www.dwesa.org

By

Sibukele Gumbos.gumbo@ru.ac.za

An ICT4D initiative based in the Dwesa and Nkwalini communities

of the Eastern Cape

Conditions for living labbing Fort Hare and Rhodes University Telkom Centre of Excellence

initiative (triplehelix) with a multidisciplinary team from CS, IS, Anthropology, Education, African Languages etc. Dwesa and Nkwalini make quadruple helix

Extreme rurality (high illiterate levels, households electrified in December 2009, population of about 15, 000, area under control of traditional leadership so need to adopt and recognise local structures, highly affected by rural-urban migration, high unemployment)

Empowered community (one of South Africas first successful land reclaim)

Poor telecommunications infrastructure

Points of presence at five schools in the area

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An ICT4D initiative based in the Dwesa and Nkwalini communities

of the Eastern Cape

Home to beautiful Xhosa arts, craft and culture

Short term objectives• Build direct benefits for the stakeholders

– Development of innovative user-driven context-sensitive eServices to the direct benefit of the communities (e.g. eCommerce, mCommerce, eHealth, eJudiciary)• Localized (linguistic and cultural), audio based• IK-based• Community innovation

– Distributed community telecommunication infrastructure– Community empowerment through computer literacy training

(e.g. pre-ACE ICT course) , training project champions etc

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Long term objectives• Network the community and build the bridge to the knowledge

society– Technical and financial sustainability– Scalable and replicable model for similar – Improved partnerships between the private, public, academia

and rural sectors to support rural development – Improve semantic technologies – i,e, provide smart software

which smoothes out ICT adoption according to local norms and language and makes exchange of information online easier;

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Challenges Distances between stakeholders

Difficulty to embedded within the provincial system of innovation

Adapt and ICT technologies in an area with erratic electricity supply, mountainous terrain

Accreditation of literacy offered

Funding is mainly through university structures

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Methods and tools Engaged literacy training sessions adapted for the communities.

Multidisciplinary team working at this

Engaging communities very strongly when building prototype eServices

Cohosting events, living with and meetings held with the

communities

External auditing of the initiative when available

Setup of software factory

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our Story

rural

Empowerment of a community

multidisciplinary multistakeholder

Siyakhula Living Labhttp://www.dwesa.org

Thank you…6