications since 1987, working with telecom leaders in South Africa during during the mid 90’s, augmented by 12 years full time living and working in (deep) rural Africa - 2 years in Zimbabwe, and then 10 years in Zambia. There I learned ICT in rural areas hinge mostly on leadership issues, so, I might be in the right forum today!

2 Some Experiences The realities of rural areas are extreemly complex. It appears that the problems this world faces elsewhere exist in the rural areas in an amplified way. I am sure you have lists and lists of issues to deal with, but I challenge you to review whether your lists include the issues I present from my twelve years of experience engendering ICTs in rural areas. First of all, why do we need communications in rural areas anyway? Well, we triumph great reasoning for economic development and bridging a divide here or there. But what are the current, and urgent, local needs? As a example, I propose the findings of my wife Janneke van Dijk. She is a researcher in paedriatic HIV. It is a field in which we do experience real joy and extreme sadness. HIV affects children much more severely than adults, and since 2007, of the 700 children living with HIV/AIDS she studied 100 children have died. For us, each of these children has a face, a name, and a life extinguished before fruition. To reduce mortality and hospitalisation of children due to HIV/AIDS, it is imperative to increase access to early infant diagnosis (EID). For rural Macha access to EID means sending batches of samples to a centralized laboratory in Lusaka, more than 300 kilometres away. A study of this process in 2010 and 2011, measuring the average times from the visit of the infant at the rural clinic to the confirmation of HIV infection status of the caregiver. The results of this study showed [6]: – the average time between collection of specimen in the rural area and arrival at the central laboratory in Lusaka is 13 days – the time from arrival at the central laboratory in Lusaka to return of results to the rural clinic is 23 days – the time from arrival of the results at the rural clinic to informing the caregiver is 46 days So, the total time from getting the specimen from the infant to return of the results to the caregiver was 82 days, of which more than half was taken in getting the result from the rural clinic to the caregiver in that rural area! This 46 days represents the communication time within the rural community itself. This is almost 2 months, and that a long time in a child’s life and constitutes precious time lost when treatment is needed. Thus, in my view, there is a direct correlation between the access to communications in rural areas and children’s lives saved.

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This is just one distinct reason why communications within rural areas must be prioritized. Our research shows the need for internet access for the rural community. For instance, we found that 54% of the internet messaging is between local users, in the village. And, when we asked, we found that a stunning 71% of the current users do use the Internet for learning [7]. So, it is being used, but what are the hurdles to overcome?

3 To Overcome Our first issue in bringing ICT access to rural Zambia was the issue of housing [8]. There are just not enough buildings for the ICT operations and the experts involved. Of course, this problem is not unique to ICT, so when we solved the issue of housing for the ICT activities and experts, we brewed a new problem: one of jealousy of other players in the community, who had not succeeded in gaining the same sort of access to resources to increase the amount of housing. Although at the start of the ICT implementation, there were no facilities whatsoever available for ICT activities, and although we succeeded in producing new housing for this purpose, this generated much trouble as the local institutes in health and education did not succeed in providing housing for their (growing) staff corps. And, I tell you, such disparities are not easily ironed out. I expect this issue to simmer and wreack havoc for our rural ICT deployment for many years to come. Then the issues with electricity. In rural areas, electricity is known to be – not there – sometimes there, or – ’bad’. However, have you seen it quantified for rural areas? Do we really know what ’bad electricity’ is? In Macha we tried to find out, and implemented (very expensive) measuring equipment. Ironically, the measuring equipment blew up twice with replacement needed before we really got going. We found electricity was ’out’ on average 15% of the time, and when ’on’, there were frequent ’brown outs’, transients, and other nasty events that equipment just do not like. And, as with housing, when an electricity back-up was implemented, the issue of community priorities and sharing showed up, given rise to much contention, to say the least. Luckily the back up systems blew up, so at least the network had no electricity when the others had no electricity either! Or what about human capacity? We found that the rural way of skills training is quite removed from the ’western way’ of doing it. So we set up a rural ICT training centre, that has trained 588 persons up to now [9]. We even graduated plenty of A+ certified persons to work in the rural areas. However, the policies ’from town’ and the necessities of having all the work constantly vetted by the experts in town blocked these rural experts from working on the ICT equipment in the government run institutions in the rural areas.

