Question

You know the story … teach a man to fish …, yes that’s the one. Quite famous in the world of international development. But what does it mean when dealing with information and communication technologies (ICT)?

Does it mean that we send money and consultants to teach other so called developing nations how to use a particular product? Does it mean donating our used equipment? Or does it mean that we share our information with them without royalties and let them sort themselves out?

In either case it creates and maintains a dependency much like the economic dependencies we see in the world today. But this dependency is a knowledge based dependency. The developing world is still dependent on the handouts of the developed world … their willingness to share information and know-how. Granted, that much of this information can be obtained over the internet, but wait, how in the first place do you get an internet infrastructure up and running in a stable and affordable fashion? As a developing nation, where do you get the resources to do so? … remember nothing is for free.

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Projects

What a view, eh? This is from the balcony of my office at the ICT department, 20th (and last) floor at MINED. The view is facing south to Catembe across the water. I also get a decent workout when the elevators are not working!

I’ve been working with MINED (Ministry of Education) for about a month now. First project was to create a web portal to capture information about the students of the teacher training colleges, some 8,000 – 10,000 students distributed through 24 schools around the country. Now that they are linked to the internet, it is theoretically possible. This information will allow MINED to manage the distribution of teachers throughout the country, make sure that everyone is converting to the new 2 yr curriculum, and then collect final marks at the end of the year.

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