CASE STUDY SERIES ON ICT-ENABLED DEVELOPMENT: AFRICA
An initiative of IICD and bridges.org

out to illustrate how ICT contributes to development in Africa. The aim
of this series is to help ground level initiatives imagine the
possibilities of what can happen if they use ICT successfully to
overcome development obstacles, and to contribute to the existing body
of knowledge on the digital divide.>

I. OVERVIEW

The Women's Information Resource Electronic Service
(WIRES) is an Internet-based Information Resource Centre designed to
provide relevant business information to women in Uganda with the goal
of empowering small-scale entrepreneurs. WIRES provides online
information on animal rearing, crop growing, trade, and women's issues,
and each subject area covers best practices, market prices, support
organisations, and the type of support they give. Initially a pilot
project, WIRES started by opening telecentres in three sub counties
within Uganda.

The Council for the Economic Empowerment for Women of
Africa (CEEWA) - Uganda Chapter, which is affiliated with the Women of
Uganda Network (WOUGNET). WOUGNET is a non-profit organisation with a
mission to help women use information and communication technologies
(ICT) as a tool to share information and address issues collectively.

CEEWA is a non-profit organisation and the
WIRES programme is supported by funders including the International
Development Research Centre (IDRC), Hivos, and the World Bank. The WIRES
project is currently supported solely by donor funding, but CEEWA-Uganda
is researching how to make its telecentres sustainable.

CEEWA-Uganda was formed in 1995, and its efforts in ICT and
entrepreneurship began in 1999.

Approximately 35% of the population in Uganda live
under the poverty line with 82% of the labour force working in
agriculture(CIA World Factbook, 2002). This heavy reliance on farming
underscores the predominantly agricultural nature of the economy. In
rural Uganda, it is primarily women who provide for households, either
by doing most of the farming or starting small local businesses. Despite
this role, men, not women, usually have access to credit and local
business exchanges. In terms of access to ICT, the vast majority of
those with Internet access live in urban areas, and connectivity is
prohibitively expensive. Typically, a dial-up connection costs $30 per
month for email only, and email plus Internet access costs $50 per
month. The minimum bandwidth leased line will cost $500 to set up, with
an entry-level service accommodating a connection for ten workstations
at $350 per month. Telephone line rates are $0.15 per minute.

Women in rural Uganda face
many difficulties in starting local businesses: they must obtain credit
through their husbands, they do not have time to network locally in
order to sell goods, and they are not taught basic business skills. ICT
offers an effective tool to disseminate information and allow women to
connect, but access to ICT is limited, and the costs of connecting to
the Internet are prohibitively high for the typical woman in rural
Uganda.

The WIRES initiative is
creating telecentres and training women in Uganda to use ICT for
accessing financial credit, marketing, and getting business tips.
CEEWA-Uganda employs local people to manage the telecentres and provides
computer-training courses on CD-ROM. So far women have been using the
telecentres primarily to communicate with other entrepreneurs, which is
helping to raise awareness of common issues among the agricultural
community. They are learning about best practices and how to record
accounting information for their local businesses.

CEEWA-Uganda plans to expand its WIRES programme and
create additional telecentres primarily in rural areas. Because men felt
left out and have also been demanding ICT training, it will budget for
training for males in the community as well. In addition, CEEWA-Uganda
wants to expand its programme to show women how to use ICT in their
daily lives as well as their businesses.

The WIRES initiative targeted 60 women in
rural areas and 30 women in Kampala (Uganda's largest urban centre) in
its original project. Namely, these sub counties were Nabweru in Wakiso
District, Buwama in Mpigi and Nakawa Division in Kampala District.

Goretti Zavuga
Email: [email][email protected]

CEEWA-Uganda
P.O. Box 9063
Kampala - Uganda
Tel: +256-41-534199 or +256-41-534190
Fax: +256-41-534193
Www: http://www.ceewauwires.org

II. GAUGING REAL IMPACT

Impact at the ground level by looking through the lens of basic best
practice guidelines for successful initiatives. The bridges.org 8 Habits
of Highly Effective ICT-Enabled Development Initiatives are used here as
a framework to highlight what the initiative has done well.>

The 8 Habits of Highly Effective ICT-for-Development Initiatives

1. Implement and disseminate best practice

CEEWA-Uganda is partnering with local organisations such as the Rural
Women Information Network of Uganda ( RWIN-U) to bring its lessons to
more rural areas, especially ones that it cannot reach with its
telecentre projects. It shares best practices through seminars,
workshops, and regular reports to its development partners.

2. Ensure ownership, get local buy-in, find a champion

The CEEWA-Uganda initiative started months before the project
implementation began, by hosting meetings with local leaders and
community members. CEEWA-Uganda made a priority of forming local
management committees and hiring local people to manage telecentres.

3. Do needs assessment

CEEWA-Uganda has institutionalised needs assessments. It performed a
baseline study to select the 90 women who were to participate in the
project, to establish the women's information and training needs, as
well as to understand what non-technology factors would inhibit their
success. The implementation phase directly followed from the findings of
the needs assessment, concentrating on implementing ICT for marketing,
teaching business skills, and access to credit, which were all specific
needs identified beforehand.

4. Set concrete goals and take small achievable steps

CEEWA-Uganda's efforts in ICT for development were strictly phased: (1)
needs assessment, (2) implementation, and (3) monitoring and reporting.
The necessary funding and timing was determined beforehand, and the
study was limited to 90 women as a study group. After demonstrating
success and learning from the initial project, CEEWA-Uganda is planning
the next steps.

