Telecenter Profiles

Featured Telecenter
Moroto High School

Wireless access to the Internet at Moroto Secondary School now benefits not only students, teachers, and members of the local community, but doctors, healthcare workers, and patients as well under a program sponsored by the World Bank's Energy for Rural Transformation (ERT) program working in conjunction with WorLD and World Links.

The Moroto region, in the northeastern corner of Uganda, near the Sudanese border, has one of the lowest population densities in Uganda (12 persons per square kilometer). Travel by road is difficult, and infrastructural services-such as electrification and telephony-have been slow to reach most of the roughly 175,000 inhabitants. The installation this winter of a VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) transceiver in Moroto High School was welcomed heartily by the school community.

On February 14, 2002, the day the VSAT connection went operational, Moroto Principal George Ruremire sent out the following message: "Dear Comrades, We thank God to announce to you that at last Moroto has been connected and we are able to communicate to the whole world. This is a pride for Karamoja in general and Moroto High School in particular."

The school now offers its teachers and 800 students training in computer use and the Internet-although with only five computers, progress is painstaking. Students are using computer resources to research reports, and exchange messages with e-pals and family. The school's computer center has even attracted students from other schools in the region, as well as students from Turkana, West Pokot, and Bukusu in Kenya.

But operating costs, even in these early stages, are quite high. The VSAT connection and other recurring costs total $250 USD per month -- costly, but VSAT is the only option for connectivity in the infrastructure-poor Moroto region. The Parents and Teachers Association (PTA) has agreed to pay for 80 percent of these costs, over and above the school fees of 10,000 Ugandan Shillings paid by each family.

Even the diesel fuel powering the generator for the computer lab represents a cost that must be carried by the school. Mr. Ruremire is convinced that solar power is the answer to this problem, but the one-time expense of solar panels, transformers, and batteries is far too high, at least for now.

The VSAT itself offers an answer--to more than just the problem of computer-lab sustainability.

A demand-driven telecenter

As soon as reception was established, Moroto High School became a magnet for personnel from local and international NGOs, and for individual members of the community. Staff from the Karamoja Project Implementation Unit (KPIU), a conflict-resolution project sponsored by the European Union, h as used the center's facilities to send project reports and documents. In addition, the Church of Uganda Happy Cow Project, working to improve cattle-keeping practices in the region, has used the center to share project information and submit proposals to donors.

The telecenter has also already borne fruit for individuals from the community. People have used the center's Internet connection to apply for university admission and for scholarships. In a sense, the isolation of the Karamoja region, the urgent need for information and the ability to communicate have led to the ad hoc growth of Moroto High School's telecenter activities.

But the school's VSAT installation represents both a major capital contribution and an extremely powerful resource. Moroto High School's swift success gives rise to a series of questions, questions that can be considered in light of the success of school-based telecenters throughout Uganda, in Zimbabwe, and in other countries.

• To what extent does a spontaneous surge of use by the community and its organizations realize the potential of this resource?



• Do schools that open the doors of their labs to communities also to engage in or support broader community development activities? Or do they focus primarily on providing ICT access and training?



• What are the implications of their abilities to out-compete private-sector or other, less well-subsidized telecenters?

Clearly, approaching sustainability and improving information access are major achievements. And over time, evaluative efforts should yield information about the scope and scale of the impact of school-based telecenters on their communities, and about their interplay with other development efforts.

Telemedicine comes to Moroto

With only a few months' experience operating its computer-lab-and-telecenter, Moroto High School has already entered into a development-focused partnership with local organizations. In September, 2001, Mr. Ruremire and Raymond Korobe, the school's Information Technology Coordinator, participated in SchoolNet Uganda's first Planning for School-based Telecenters workshop. One workshop session highlighted the role that telecenters can play in community-development initiatives.

In March, 2002, Moroto High School was identified as a candidate for participation in an Ugandan Energy for Rural Transformation project (ERT), funded under the World Bank's Africa Rural and Renewable Energy Initiative. The primary objective of the ERT project is to generate and test "knowledge packets" that can help Ugandan telecenters support specific, development-related activities in their communities.

On April 11, Meddie Mayanja of SchoolNet Uganda traveled to Mororo to consult with Mr. Ruremire and other key stakeholders in the community to identify areas of need and opportunity, outline the processes of project development, and schedule future steps.

Health and medicine emerged as key challenges to development in the Karamoja region as a while, which has the worst health indicators of any region in Uganda. Critical medical conditions include Malaria among the young and among expecting mothers, acute respiratory infections, dysentery and diarrhea, skin disease as the result of contaminated water sources, diseases resulting from malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, as well as others.

The region's remoteness combines with its poverty to exert a profound effect on its health care system. Its two hospitals, Matany and Moroto, find it difficult to attract competent staff with good diagnostic skills, which compounds their lack of diagnostic equipment and treatment facilities.

The hospitals are linked, albeit unreliably, by telephone and high-frequency radio. Because both of these means require high degrees of coordination and scheduling among personnel their utility in hospital settings is limited. To address these problems, the ERT project held a two-day workshop for over 20 doctors and other health-care workers, intended to: "Provide orientation to telemedicine and Ugandan efforts in particular" Explore the medical challenges in Karamoja and how ICTs can address these " Introduce health-related use of the Internet, e-mail, discussion lists " Resolve administrative and operational issues to telemedicine efforts at Moroto High School

The potential of ICT access to increase the capacity of Moroto's health-care workers was apparent almost immediately. In the course of the hands-on research sessions, using the Moroto High School telecenter using its VSAT connection, one participating doctor found clinical-management information on Burkitt's Lymphoma, a malignant cancer responsible for the deaths of children throughout the region.

The workshop established a steering committee, including representatives from both hospitals as well as the school's I.T. coordinator, Raymond Korobe. The committee has already established contact with the Intensive Care Unit and with the Department of Radiology at the much larger Mulago Hospital, as well as with the Enhancing Access to Health Services and Information Through ICTs project of the International Development Research Centre.

The Moroto-based telemedicine initiative of the ERT project takes advantage of Moroto High School's computer facility and its VSAT connection, and of the technical capacities of the hospital personnel. In prior eReadiness survey, undertaken as part ERT, nearly 100 percent of hospital workers surveyed reported comfort using office-productivity software on computer (although only 30 percent had experience finding information on the Internet.)

As critical, the Moroto's school-based telecenter's support for telemedicine depends for its success on the ongoing support of all involved stakeholders and participants-ranging from the Head Teacher through the entire school community of teachers and students, to the parents group, to the hospital personnel themselves.