Over the last three years I have had cause to visit a number of telecenter projects around the region, some sponsored by Microsoft and some by NGOs or other multi-national companies. In many cases these telecenters have provided a focal point for their local communities, connecting these communities to a world of services, education and opportunities.
Many of these projects often suffer from similar challenges of both remaining relevant to their local communities, and becoming sustainable over longer periods of time. In many cases a telecenter will be a transitory project, playing an important role as local wealth is generated.
As countries increase their levels of wealth and connectivity we will eventually see many of these telecenters disband as people move towards using devices that they own and can make use of as part of their day to day business or in their homes.
Today many telecenters are built for a particular purpose, and frequently under the stewardship of a specific sponsor. Sometimes we see a focus on local micro businesses, sometimes on broad education and frequently with a narrow focus on ICT literacy.
Over the longer term the problem here is that either the relevance becomes diminished as individuals acquire the skills that the center delivers, or the sponsor loses interest as they move onto focus on another project. In either cases the telecenter itself is rarely sustainable in its own right, nor is there a clear understanding around what will happen to the center as the local community gets to a point where it just is not needed any more.
A conversation with a entrepreneur in Nepal a couple of months ago got me thinking about ways that we might be able to encourage more value out of telecenter projects, while at the same time looking for models that make them independent and sustainable.
The entrepreneur I was talking with was Jenara Nerenberg, she has started a project based out of Kathmandu that she calls BOPSource. Her idea is a simple one, it is to use social networking to connect potential service providers at the bottom of the pyramid with potential customers and employers in the middle and at the top, using the power of crowd sourcing to help people build wealth and success.
As with most traditional internet based applications Jenara is not deploying infrastructure to reach her potential users, instead she is encouraging existing telecenters to introduce their local communities to the service that she provides while at the same time promoting BOPSource in more developed countries, essentially connecting the top and the bottom of the pyramid together using infrastructure that they already have access to.
As we look at the future of telecenters this model makes a lot of sense. I would like to think that we are moving past an era when a telecenter was a unique project in a given community to a point where it becomes part of the local infrastructure. Assuming that this is the case then it opens up new markets for an array of applications that have the ability to make use of that infrastructure and advance the telecenter concept.
Visitors to telecenters should no longer be expected to participate in a single predefined program, instead they should be able to decide for themselves which applications they want to make use of and how they want to derive value from visiting the center. In some cases they will choose education, in some cases they will use the tools available to build their business and in others they will simply choose entertainment.
At this point the telecenter has evolved into being a platform, not just a host for a single application. Sites like BOPSource are the early examples of this new genre, and I’m confident that over the coming years we will see hundreds or thousands more.
As a platform it is much easier to envisage models for sustainability, scenarios where visitors choose to migrate onto their own personal devices and many new applications for these important community focal points.
Jenara has started something that I think will become a market changing trend over time, and has the potential to redefine the way we think about the value that rural connectivity brings to the more remote parts of Asia.
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