Tele-centres in Ghana
Introduction
In low income countries, where affordability is a barrier to implementation of universal services, tele-centres can play an important role in a strategy for provision of universal access to ICT services. For this reason, the concept has in the past couple of years been promoted by a number of national and international development agencies. This paper describes how tele-centres have developed in Ghana and how they contribute to the provision of universal access.
A number of different models for development of tele-centres have been applied in different parts of the world. The first centres established in Scandinavia had much focus on provision of IT facilities and dissemination of knowledge on the technology. The aim was both to reverse a trend of out-migration from rural areas, and to increase IT awareness and capabilities. Public funds were provided for the initial investment and for operations during the first years.
In other countries, centres are focused on creation of new job-opportunities. In the UK and in France most centres function as telework centres providing facilities for teleworkers. This concept is also widely used in North America.
A very different concept of tele-centres has been used to promote rural development in Eastern Europe, most notably in Hungary, and later also in Estonia, where an active telecottage movement has been set up with support from Sweden. More than 50 centres are operating in each of these two countries. Hungarian tele-centres are established to prevent out-migration from rural areas by provision of telecom access, job training and career counselling for the local population. Some centres also provide agricultural extension services and support for marketing and export of local food products. A similar concept has been used in Australia.
In developing countries, many of the tele-centres are essentially phone shops, sometimes also offering public access to fax or other supplementary services. But in the past three years Internet cafés have popped up in larger cities.
The most ambitious centres offering a multitude of services like IT training, distance learning, tele-medicine, informational services, etc. are usually established in co-operation with international agencies like ITU, FAO and UNCTAD.
Ghana has followed quite a different model, as the vast majority of the Ghanaian tele-centres are established on the initiative of private entrepreneurs. Although their primary service is related to telecommunication, they may also offer other business services like photocopying or text editing. So far this type of centres are mainly located in urban neighbourhoods, where there is a large population of customers without residential access to basic telecom services, but wireless local loop technology can now be used to establish tele-centres also in rural areas.
Section snippets
Access to telecom services in Ghana
Ghana has experienced a substantial growth in penetration of telecom facilities in the past few years. The penetration of telephone lines in Ghana was between 1980 and 1994 stabled at a level around 0.3 per 100 inhabitants, but following the liberalisation and the subsequent privatisation, substantial growth rates in the number of lines have been achieved. In addition to this, mobile phone services have been in operation since 1993, and in 2001 the three operators had in total almost 200,000
Development of tele-centres in Ghana
Tele-centres in Ghana have, at least in some areas, compensated for the low penetration of telephones. Although a few centres have been established through international grants, the overwhelming majority of the centres are purely commercial in their orientation and established by private entrepreneurs as small private enterprises. This development has not been initiated through national or international development programs, the initiative has come from the entrepreneurs themselves. Some of the
Viability of tele-centres in Ghana
In Ghana as well as in many other developing countries the demand driven centres mainly focus on provision of basic communication services such as telephone, fax and sometimes also e-mail and Internet.
The tele-centres in Ghana are clearly profit-oriented. They are established on the initiative of local private entrepreneurs without being part of any type of special program.
The Ghanaian entrepreneurs are not supported by any national or international programmes and the owners must be able to
Conclusion
The development of tele-centres has varied in different parts of the world, and the number of tele-centres differs widely from country to country. The development in Ghana differs both from the franchise model adopted by national telecom operator and community centre model adopted by international donor agencies both with regard to funding and the type of services offered.
The tele-centres in Ghana have been set up without any type of financial support. This is reflected in the type of services
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