5. Critically evaluate efforts, report back to clients and supporters,
and adapt as needed

CEEWA-Uganda formally monitored the project every two months, and
produced a report at the end of every six months. Some of these reports
indicated that many of the women did not appreciate information as a
resource; they wanted money, not information. CEEWA-Uganda therefore had
to teach women how to use the information both to improve the
effectiveness of their local businesses as well as to find credit.
CEEWA-Uganda also had to schedule activities and meetings in
conversation with the targeted women, many of whom could not attend
during normal business hours due to family responsibilities.

6. Address key external challenges

Literacy and education were key obstacles to women's success in using
the telecentres. CEEWA-Uganda has begun to provide information in local
languages and plans to focus on these issues in its future projects.
Another challenge arose because some of the targeted women lived too far
from the telecentres and could come to the telecentre on a daily basis.
Lacking daily interaction, many women did not become completely
comfortable with using computer technology. CEEWA-Uganda will address
this problem directly in future implementations.

7. Make it sustainable

The WIRES project is currently supported solely by donor funding, but
CEEWA-Uganda is researching how to make its telecentres sustainable.
They are aware that in the absence of funding, telecentres must find
profitable business opportunities that serve real community needs such
as business and entrepreneurship training, computer and Internet
training, and business facilities and administration.

8. Involve groups that are traditionally excluded on the basis of
gender, race, religion or age.

CEEWA-Uganda targets its activities toward women.

III. LESSONS LEARNED

and entrepreneurship, to share her views on the WIRES project's greatest
success, the challenges faced, key constraints and dependencies that
affect the project, opportunities for future improvement, and other
lessons learned. This is what she said:>

"It is crucial that our managers are trained in ICT. When I began this
project, my skills in ICT were still basic, and there was no provision
for capacity building. I learned on the job, although it was very costly
to make mistakes. One example of why this is important was during a
contract negotiation. We found that networking consultants wanted to
take lots of money for simple jobs. Once I understood what these jobs
really entailed, I was in a much more powerful position to bargain.

In implementing projects on the ground, I have learned that you have to
be patient with the audience. This often depends on age: the youth are
quick to learn and the elderly are much slower.

You must also involve the people in their own destiny as it relates to
information. You must have a participatory approach, even in your
baseline study. The local people must own the ideas, and in order for
that to happen, you must explain and come to a level at which they can
understand you. They cannot consider you elite women from the city; they
must see you as partners in the development process."

IV. THE STORY
highlights why this use of ICT for development is particularly
interesting.>

Rural Uganda is a difficult place for women. Many women are the primary
providers for households, either responsible for doing much of the
agriculture work, or running a small business. Despite this role as
providers, men, not women, usually have access to credit and local
business exchanges. The Uganda chapter of the Council for the Economic
Empowerment for Women of Africa (CEEWA) tries to rectify this problem
and help women find the financial resources they need directly. In
addition, as part of its Women's Information Resource Electronic Service
(WIRES) initiative, CEEWA-Uganda recently brought information and
communications technologies (ICTs) directly to the villages by building
local telecentres.

Women business owners in the small rural town of Nabweru, where one of
CEEWA-Uganda's telecentres is located, however, wanted money, not the
Internet. CEEWA-Uganda believed that empowering women with ICT would
provide them access to credit in addition to dramatically improving the
scope and method of their business. Of course, rural women took some
convincing. Before building the telecentre, Goretti Zavuga, who leads
CEEWA-Uganda's ICT implementation in rural areas, held regular town
meetings to get women involved and better understand local business
problems. In addition to accessing credit, women had trouble finding
time to network, and often needed to be coached in basic business
skills.

Incorporating these needs and women's unique schedules into the
telecentre, CEEWA-Uganda began construction of its telecentre. Charcoal
business owner Margaret Nabanja and chicken feed supplier Samailie
Byabagambi now testify to what ICT can do for rural businesses. After
training these women business owners to use computers and the Internet,
they were able to find new sources of credit and change their entire way
of doing business. They now order supplies using the phone and access
market price information over the Internet. They have both been able to
expand their businesses and are so sold on technology that they own
mobile phones. Nabanja and Byabagambi, who had never touched a computer
before, are now teaching their fellow villagers how to surf the
Internet.

Men felt a little left out though, with all this attention being paid to
their wives. In future WIRES projects, WIRES will also budget for
training rural men and allowing them to use the telecentres. In
addition, CEEWA-Uganda plans to develop training programs to help women
use ICT to enhance their daily lives as well as their businesses.

__________________________________
Author: bridges.org
Date: 12 November 2003

About the bridges.org/IICD Case Study Series on ICT-Enabled Development

This case study series on ICT-enabled development aims to disseminate
best practice examples of how information communication technology has
been successfully used by ground level initiatives to alleviate poverty.
Case studies are an effective tool for examining what works best, what
fails, and why. The intention of this series is to share knowledge and
catalyse lessons learned about ICT by local organisations and the
international community. The current focus is on efforts based in
Africa.

The case study series is an initiative of the International Institute
for Communication and Development (IICD) and bridges.org, two
organisations that share the goal of encouraging the effective use of
ICT in developing countries. IICD is an independent non-profit
foundation, established by the Netherlands Minister for Development
Cooperation in 1997 and based in The Hague. Bridges.org is an
international non-governmental organisation based in Cape Town, South
Africa. This initiative is supported by the Building Digital
Opportunities Programme (www.iconnect-online.org), funded by the UK
Department for International Development (DFID), the Directorate General
International Cooperation (DGIS), the Swiss Agency for Development and
Cooperation (SDC)

To view this case study online, go to:
http://www.bridges.org/iicd_casestudies/case_studies.html