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Of course, there are huge technical difficulties to overcome too, both on the hardware and on the software side. On hardware, we found that if it is not cheap equipment, then it just cannot be replaced when it blows. And it will blow. For instance, we got over 40 great UPS systems, all but five blew within weeks or months. Or expensive computer systems - poof! - they do not last in the onslaught of dust, heat and ’bad electricity’. The cheap old stuff remained, and continued working. But, most stuff just came - and went. I hardly dare to deal with the issues of costs, but let me briefly touch on it. In the USA, the FCC now propagates free WIFI countrywide. We in rural Africa pay through the nose. The ITU showed that the cost of broadband in Africa is 1,000% of the average income of a person [10], and, no doubt, those figures are derived from towns only. In rural Zambia we have seen the cost of bandwidth go up over 50% during the last eight years (still going at prices over USD 5,000 a month, e.g for a 2 Mbps). In the mean time, the average size of a website has exploded hundredfolds [11]. You see, generic figures might show a shrinking digital divide, but in practice the digital exclusion continues to widen, in my experience.

4 Some Observations I recall the quote that only 10% of your time and money should be focused on the technology, with 90% invested in people, process and politics.. I certainly found the people side the most rewarding [12]. And, yes, people in rural areas live different lives from people in urban areas, with sound reasons. So, what are the differences that we have observed (and documented), but found to be poorly understood, or even ignored, by people living with tarred roads, shops around the corner, and settled in Western paradigm? Let me briefly share four of them, these are: – – – –

Orality Ubuntu Relatio, and Dogma.

The context of Orality is little understood, and difficult to grasp for those daily operating in an environment that thinks conceptually and operates within the confines of literacy. The preferred method of the oral communicator for learning, remembering, and conveying is receiving information through stories. For instance, in my experience, real sustainability has been achieved when the local community has found the stories and wordings for the activity its the own, local language. Actually, I am trying this method today, and I hope it impacts you more than if I had used lots of words on lots of slides. But how do engineers (and policy makers) normally approach work and the dissemination of information? Through particularisation, and through guides, and manuals. No wonder those approaches appear foreign to the rural area dweller.

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Or what about the great, African tradition of Ubuntu? I am because We are [13]. How to incorporate this epistomology, this way of thinking, into systems? The legal system of South Africa has some notable examples, in the laws for traditional leadership [14] or in court [15]. However, in ICT we tend to have engineering systems developed within a western mindset, that might benefit certain individuals over others, that work according to long enshrined colonial practices [16], and thus wreak havoc in the indigenous cultural systems that exist and sustain the social fabric and cultural heritage of the rural areas. However, when we include ’Ubuntu thinking’ in our systems and policies than I would hope ICT supports the traditional African values. For instance through community radio we enhance and mondernize the traditional culture in our village [17]. Relatio, have you ever heard of it? You know what ’ratio’ is, but what is ’relatio’ ? I am sure, with so many Africans in the room, you actually know it in your heart! Relatio is the amount of relationship, and that is currency, the currency of the rural areas [18] [19]. My experience in rural Zambia (and Zimbabwe) is that the western view on money is not readily understood in rural areas, where the practice is a ’relatio economy’, the economy of giving. And that implies that for sustainability, one needs to understand that kind of economy and work alongside it; for instance facilitating the process of oral budgeting [20]. When we focus on a western definition of entrepreneurship only, we run the risk of individualizing too much, dispensing assets to raise the standard of certain individuals in the community only. And, then, that individual runs a huge risk of being excommunicated, or worse. Now the fourth one, and this one is even more contentious; the one of ’dogma’. It is the issue of how we ’frame our world’. These are the enshrined teachings of colonialism, the issues of race, and how we ’view each other’ [21]. At both sides of our cultural divides we are guilty of pre-conceived ideas. They are often not helpful, certainly they are not in most rural areas I have dwelled. My experience is that African leadership involves everyone close to the action, is based on sharing, seeks balance, and so on. And, change is fueled by the young persons [22]. We call the them ’local heroes’, and figured out a holistic model of interaction where one balances views on reality through, for instance, ethnographic study. We wait for the local talent to emerge and then support vigorous activity when the time is right [23]. It is all about love and people. However, we often find our rigid models, based upon western worldviews, do not cater for that kind of more lucid traditional African behaviour.

