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Sustainability

Challenges

A number of challenges arose during the life of the project and these include:

  • Community understanding that this was a technology project and not a poverty alleviation project
  • Defining "who is the community"
  • Some community members simply are not "self starters"
  • The logistics of operating in deep rural areas
  • Institutional support was lacking particularly with respect to funding of small business
  • Harnessing outside resources to support and grow the project. We have been successful in partnering with Eskom in the provision of grid supply to some key facilities but other utilities e.g. water supply are sadly lacking.
  • Exit strategies. As the Lubisi Dam Development Forum continues to grow in experience, the icomtek team's role in facilitating and mentoring will diminish. This active process of skills transfer ensures that Forum members become independent, with a basket of skills to offer other communities. Demonstration of this principle was in the fact that the trainees generated their own business plans, summarized these for presentation and delivered the presentations themselves to their peers in the Lubisi Dam Development Forum.
Mechanisms for sustainability

Sustainability is central to the project implementation. This is directed on two fronts:

  • Sustainability of the ICT Hub/MPCC itself
  • Sustainability of SMME's that use the ICT Hub/MPCC as a business support centre.

From the model below the "value addition" in the provision of additional services, as one progresses in an anti-clockwise direction around the model, is illustrated. The ultimate goal is that the trained business facilitators (ICT Hub members) are providing training and business support services to the community.

 
Typical Transaction Values of MPCC Components

The typical transaction values of the components of service delivery follow an exponential increase from R1 through to R1000. This includes:

  • Telecentre services which cost R1 or more,
  • Desk top publishing, which costs R10 or more,
  • Training which costs R100 or more,
  • Business support which could cost R1000 or more,

The low-cost, high volume business found in the first two components (Telecentre and DTP) can create the fundamental cash flow needed to support the higher-level activities (Training and Business support). These elements have been combined with anticipated volumes of transactions to arrive at the target income and other aspects of the business plan, to analyse the potential for the ICT Hub to support itself as a self-sustaining business.
 
MPCC Configurations

Multi-purpose Community Centres (MPCC's) can be commissioned on the basis on one of the following types of configuration:

  • Hub
  • Node
  • Satellite

Each of these have different physical components, but with the same core components. The details of the types of configuration and their implications are given in a separate document, which covers the possible activities at district, town and community level, with different ranges of services in each location. This document uses the "hubs, nodes and satellites" concept to show how service delivery can be spread widely and extended into rural situations.

The operational models were constructed on the assumptions that:

  • Central (urban) sites are "hubs"
  • Towns and villages are "nodes"
  • Rural situations are "satellites"

In this network of service provision core services are offered at each component of the network and expanded services at other points. Information management and service delivery is viewed from an ICT perspective in which hubs, nodes and satellites are different types of access points, all providing entry into the full range of electronic information technologies, but each having a different set of information management and offline services.

 
Recommendations
Sustainability of ICT's can be achieved provided it is recognised that the ICT's are seen as a means to an end in that they are an enabler for local economic development. By leveraging existing and start up businesses through the use of the ICT hubs's it is believed a level of sustainability can be achieved in terms of covering running costs, such as telephone lines and salaries. In no way can sustainability be achieved if the capital cost of the ICT's has to be repaid. Once a basic level of sustainability has been achieved at the ICT Hub, it is then a simple matter of rolling out the ICT's, after training, to the surrounding satellite sites at minimal cost.

Recognising that resources are scarce in most Provinces it is proposed that a rollout strategy where key centres are initially identified and resourced. These centres or 'hubs' provide the training and support for a cluster of communities in the area until such time as the network can expand to form nodes in the surrounding villages. Ultimately the network will expand to the outerlying rural communities or satellites.