Dear Wallace: Many cultures in developing countries, but particularly in Africa, are so oral that it will take time (transformation of culture basically) to change things. All these studies will not change this cultural dimension of the issue or compress the decade or more that it will take to transform a culture. Worse yet, in these studies, it is so difficult or even impossible to get sincere answers from respondents. You need to live among them for years and perhaps start to mimic how they think within their given environment. (Who has the time to do this). Yes, it would be helpful if they had the technology and the infrastructure but that can be done in a day....relatively speaking.
Ivo Njosa Information and Communication Technology On Tuesday, May 10, 2005, Wallace Chigona <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > My student is working on a research proposal on the role of e-community > forums in encouraging the community to use telecenters and make use of > e-government services. > > The student is interested in a particular case study of an e-government > initiative by a provincial government in South Africa. The initiators of > the initiative realised that most e-government information is not > accessed because the citizen, especially those on the wrong side of the > domestic digital divide, do not have access to information mainly > because they lack access to technology. They also realised that the > concept of community access (e.g. telecenters) does not usually work > because, for a host of reasons, the community may not use the centers. > Literature shows that one of the reasons for the community not using > community access points is lack of community involvement in setting up > and running the centers. To address these problems this particular > initiative "came up" with the concept of e-community forums. The aim of > the concept is to stimulate public interest in the community centers and > get them involved in the day to day running of the centers. Thus, > generating community participation. ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For past messages, see: http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html
