Dahms M. (1999) For the Educated People only ... Reflections on a Visit to two Multipurpose Community Telecentres in Uganda, in Gomez R., Hunt P., Lamoureux E. (eds) Telecentre Evaluation and Research: a global perspective, Ottawa: IDRC

Online: http://www.idrc.ca/telecentre/evaluation/nn/08_Kno.html

The article describes the visit of the author at two Multipurpose Community Telecentres (MCT) in Uganda, the Nakaseke MCT and the Nabweru MCT, funded by ITU, UNESCO and IDRC. The article starts out with a short description of the two MCTs visited, including project aims, physical lay out, services offered and users of the MCTs. The articles goes on clarifying the following concepts: Community, Development, Information, Communication and Technology. The article, then, focuses on the fact that the two telecentres are perceived for educated people only. Even though their aim is to reach the local community. The author reviewing the services provided, mainly in English, confirmed this perception. Farmers are likely to use only telephones and photocopying machine, two services which are also physically separated by the computer facilities. The author discusses briefly the digital divide issue, and then reports the three main problems, which have to be taken into consideration, to provide information to a rural community: The language problem, the literacy problem and the relevance problem.