Can Telecentres successfully empower communities? Planning, Design, Execution and Evaluation of a South African Rural-agricultural Telecentre

Abstract

This thesis is an in-depth micro study that adapts the participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) method to study the planning, establishment and post-establishment phases of a telecentre in a deep rural-agricultural setting in South Africa. The PM&E Method forms part of the humanistic, person-centered approach of the Ethnographic Paradigm which promotes the research participants as the central characters in their own development process since their opinions, suggestions and recommendations are collaboratively discussed and included in all Actions undertaken. Thabina was chosen for this study, for two reasons: Firstly, being the first small-scale Irrigation Scheme in South Africa to be transferred into a water user association (WUA) by the then Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF), it provides the researcher with a local community that is already organized into an homogenous unit and second, the fact that the community is geographically located in a deep rural agricultural area of South Africa. The community is therefore a developing community at a low level of development, which may according to the literature, benefit from development communication and information. For example, the farmers have to comply with the rules and regulations of the Department of Water Affairs, which could be easily adhered to if the financial and management systems were computerized. The farmers also have to communicate with other stakeholders, roleplayers and agriculture-related organizations. The participatory approach, which forms part of the ethnographic discipline, as used in this study, was based on a four phase participatory process. In this thesis a generic four-phase participatory process is developed by extracting from existing models in the literature the ingredients that would best fit the circumstances of this case study. The complete model framework would have to take into account the institutional structure of a telecentre as well as that of a WUA, a Trust, a Cooperative, a Community Development Programme and many similar organizations, being established by means of the participatory paradigm. This generic four-phase participatory process (structure and actions) was then adapted to the specific circumstances, conditions and situation of the (mostly) illiterate farmers of the Thabina smallscale irrigation scheme. During these four consecutive, participatory phases of the fourphase participatory process, the community (farmers) participated in the decision making processes and all comments and suggestions of the farmers were taken into consideration before any decisions were finalized by the Management Committee. At the completion of each phase the actions taken during that phase were evaluated by means of formative PM&E in collaboration with the Management Committee. This interpretative research method was chosen as the researcher could operate as a participant observer to the interactions between the farmers. This means that the research process will be presented as a narrative description it will be presented as a "chronological rendering", as suggested by theorists for the Ethnographic Paradigm in which this participatory approach is classified. A telecentre per se is a room or office with appropriate information and communication technologies (ICT) by means of which applicable information could be obtained, assessed, accessed, created and managed and communication established in order to address the socio-economic development needs of the community. The potential role of the telecentre in bridging the Digital Divide has been proven without doubt, as the telecentre, based on technologies, supports development. This means that technologies have put information and communication at the forefront of development. This thesis may be viewed by some observers as a comprehensive experiment. During the pre-establishment phase, pre-establishment actions were taken to ensure that the design of the phases made provision for participation of the community during each and every step of the process. Before the evaluation of the actual implementation of the telecentre, several pre-establishment actions were undertaken, such as the determination of agriculture-related needs. The concept of a telecentre was also explained to the farmers during which the farmers decided that they needed a telecentre at their irrigation scheme. Draft documents compiled by the researcher, such as the Project Plan and how to manage a telecentre, needed to be approved by the community through the Management Committee, on which they were represented. In order to identify the socio-economic information and communication needs of the farmers, a survey of the socio-economic and ICT needs of the community was undertaken during semi-structured interviews. The valuable empirical data obtained from these questionnaires were evaluated and lead to the identification as well as buying of appropriate technologies to address the agriculture-related needs as well as the socio-economic and ICT needs. At the end of 2006, a year after the establishment of the telecentre in 2005, the use of the information and communication technologies was evaluated according to a theoretical model designed by the researcher in order to measure the use of the information and communication technologies. Empirical information showed that the expected daily use of the information and communication technologies exceeded expectations.