5 For Policy There are many more experiences to share; for instance the hundreds of times we travelled from rural areas to the capital to try to acquire the necessary approvals, paperwork, and permits to be allowed to do what we figured out would need to be done. The difficulties of aligning the paradoxes between African and Western worldviews. Or, the issues of rural banking. Or, the wonderful discoveries that can occur in rural areas, like innovation on eLearning in music [24], in nurses

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training [25] [26], and engineering [27] [28]. Or, the difficulties being blocked from information on the Internet while one tries to access from Africa. In my view, the complexities of the rural areas are not easily compressed into cause and effect descriptions. Further, the issues encountered, and the open society we are entering more and more, present frankly unsolvable paradoxes. Those paradoxes can be mitigated by reconciliation of dilemmas [4]. Currently, the Western system with its message of individuality, its praising of the winner who takes it all, and its spirit of selfishness, is under pressure. Therefore, there is a window of opportunity for modernized African models utilizing the potential of the continent [29], that aims on fellowship, humanity, a spirit of compassion. In my experience, the rural areas contains much talent. However, this talent is often not empowered to contribute to the development its community. To assure peace and stability, both the cites and the rural areas need synchronized development. To assure progress, rural development must aim to guide rural communities from a closed mental attitude, through the arrested state, to an open view of circumstance. Such necessitate the right policies, that incorporate state-of-the-rural-art of thinking and practice [23]. In my experience, then there can be great progress that keeps and grows local talent in the rural areas. A respectful implementation of ICT in rural areas provides a facilitating infrastructure that helps in all of this.

6 Conclusions I do maintain that the plural character of the positioning of ICT in rural Africa, severely affecting the policy challenges, stems from two different and often competing paradigms: an African indigenous paradigm and a Western paradigm. The paradigms diverge in terms of values, definitions of social aspects and realities, and cultural approaches. At the heart of this plurality are these inherently different worldviews, which in practice lead to a number of barriers to interaction, implementation, and even antagonism. In my view, these issues can be overcome by focusing on social innovation [30], in this case developing the appropriate means for ICT access together with the rural communities. Undeniably, ICT provides the tools that support people, also in rural areas. The challenge is for ICT to be introduced and utilised in the right manner, and with the right timing. This balancing act, in my opinion, is an act of reconciling dilemmas. The strategy thus derived will facilitate, and not denigrate, the modernization of existing and long enshrined traditional structures in rural areas. Kenneth Kaunda, the first President of Zambia, once said: Westerners have aggressive problem-solving minds; Africans experience people. His wise observation reveals two complementary priority structures. In the past, emphasis has been placed solely on the development of Africa on Western terms. We must set policies that aim to trancend this historical legacy, reconcile and begin to experience people.

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The process to achieve sustainable progress is an exchange not only of physical capital, ICT equipment and funding, but also of values and culture. Development of rural access must be conducted in a modernized traditional African way. This process requires a shift of priority from front-loaded, formula-obsessed, pre-packaged development tactics towards more loving, spiritually enshrined, decentralized, inclusive, engaging, patient, tolerant and balanced set of programmes that invest genuinely, not merely at a financial or technological level, but on a relationship level as well. In my view it is by integrating and reconciling knowledge of the traditional African context and culture in current systems and policies, that the vibrant complexity of rural areas can be released from the shackles of traditional rationality, and be appreciated as an valuable force of African development, and true sustainability.

7 About the Presenter Gertjan van Stam (47) was born in the Netherlands. For the last 10 years he and his family have lived in the rural village of Macha, in the Southern Province of Zambia. Before that he stayed for 2 years in rural Murambinda, Zimbabwe. He has been involved with strategic developments in ICT in Africa since 1987. His goal is to identify and inspire local talent and introduce appropriate technologies to build the necessary capacity for community-led activities to yield sustainable human development outcomes. His quest is for a logical framework for understanding dynamics of change in African communities and engendering leadership capable of inspiring, initiating, implementing, operating, and scaling up sustainable progress and the use of technology in the local community. Since 2011, Gertjan has volunteered in strategy-making at the IEEE, the largest professional institute in the world. He is part of IEEEs Ad Hoc Committee for Humanitarian Activities, working on Social Innovation and leading ’thought leadership and advocacy’. His activities in Zambia were featured in IEEE The Institute, and his career was documented in an award-winning IEEE video at TryEngineering. The activities in Zambia were documented worldwide though BBC Clicks. Gertjan authored the book Placemark, and has published over 20 articles on findings and lessons learned in rural Africa.

References 1. 2. 3. 4.

BBC Clicks. BBC Clicks - Macha Works, 2011. Tony Roberts. ICT for Social Justice: hype debunked!, 2013. Chris Blow. Allocation of Time: Deploying Ushahidi, 2010. Gertjan van Stam. Is Technology the Solution to the Worlds Major Social Challenges? In 2012 IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference, Seattle, USA, 2012. IEEE. 5. Gertjan van Stam. Information and Knowledge Transfer in the rural community of Macha, Zambia (in press). The Journal of Community Informatics.

