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| Type: |
Conference or workshop paper |
| Language |
English |
| Year of publication: |
2010 |
| Target countries: |
Zambia |
| Download: |
 613kb |
| Summary |
Since the liberalization of the telecommunication sector in 1994, Zambia has witnessed significant growth in the ICT sector. Despite this growth, access to ICT services such as internet and related technologies are more biased to urban population leaving out rural areas that comprise over 60% of the country’s population.
Like any other Sub Saharan country, Zambia is faced with many challenges that include lack of adequate ICT and energy infrastructure restricting opportunities for increased private sector investments in rural areas. To mitigate some of these challenges, rural communities rely on shared ICT infrastructure and services through the use of community based telecenters and/or internet kiosks.
However, existence of telecenters and their activities in Zambia have been in isolation and activities are not effectively coordinated. Telecenters are negatively affected by several challenges and affect their overall operations and sustainability. There is a need to increase management skills, networking and coordination among community based telecenters is therefore necessary to have overall impact on the lives of the local people and development in general.
Southern Africa Telecenter Network in conjunction with Zambia Association for Advancement of ICTs organized a national telecenter development workshop in mid December to explore ways to mitigate challenges facing telecenters. The event was supported with the auspices of Technical Center for Agricultural Cooperation (CTA).
This report gives some detail and outputs on the deliberations of the first Zambia Telecentre Development Workshop undertaken at Andrews Motel from 14th to 17th December 2009.
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