TANZANIA - CYBERCAFE BOOM BUT GOVT POLICY HOLDS BACK GROWTH

Tanzania has experienced a very rapid growth in cybercafes. It is unclear whether demand is mainly local or from tourists but the country’s local internet user base is growing. Government policy has been slow to encourage further investment. However the Government has an ambitious scheme to promote greater connectivity. Pantaleon Shoki reports on developments.

A recent survey by Tanzania’s Business Times shows that thousands of people flock into internet cafes in Dar Es Salaam everyday to surf the net and read their e-mail. Increasingly many people in Dar Es Salaam are communicating through the internet. As a result of the growing demand for these services, many internet cafes have been opened. There are more than 20 cafes in Dar Es Salaam’s central business district alone. Zanzibar has at least five.

Retail internet charges in most cafes in Dar Es Salaam recently dropped from roughly US$1.25 to US $ 0.625, that is equivalent to Tshs. 1000.00 and 500.00 respectively per hour, but it is reported that this is still enough to meet the operating costs and also make a little profit. Some cafes also offer rent subscription services whereby members have unlimited surfing upon payment of a monthly fee of Tshs. 30,000.00 equivalent to US $ 37.50 and surfing at will.

The bulk of clients in most cafes are young people, business people, office workers, students and academics. E-mail services are the most popular at internet cafes, followed by general website surfing. While a number of people go to make telephone calls abroad which is cheap via the net, others go to the cafes on e-business missions but the proportion in this category is relatively small.

According to a report by a UK MP (see end of article), the ISPs calculate that there are 7,000 - 10,000 Tanzanians with ISP accounts and a further 50-100,000 on e-mail.

The number of people transacting serious e-commerce, e-business, e-health, e-law is still very low. It is almost insignificant when one looks at the current literacy figures or the number of university graduates, most of whom do not own e-mail accounts, let alone visit different websites for non-academic purposes.

Existing ISPs

With the growth of internet cafes over the last two years, Tanzania’s internet use is growing fast. Currently, full internet access is provided by Internet Service Providers (ISP) such as Cats-Net Limited, Wilken Afsat Tanzania Ltd, Africa Online, Intrafrica, Raha.Com and recently the Jambonet (under Intelicom (T) Ltd).

The University of Dar Es Salaam also has an international data licence. But this is only for a closed user-group comprising the University community and, as such, is not liable to the hefty licence fees charged to commercial users. It is however precluded from re-sale to the general public.

Recently Jambonet has been launched with the objective of reaching those areas which are not currently served by the present Internet services in order to make sure that more Tanzanians exploit the benefits offered by the internet. The current concentration of internet services is found in Dar Es Salaam, Arusha and Mwanza. There is some radio-based email transmission in some rural parts of the country and most of this is religious institutions such as the dioceses.

Government policy is a barrier to growth

Existing telecommunication policies and the state telco monopoly are undermining the development of the internet in Tanzania. This difficulty was highlighted in a recent public policy dialogue on ICT. Professor Beda Mutagahywa of the University of Dar Es Salaam urged policy-makers in Tanzania to create policy principles for convergent services that mix technology (unregulated and highly competitive) and content. KPMG’s IT Director said at the same event that Tanzania lacked a policy backed by a appropriate legal and regulatory environment to stimulate investment in ICT development. These obstacles to Tanzania benefiting from ICT opportunities obstructs Tanzanians from fostering regional co-operation to harmonise regulation, increase competition, and rationalise usage of scarce bandwidth to the better good. Reliable power and technologies are hampering IT development, making costs of opening cyber cafes very high.

Many commercial ICT initiatives are simply not viable in Tanzania at present due to a number of familiar factors: outdated institutional frameworks, poor transport infrastructures, ineffective national payments system, inadequate postal services, lack of street names for home delivery and absence of credit infrastructure.

The Government has an eThinkTank (http://www.ethink.tz.com/) which was launched by David Sawe in the President’s Office and Simbo Ntiro from KPMG. Also according to Derek Wyatt’s report there is an ambitious project to offer greater online access using the spare capacity of the military’s communications system.

