‘Sayed Ali is a cocoa farmer in Nyenasi, a small village in the central region of Ghana. He lives with his wife and in his words ‘many children’ in a small village house, five days a week, like every farmer in Nyenasi, Sayed goes about his business farming. ICTs are the least of his worries.

By his own admission Sayed says “I am poor and finding it more difficult to feed my family.” Computers and the Internet are not familiar tools in his line of trade, so when asked if he had seen, used, or knows anything about computers and the Internet, Sayeed was not the most enthusiastic of respondents. Sayeed has no clue about what computers or the Internet is and what it does. Sayed is not alone, many of the farmers in Nyenasi and villages across Ghana have never heard of the Internet or computers before, they are busy trying to make a living.

The village of Nyenasi is like most villages in Ghana, there is no electricity, library, post office, or telephone service, the major sources of information are the interactions on market days at the district capital Twifo Praso and portable radio sets which run on dry cell batteries. ‘The agricultural extension officer is still a powerful conveyer of information. It is such communities that many development experts want to reach with ICTs, and it is people like Sayeed, that experts claim, can reduce their poverty levels if they embrace ICTs.’

Decentralised Ghana makes it possible to bring ICTs to villages
In Ghana, a decentralised system of government is practiced. Here the country is divided into 10 administrative regions and 110 administrative districts. The District Assemblies as they are known form the basis of local government and they are governed by a District Chief Executives (DCE), who is allocated a budget to undertake development projects for the districts. Nyenasi is located in the Twifo Heman Lower Denkyira District (THLDD) found in the Central region of Ghana.

Abraham Dwumah Odoom is the DCE for THLDD and overseas the village of Nyenasi, he believes ICTs hold the answer to some of Sayed’s cry of poverty. Odoom whose district covers an areas of 1199 sq. kilometres can boost of only two public pay- phones and eight private communication centre (telephone access points) serving over 107,787 residents in the community. To make his vision a reality, he is investing a huge amount of the community’s funds into a grand project to extend Internet to the whole of the district. The project which was commissioned in November 2003, seeks to use ICTs to enhance the socio-economic development process, modernise agriculture, improve education, with the potential to transform THLDD into a middle income, information rich, knowledge-based and technology driven economy and society. To start with Odoom has set up, the first Internet café in the whole of the THLDD, he has computerised the operations of the district assembly and is getting staff trained in basic computer literacy.

Many of the civil servants and professionals who work in the town are major users of the café: nurses, teachers, students and mine workers (from the next district).

For Odoom and his team, the success of the programme lies with the youth of the community. Once a month pupils in all basic cycle schools in the THLDD have the opportunity to use computers and the Internet. In all, there are 18 junior secondary schools in the district and, through a comprehensive training programme each class from all the schools come to the centre once a month to receive basic computer training and Internet skills.


Rural farmers and ICTs
S.W. Hansen is director of Agriculture for the THLDD, he knows all about the Internet and its benefits. Sitting in his office is a desktop with a dedicated Internet link from the District Assembly office. Hansen is more worried about the farmers in the district. He says of the potential benefit of the project to the farming community “we intend to use the Internet to buy and sell goods for our farmers.” Already through a government/donor initiative, the Ministry of Food Agriculture (MOFA) has set up an Agriculture Information Centre in the district capital Twifo Praso.

It is in this very centre that, Hansen hopes, will be connected to the Internet, farmers can themselves access relevant information. He says, “most of the farmers are literate and I believe they can use the Internet.” As part of the programme to reach farmers with ICTs, the District Assembly also intends to use its mobile vans to show videos in the villages on best farming practices and to make available CD Roms on agriculture information to farmers.

In-country digital divide
Not many kilometres (70 km) away form THLDD is Cape Coast, the Regional capital of the Central region of Ghana. Here the story is much different. Cyber cafés are common and the proliferation of ICT training centres continues. This scene is not much different in all the ten regions of Ghana. The proliferation of ICTs in the country has been centered in the major urban centres much due to the neglect of the rural areas.

It is not uncommon to move a few kilometres from any of the regional capital and discover that, the people have no access to computers and the Internet and that the only source of information is the national radio and television, which broadcast state information and usually provide week signals.

Access is therefore non-existent in many communities apart from the 10 regional capitals. The rural poor are left behind in this fast moving ICTs again. For example, in the Upper East Region of Ghana, which is further up north from the capital Accra, there is only one Internet café in the whole of the regional capital and the cost of use is simply outrageous. THLDD Internet project is a unique local government project to focus on ICTs for the rural poor.


Conclusion
There are plans to improve telephony in the community by deploying Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) in the near future. It is presently illegal to operate VOIP in Ghana. There is a need for an alternative source of power supply. Internet charges at the THLDD Internet café are not cheap by national standards.

There are daunting challenges involved in deploying ICTs and though it may be a bit too early to start measuring what has been achieved, nonetheless it has joined the information age and has broken new grounds in ICTs proliferation in Ghana.