TOWARDS BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE IN TANZANIA

Is the National ICT policy implemented to achieve the goal?

Tanzania’s National ICT policy was prepared under the auspices of the then Ministry of Communication & Transport, now termed as the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and released on March 2003. The policy is a sole compass for all ICT driven activities in the country with a view to ensure an effective implementation of the IT knowledge so as to spruce up national economic development goals.
Everybody can agree with the fact that, the implementation of the ICT initiatives in Tanzania is moving at a snail pace despite the country embarked on the development of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) about a decade ago.
However, since the policy came into being, little has been done in terms of mainstreaming the ICT sector and the entire activities, including the application of the Information Technology.
The mission statement of this policy is “To enhance nation-wide economic growth and social progress by encouraging beneficial ICT activities in al sectors through providing a conducive framework for investments in capacity building and in promoting multi-layered cooperation and knowledge sharing locally as well as globally”.
Despite of the fact that Tanzania is the first country within Sub-Saharan region to establish own ICT policy, much emphasis has not been put to prioritize the usage and the application of the basic ICT tools for national development.
Analysts within the sector say that there is a negligence to a full commitment by government on dealing with the issues related with the ICT development in the country despite of the fact that a number of obstacles such as poor infrastructure and illiteracy still exists among users.
The National ICT policy is linked to both Communication Acts and Telecommunication Acts. Other Acts and policies directly relevant to ICT include the Broadcasting services Act of 1993 and the Broadcasting services policy that is currently under review.
Drafting of a national ICT policy implementation strategies is a broad based task force under the current ministry of Technology and Communication. The policy has been deliberately aligned to Tanzania’s Development Vision 2025, and to the great dismay, little has been reformed to boost the sector.
ICT is defined as the ability to manage and manipulation of information including the conduit to transmit this data to various recipients in different parts of the country, regionally as well as globally. It has the prerequisite that users must be literate and be able to sustain ICT implementation and have absorption capacity.
According to National ICT Coordinator in the country, Engineer Augustine Kowero, in order to strengthen the national ICT policy in the country, people, civil society groups and the government need to use best practices in order to leap-frog in the arena of ICT.
According to him, the use of intellectual property usage and principles plays a big role in achieving this. Engineer Kowero is in the view of the fact that the nation must adhere to the ICT policy as stipulated to ensure an effective implementation of the national development goals. In analyzing Tanzania’s ICT status since the policy was instituted, ICT educators in the country maintains that, “the government has not made concerted efforts to give a push to the spread of ICT countrywide as a key vehicle towards achievement of the country’s development vision 2025.
For the case of access to infrastructure, according to International Telecommunication Union (ITU), statistics on Tanzania shows that its Tele-density is still low with a number of fixed lines currently standing at 6 telephone lines per 1,000 people. That’s 0.06 percent.
The number of mobile phone subscribers currently stands at 81 per 10,000 inhabitants. In contrast, the city of Dar es Salaam which has the leading subscription base in the country, has 5 lines and 10 mobile phone subscribers per 100people. Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority (TCRA) has registered over 10 companies to provide public data communication services including internet bandwidth. These data operators have isolated initiatives of connecting their points of presence to the global internet backbone. The lack of national Internet Exchange Point (IXP) also means that much of Tanzania’s local traffic is routed via international routes. This is inappropriate use of a scarce and expensive resource that increases the cost of local internet access for users.
There are presently about 23 licensed ISPs in Tanzanian providing between 10,000 & 15,000 dial-up accounts in the country with many more users via company and government’s Local Area Networks ( LANS) and internet cafes. Available e-readiness studies suggest that there is a large unsatisfied demand in the country for internet access.
Tanzania has a small emerging skilled capacity to support the ICT industry in terms of hardware and software. The IT industry is small although there are a surprisingly diverse range of goods and services offered, statistics shows that only 52 companies deals with computer hardware, software and maintenance services in the country.
Few local companies are developing computer application packages and most of the software used by Banks, multi-nationals, large private sector companies, schools, Universities and in government’s ministries, Agencies and imported at considerable cost. In education, very few primary & secondary schools as well as teacher’s training colleges in the country have access to computer laboratories even fewer of these facilities are linked to the internet.
There is an official secondary school computer studies syllabus for forms one to four. However, only very few students have taken these courses so far. Lack of a program for training teachers of computer studies has been identified as a reason for slow take up of computer studies in both primary and secondary schools..
The state of education in the country is inequitable and of generally poor quality. Educational opportunity is highly stratified, decent schooling is increasingly the preserve of a small elite, and currently practices reinforce and intensify existing disparities in the country.
Though the ICT has helped the education sector access in Tanzania, still many more educational institutions in the country have computer laboratories and other multi-media facilities. These facilities are more in private schools and even fewer of these facilities are linked to internet.
At Universities and other institutions of higher learning, few computers are available for use by students and staff. Moreover, they are not enough to meet the demand. There is a shortage of well-qualified professionals of ICT in Tanzania, likewise, there is no well established ICT professional profiles, and a standardized process of evaluation or certification of the different courses offered by various training centers is lacking. Many ICT users in Tanzania access the internet cafes, in view of this situation, there is therefore a need to reduce barriers in deploying ICT and in developing the required human capital for sustainable participation of Tanzanian information society in the ICT industry.