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6. Catherine G Sutcliffe, Janneke H van Dijk, Pamela Sinywimaanzi, Felix Manyani, and William J Moss. Turnaround times for early infant diagnosis of HIV infection in rural southern Zambia. In 4th International Workshop on HIV paediatrics, Washington DC, USA, 2012. 7. David L Johnson, Elizabeth M Belding, and Gertjan van Stam. Network traffic locality in a rural African village. In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, pages 268–277, 2012. 8. Gertjan van Stam, David L Johnson, Veljko Pejovic, Consider Mudenda, Austin Sinzala, and Darelle van Greunen. Constraints for Information and Communications Technologies implementation in rural Zambia. In Africomm 2012, 2012. 9. Consider Mudenda and Gertjan van Stam. ICT Training in Rural Zambia, the case of LinkNet Information Technology Academy. Africomm 2012, 2012. 10. ITU Statshot. Who Can Afford Broadband?, 2012. 11. Gertjan van Stam. Observations from rural Africa: An engineer involved in ICTs and critical ethnography in Macha, Zambia. In UCSB Center for Information Technology and Society Lecture Series, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 2012. 12. Gertjan van Stam. Placemark. Gertjan van Stam, Macha, 2011. 13. Desmond Tutu. No Future Without Forgiveness. Doubleday, New York, 1999. 14. Government Gazette of Republic of South Africa. Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Amendment Act, 2003. 15. J. Lamont. Afri-Forum and Another v Malema and Others, 2011. 16. Paul Dourish and Scott D Mainwaring. Ubicomps Colonial Impulse. In UbiComp’ 12, Pittsburg, USA, 2012. 17. Gertjan van Stam and Fred Mweetwa. Community Radio Provides Elderly a Platform to Have Their Voices Heard in rural Macha, Zambia. The Journal of Community Informatics, 8(1), 2012. 18. Kevin Sheneberger and Gertjan van Stam. Relatio: An Examination of the Relational Dimension of Resource Allocation. Economics and Finance Review, 1(4):26 – 33, 2011. 19. Mandiyamba Rukuni. Leading Afrika. Penguin Books, Johannesburg, 2009. 20. Gertjan van Stam. Oral Budgeting in rural Macha, Southern Province, Zambia. Anthropological Notebooks, 18(3):4146, 2012. 21. Gertjan van Stam. Towards an Africanised expression of ICT. In Africomm 2012, 2012. 22. Gertjan van Stam and Gerard van Oortmerssen. Macha Works! In Frontiers of Society On-Line, Raleigh, 2010. 23. Jasper Bets, Gertjan van Stam, and Anne-marie Voorhoeve. Modeling and Practise of Integral Development in rural Zambia. Case Macha. In Africomm 2012, 2012. 24. Kristin Shoemaker and Gertjan van Stam. ePiano, a case of music education via internet in rural Zambia. In Society On-Line, April 26-27th, 2010, Raleigh, NC, USA, 2010. 25. Jo M Vallis, A C Mason, K Afari-Dekyi, E Ansotinge, J Antwi, L Chifwaila, F Fraser, P Moyo, Consider Mudenda, C Turner, Gordon Urquhart, Gertjan van Stam, and A. Wales. Building Capacity for E-learning for Nurse Training in Zambia and Ghana: Appropriate Computer Technologies? In Appropriate Healthcare Technologies for Developing Countries (AHT 2012), 2012. 26. Julie Schurgers, Gertjan van Stam, S Banda, and M Labib. Opportunities and challenges of E-learning in Zambia : Experiences and Reflections. Medical Journal of Zambia, 36(3):119–124, 2009.

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27. Jacqueline Mpala and Gertjan van Stam. Open BTS, a GSM experiment in rural Zambia. In Africomm 2012, 2012. 28. Jonathan Backens, Gregory Mweemba, and Gertjan van Stam. A Rural Implementation of a 52 Node Mixed Wireless Mesh Network in Macha, Zambia. EInfrastructures and E-Services on Developing Countries. Africomm 2010., pages 32–39, 2010. 29. Reuel Khoza. Let Africa Lead: African Transformational Leadership for 21st century Business. VezuBuntu, South Africa, 2005. 30. Gertjan van Stam. Towards an IEEE Strategy in Social Innovation. In 2012 IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference, 2012.