Changes for the better in the ICT can only be achieved if the Government workswholeheartedly with the private sector. Companies dealing with computers have forecast a boom in Tanzania’s Information Technology (IT) sector in the country in the coming few years due to the rapid changes caused by the transition from a socialist to market ecenomy.Datel, Wilken Afsat, SITA and Simbanet are companies providing data communication services in the country.

TANZANIAN WEB SITES

There are not a large number of Tanzanian web sites yet and three reported sites in swahili. One site identified in the UNESCO top 50 African sites is http://www.newafrica.com/. According to Roselyne Nderingo, Managing Director, it is getting a complete overhaul.www.newafrica.com is managed and produced out of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It says it has 90 staff members who are now turning the site from containing thousands of .htm pages to an entirely database driven site. It is using in-house developed publication software and a new directory database as the backbone to the new site, all based on SQL.

What will you find? Several thousands pages of travel information on: national parks, diving, hiking, bird watching, beaches and more with almost 300 maps, thousands of hotels, and more than 30,000 businesses. Other information include, agriculture, business, economics, investments, mining and the industry sector. It also claims to have East Africa’s largest online art gallery, a language dictionary and an online Swahili page.

Pantaleon N Shoki
Victoria Research Bureau Ltd, (Consultancy Services),
Mobile: 255-0741-611-607.

Exploring the digital divide (D2D) in Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia, Derek Wyatt, UK MP, Report to Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, November 2000


LETTERS

COMPUTER DRIVING LICENCE - A WAY TO ACCREDIT

I refer to the lead article issue 45 which related to e-Commerce in Namibia. In particular the apparent lack of "proper" basic ICT training, accreditation etc.I am aware of the ECDL/ICDL(European Computer Driving Licence/International Computer Driving Licence) training and certification which has, I am led to believe, been accredited in many European countries as well as in Africa. It consists of 7 modules for the certificate and offers a 4 module intermediate qualification. Modules cover: General Basic Concepts; File Management; Word processing;Spread Sheets, Data Bases; Presentations and Networks/Internet/E-mail.

Surely this apparently well accepted training and qualification would provide at both secondary and tertiary level an acceptable staring point (maybe more than just starting??). Also for adult self-improvement and ‘up-skilling’ ??
Tony Harper

FURTHER RESPONSES ON RECYCLING COMPUTERS (ISSUE 44)

Some edited extracts from a wide-ranging correspondence:

Zimbabwe, as a developing country, is way behind in terms of IT infrustructure. I am surprised to hear that computers that have been used for four years are being discarded in some parts of the world when the computer that I am using to send this message is more than 5 years old, and that is the computer that holds the WINISIS database for my organisation’s library, a United Nations agency for that matter. I brought in a niece of mine to the office to prepare a CV that was urgently wanted by an aunt of hers who was going for an interview. This niece of mine is a secretary in a private company, but she thought my computer was too modern. Then If UN agencies can use computers that a more than 5 years old, and private companies think those computers are the latest on the market, then computers that are only four years old are a pipe-dream for Zimbabwean schools.
Driden Kunaka

You do not address the issue of legacy. In my mind children are better off having no knowledge than useless knowledge. You defend your position by patronising ordinary Africans. With the latest computers they could leapfrog into the present! With this strategy they will ALWAYS be behind - which is why I call it a no-hope IT strategy. If you disagree please explain how under your plan they could ever catch up with the West. Remember, Thailand use to be less developed than Nigeria only 2 decades ago. Today Thai kids have the skills to assemble their own computers from the basic parts if they cannot afford a brand new one. I was in Thailand recently and saw the kids and talked to them. This has taken less than one generation.
Dapo Ladimeji

We need to concentrate on getting the youth and the general populace in Africa ACQUAINTED with the computer first! Second hand computers may well be the only chance that many on this continentwill have to learn how to adapt to a world that will not adapt to Africa. We in Africa can widen our exposure by utilising the second hand computers. I would like to commend the efforts of the organisations that are involved in this endeavour. I wish them all the best.
Larai Gomwalk

 

source: http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/back/balancing-act46.html