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Rural internet - offline but still connected

By Katherine Nightingale - posted Monday, 23 February 2009


He offered basic “office” programs and provided scanning, photocopying, digital photography, and access to media such as DVDs and music, along with an email service and requests for web pages. The power source? A single, 22 watt solar panel. The connection? A USB memory stick taken once or twice a week, by mototigi, to a telecentre with an Internet connection in distant Ouelessebougou.

It was an exciting new scheme to connect the village with the outside world. But it was halted after a year because of poor demand, says Olivier Alais, Geekcorp's Mali country director.

Perhaps this was predictable, considering that less than a quarter of people living outside the capital can read and write. As Alais says, people in rural Mali do want to connect with the rest of the world, but they choose radio and mobile phones.

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Maybe that is why, a continent away in Sri Lanka, the Kothmale Community Radio Station is having such success with its “radio browsing” show, in which presenters search the web for listeners' queries live on air.

Back in Mali, Geekcorps has switched its attention to something more popular: offline resources like Moulin. Moulin is a yearly-updated, French version of Wikipedia that can be downloaded to a compact disc or memory stick. For now, the cybertigis will continue to offer ICT services, but remain offline.

Turning the net to profit

Amir Hasson, founder and chief executive officer of United Villages in India, had to make similar adjustments.

His organisation uses a system called DakNet - dak means “post” in Hindi - that mixes wireless technology with whatever transport is already available to connect about 400 remote Indian villages.

When the daily bus pulls into one of these villages, data as well as passengers can embark. The bus is fitted with a storage device that lets data, uploaded from the village computer kiosk, hitch a ride. It's much cheaper and less power-hungry to transmit data over such short distances - from village kiosk to the bus - than over the long distances from village to town.

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But Hasson's business plan of selling email and web access to villagers proved unprofitable.

"We very quickly realised that we weren't going to be able to survive [on email and webpages alone]. There's a big difference when you expect people to pay," he says.

Apart from a few avid email users - usually a handful of teenagers or students in each village - it was "difficult to get people to see the value of doing something differently".

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First published in Scidev.net on February 13, 2009.



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About the Author

Katherine Nightingale is a writer and editor interested in the fields of science, agriculture, health, water, energy, climate change, biodiversity, sustainable development, poverty reduction, biotechnology, engineering, and policy.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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