TECHNOLOGY: Welcome to Ruralkenya.com

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Arthur Okwemba

NAIROBI, Oct 25 2005 (IPS) - A generator rumbles behind the two-roomed building, which looks like one of the maize mills that dot Kenya’s rural landscape. But, you’re not likely to find a harvest of any sort in here – rather, food for thought.

This is an internet café in a sleepy, rural part of Emuhaya constituency, about 500 kilometres from the capital, Nairobi. Information and technology experts estimate that only two percent of Kenyans with access to the internet live in rural areas. For those who have managed to log on, however, life has never been the same since.

“For me, this is the best thing ever to happen,” says 65-year-old Beliha Ndanyi with a broad smile, as she waits for her e-mails to download on one of the two computers in the cyber café.

“Just the other day when my two cattle were stolen, I e-mailed my two sons in America, and in a matter of days they had sent me money through the Western Union Money Transfer to buy other cattle.”

Nearby, two youths are deeply engrossed in surfing the web.

“It is just amazing,” says Joseph Odinga, a student at Maseno Polytechnic, a local government training institute. “You keep in touch with friends in colleges and know as much as other youths in the capital city.”

In Kiambu district, about 50 kilometres from Nairobi, it’s much the same story.

Fanice Njoki, 58 – a small-scale farmer – uses an internet café to communicate with her son who lives in the United States, and a daughter who resides in the United Kingdom.

“Before, I could wait for months before I could communicate with my kids and tell them about my problems. But since this thing (the computer) was brought here, I can share with them on a daily basis if I want,” says Njoki.

The increase in internet cafés around the country comes in the wake of a government policy lifting duties on imported computers. Since the initiative was announced about two years ago, prices for computers and related equipment have fallen dramatically; a machine that used to cost in the region of 1,300 dollars now sells for 650 dollars.

Enterprising individuals have set up internet cafés in the capital and beyond, although exact figures on the number of cyber spots established in rural areas are difficult to come by.

The charge for downloading mail can range between twenty and forty cents, less than half what it would cost to send a letter abroad – but still pricey by Kenyan standards, given that about 56 percent of the population survives on less than a dollar a day. Ndanyi and Njoki are able to afford internet charges because of the remittances they receive from their children living abroad.

Cost isn’t the only barrier that these new found cyber enthusiasts have had to overcome, however.

Low literacy levels mean that Ndanyi and Njoki have to dictate their messages to family members or internet café assistants. Ndanyi is helped by her 21-year-old granddaughter, Jane Ayoki, who is waiting to start college.

Then there’s the matter of distance. The café used by Ndanyi – one of two in Emuhaya – serves a community of about 20,000 people, some of whom have to walk over 10 kilometres to log on.

Still, both women say they have become so attached to the internet that any interruption to the service is hugely upsetting. “I just feel anger boiling in me,” notes Ndanyi.

According to Peter Owuor, the café owner, people use his facility to get information on current affairs, as well as commercial and agricultural issues. Business is so good that he’s thinking of buying another computer.

Unfortunately, he adds, some young clients have also taken to browsing pornography sites, which he has yet to succeed in blocking.

This is not the main challenge Owuor faces, however. “The biggest problem is electricity,” he says. “I have to spend so much on oil.”

Just one in 30 people in the area has access to electricity. Owuor, who uses a generator to power his two computers, says internet services in rural regions would spread more rapidly were it not for lack of power and a shortage of telephone lines.

At present it costs about 60 dollars to install a phone line, and more than 200 dollars to buy a generator that can power a computer in the absence of electricity: prices that few Kenyans could afford.

Nonetheless, as internet users overcome these barriers, other debates about the World Wide Web are also starting to emerge, notably over the languages used on internet sites.

“The whole argument is that if our communities have to reap the benefits of the information society, then their languages have to be on the website,” says Owuor.

During the African Regional Preparatory Conference for the second leg of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) that took place earlier this year in Accra, Ghana, African linguistics and technology experts proposed the creation of a fund that would help place and maintain African languages on the internet.

“The only way to make Africa part of the information society is to ensure African languages are acceptable in cyberspace,” said Salam Diakite, Director of Research and Documentation at the Bamako-based African Academy of Languages, while addressing the WSIS gathering. (The second phase of the WSIS will take place next month in Tunisia.)

Certain information experts question whether sites in these languages would be economically viable.

If the example of Njoki and Ndanyi is anything to go by, however, Africans are ready to embrace the net. If it speaks their language, so much the better.