Not Your Mother’s Telecenter

By now we’ve all heard of the telecenters of the 1990s – providing access to hardware and the internet, and shaping the face of ICT4D for a while. And while Internet Cafes are still prevalent, they no longer dominate the ICT4D discussion.

Photograph of the outside of the Bwacha Women's Club Building

Photo Credit: WomenICTEnterprise.org

But there are still lessons that can be learned from past projects. The Kalomo Bwacha Women’s Club looks on the surface like any other telecenter, but in fact, it provided so much more than just access.

The enterprise provides email and telephone services; secretarial services; basic Internet training and browsing; and desktop publishing services such as the creation of calendars, brochures and cards using digital photography for government, public and private institutions, members of women’s clubs and individuals. The center engages women in using ICTs as part of an effort to transform the face of the district, socially and economically. Participants work to improve other women’s money making activities by using the internet to market their produce. The hope is that this approach will help foster economic growth in a place which is mainly dependent on farming and which has very few companies offering jobs to indigenous people.

There are ten core women members, only one of whom is paid, the rest working on a voluntary, part-time basis. The full-time employee works from 8.00am to 5.00pm, sees to the daily running of the club, types for the clients, operates the Internet, answers queries and so on.

The other members look for income-generating projects and recruit new members. They visit Kalomo villages, teaching and sensitising villagers, particularly women, on issues that affect them such as HIV/AIDS and poverty alleviation. They take digital photos, upload these onto their computers and make prints which they then use to distribute to other communities, sometimes in the form of a poster or a calendar with an educational message. They particularly promote women’s initiatives and highlight the plight of women in various communities. These visits help others to realise that they too can advertise their goods and services and learn from each other.

The club also generates income from affiliated clubs, which contribute a small annual fee. They distribute seed to their affiliated clubs who, once they have harvested it, pay them a fee. The seed may be maize seed, beans or any other that is expected to do well during that particular season. All this is at a concessional rate for the affiliated members. The club also holds community events to raise awareness and funds. The end of March will see an open market and a beauty competition, both organised by the club. ICTs play a major part in that participants will be encouraged to keep in touch via email and goods will be advertised on a web site, using digital photos. The club also hopes to create a database.

By sending women out, this “telecenter” reaches out into the community and makes changes in the lives of the women there. Rather than waiting for them to come to the center, the center brings its services and support to the community.

This is just one of several Women’s ICT-based enterprises described on the Women’s ICT Enterprise website. Although the site has not been updated in some time, the cases are still interesting and provide a good background for similar projects today.

Source: Comminit and WomenICTEnterprise

March 8, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Business Enabling Environment, Economic Growth & Trade, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Workforce Development

ITC’s E-Choupal: Improving the Lives of India’s Rural Farmers

The agriculture industry is imperative in India. The country ranks second worldwide in its farming output, agriculture allotted 16.6% of the country’s GDP in 2007 and employed 52% of the total workforce. Yet most Indian farmers remained impoverished. The origins of this problem stem from the archaic government regulation called the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act. Created in the 1960s, the APMC Act founded that agri-companies, like ITC, could only buy agricultural produce through designated markets called mandis where they would have to buy from registered commission agents. Once the crop was harvested, farmers would take their produce to the mandis where their produce would be auctioned by commissioned agents. Since the agent was the only channel between the farmer and the processor, agents would typically auction off multiple lots before taking it to the processor. Thereby ensuring no price or quality transparency in this farm-to-factory cycle. Since the mandis were a formidable distance from the fields, farmers would have to accept the price offered them at auctions on the day that they bring their harvest to the mandi. As a result, traders are well positioned to exploit both farmers and buyers through practices that maintain system-wide inefficiencies and pocket additional differences in price.

Incorporated in 1910, ITC is one of India’s leading private sector companies with a market capitalization of nearly US$18 billion, an annual turnover of US$4.75 billion. Rated one of the “World’s Best Big Companies” and “World’s most reputable companies” by Forbes magazine, ITC has business interests in tobacco, hotels, agri-business, retail, information technology, and others. The company founded its first E-Choupal site in June 2000, where they created Internet kiosks in rural farming villages to create an “improved supply chain”, directly connecting themselves and the farmers. The e-Choupals serve as both a social gathering place, choupal means gathering place in Hindi, to exchange information and an e-commerce hub. What began as an effort to re-engineer the system of processing and acquiring soybean meal, rice food grains, wheat, lentils, and coffee in rural India also created a highly profitable distribution and product design channel for the company. An e-commerce platform that is also a low-cost, mutually beneficial system focused on the needs of rural India.

In addition to the farmers only using the e-Choupal there is also a host farmer, called a sanchalak, who acquires some operating costs and is obligated to serve the entire community; the sanchalak benefits from increased esteem in the community and a commission paid him for all e-Choupal transactions. The farmers can use the Internet kiosks for daily access to closing prices on local mandis, as well as to track global price trends or find information about the weather and new farming techniques.

The rural farmers can also use the e-Choupal to order seed, fertilizer, and other farming products such as consumer goods from ITC or its partners, at prices lower than those available from village traders. When it is time to harvest the crops, ITC offers to buy the crop directly from any farmer at the previous day’s closing price and then the farmer transports his crop to an ITC processing center known as Choupal Saagars. Choupal Saagars are alternatives to the traditional mandis, catering to about 40 e-Choupals and are all within tractor driving distances. The crop is then weighed electronically and assessed for quality, and the farmer is paid for the crop along with a transport fee. Through this new process, farmers benefit from a more accurate weighing, quicker processing, and immediate payment. Further, the access to a wide range of information, including precise market price knowledge and market trends, assists them in deciding when, where, and at what price to sell.

Though the e-Choupal system serves as a catalyst for rural transformation, alleviating rural seclusion, cultivating transparency for farmers, and enhancing their productivity and incomes, there were still some core problems like education, health care, and insurances, which still eluded the farmer. Governmental system inefficiencies have long kept farmers in an economic hiatus, and companies in the agrarian society struggled to find a balance between their social and shareholder obligations. However, with the e-Choupal system, ITC had a model that created a unification of their seemingly oppositional needs.

The e-Choupal program converged with ITC’s corporate social responsibility initiative to act upon objectives to help the community they were working in. Through their e-Choupals, ITC created Supplementary Learning Centers to help with rural India’s primary education, empowered women to become part of the global marketplace, and developed a three-tier Choupal Health Care model to cultivate the installation and delivery of both preventative and curative healthcare services. In addition, they also generated a full scale retail marketplace in the Choupal Saagars to the rural population and created financial product marketing for the farmers and their families where ITC offers to sell credit through their network. The Kisan Credit Card, third party loans, and channel credit allowed farmers to establish a better established infrastructure which drove down certain aspects of cost and improved the quality of their crops. Weather insurance, life insurance, along with pension and disability incomes were also established for farmers to have for themselves and their families just in case disaster struck.

One of the retail Choupal Saagars

The e-Choupal system lets farmers be more lenient with their choices, gives them a higher profit margin on their crops, and access to information that improves their productivity. By providing a more transparent process and empowering local people as key nodes in the system, ITC heightens trust and fairness. Critical factors in the success of the venture are ITC’s extensive knowledge of agriculture, the effort ITC has made to retain many original aspects of the existing production system, including maintaining relationships with local partners, ITC’s continued commitment to transparency, and the treating the farmers and local partners with respect and equality.

Sources: CIA World Factbook- India

January 11, 2011/by actualize