SOUTH AFRICA: KWA-DUKUZA DIGITAL VILLAGE
Telecentres (or whatever else you might choose to call them) sit in the middle of most efforts to close Africa's digital divide. Their critics rightly ask what they deliver in terms of of benefits for users. Those familiar with them worry about the range of technical resources required to run them. Sheena Lutges reports from the sharp end on both of these issues.
The Kwa-Dukuza area in South Africa consists of over 90 schools educating approximately 60,000 learners. For a number of years the schools in the area had experienced a pass rate of below 50 % in their final matric exams. These poor performances, which made the area one of the worst in the
province, could probably be ascribed to under-resourced schools and high learner-teacher ratios. In many instances, teachers have to cope with teaching classes of up to 50 or more learners. The resources that are offered by the Kwa-Dukuza Resource Centre, do not just assist the school-going youth, but open up new learning opportunities to educators, adults, small business entrepreneurs and the unemployed.
Over 60% of current job opportunities require computer literacy at entry levels. Geographic and financial restraints make it impossible for many of the schools in the area to provide their learners with the necessary resources to bridge the gap in the so-called digital divide. The Resource Centre¹s digital village addresses this major lack of resources through the provision of 30 "state of the art" computers in the Digital Village.
Not only do the computers connect users to the rest of the world via e-mail and the internet, but provide them the opportunity to gain the skills necessary to use interactive educational software, as well as vital business packages like Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. 72 % of the members are scholars and the majority of these scholars are black Africans from the ages of 1418. They come from the rural areas around Kwa-Dukuza with little basic amenities in the form of electricity or running water. Families are dependent on subsistence farming to generate an income or dependent on state pensions of R 400 R 500 per month. These scholars generally attend schools that are under-resourced with high teacher learner ratios (50:1).
The Centre also has a seminar room, which doubles up as a computer instruction facility. On-site computer facilitators, many of which are volunteers, are available to offer assistance and guidance to interested members. The following computer access is provided:
- Many educators have battled to implement the new Outcomes Based Education system that was implemented by the Education Department. On site assistance has provided educators the opportunity to locate new and exciting lesson plans to enhance teacher delivery.
- Schools have been warned that without stringent accountable records, state subsidies will not be granted. A server-driven financial package allows principals to be accountable for finances and provide the necessary statements required by the education department.
- Individuals may acquire basic computer skills before being allowed to have access to computers in the Digital Village. Most of the lessons are held in Zulu (local African language), also granting members the benefit of understanding concepts in their own language.
Records of members are kept for those using the digital village. Members book in for half hour slots at a time and depending on how full the Centre is a member may re-book for additional time. Our access cards indicate that on an average day anything between 300400 members make use of the whole Centre. Our records indicate that we maintain up to 3000 members throughout the year. Our statistics also indicate that the Centre maintains a utilization rate of over 80%.
Kwa-Dukuza is a very poor community and many young people are left to their own devices in holiday times, which have resulted in high drug abuse and youth loitering in the streets. With high usage rates we can only assume we are making a difference in that the youth are choosing to come to the Centre and choosing education over being on the streets. Our African learners in particular arrived at the Centre with no or little knowledge of computers and have now progressed to surfing the internet and designing their own web pages. This has also been evident in the high usage rate of Televidoes by many scholars when we first opened in June 2000 to a dramatic drop after 6
months. These scholars attended the computer literacy classes and have now progressed to the Digital Village.
For educators there have been some dramatic advantages in that many schools are expected to present documents to the Department and worksheets for classroom activities, as well as new lesson plans. Many schools do not have the office space to attend to these tasks or the funds available for the
purchase of the resources. Some rural school fees are anything between R 50 and R 200 per annum, and still many families cannot afford this fee. For many principals the Centre has provided an administrative tool, for financial accountability, classroom record keeping, and lesson plan support.
Further once the materials are developed on the computer, the Centre offers a high volume duplication facility in our Printroom, which is utilised to its fullest in examination times.
In the last part of this article, Sheena Lutges tackles the technical requirements of running a network of this scale and the issues that have arisen. This last part can be viewed on Balancing Act's web page after 9/10/2001.