Since
its inception in 2004 BIC has undertaken activities in the field of information
generation, processing and dissemination using modern ICTs. These processes
have been supported by a number of development partners notably Hivos, SNV, COMESA,
KRC, GoU, and RICNET. All BIC operations were guided by strategic business plans.
The immediate business plan aimed at empowering progressive farmers to embrace
and apply modern ICTs in the generation, processing and dissemination of user
friendly information to improve the production, processing and marketing of
both crop and livestock products. Over
the last eight years BIC has registered a number of achievements in
facilitating information sharing processes, notably the following:
·
Formalizing the
institutional set up of Bwera Information
·
Demystifying application of
modern ICT by peasant farmers to improve their farming practices. In this
regard BIC has contributed to narrowing the digital divide;
·
Building the capacity of the
poor women and men to envision, and initiate income generating activities. BIC
has done this through training and providing information on entrepreneurship
skills. Many member groups have initiated their own income generating
activities and/or have used BIC infrastructure to access additional funding to
support their projects
·
Putting in place, within the
communities, 19 facilities for information processing and dissemination such as
telephone, e-mail service, photocopy, scanning, document processing, current
news service, binding and notice boards which has contributed to bringing much
needed services closer to the people. The BIC info points have served as true
‘information centres’ for this is where communities gather in the evenings to get
current information and catch up with the latest happenings. BIC has also
introduced mobile internet in the community to facilitate the grassroots people
to have access to the internet;
·
The BIC resource room which
is stocked with a fair number of reading materials, videos and CDs on rural
livelihoods that are available to the public has contributed to making
information more easily accessible to the users on demand;
·
BIC has stocked four info
Points with Dstv dishes- these facilities are used as centres for information
sharing- during the oil and gas debate in the parliament of Uganda, the
communities would gather around to see how MPs debate. The communities are
participating in parliamentary debates using these facilities;
·
Starting a computer
applications training service. This has helped in increasing computer literacy
among the rural poor women and men (in a year at least 120 farmers and youths
are trained). Graduates of the BIC computer training have found employment in
the many mushrooming secretarial bureaus in town hence BIC has contributed to
reducing youth unemployment. On the other hand progressive farmers trained by
BIC can now use modern ICT to search for information to solve their production
problems and also search for markets for their produce;
·
BIC has served as a linkage
point between NARO and the farmers and hence has facilitated farmers’ access to
expert advice; likewise, BIC has become a link point with the Department of
Meteorology and regularly updates farmers with information on weather;
·
Networking with other ICTs
in Uganda and beyond.
·
Conducting business as a
local capacity builder for the local Government, SNV and COMESA;
·
Promoting the collective
marketing value chain by facilitating information sharing between producers and
the market;
·
Together with SNV BIC has
opened 20 school garden sites that are study centers in the 20 primary schools.
The parents use these school garden to visit the schools, do joint monitoring
and interact with the pupils during lesson conducted in the school garden.
In
the process of registering these achievements BIC has registered some
challenges and learnt lessons from them which now inform the problem statement
for this proposal. Some of the lessons learnt include:
§ The
concept of application of modern ICT in information sharing among the poor men
and women has not been well understood by the majority of the target groups and
stakeholders and so needs to be popularized further;
§ The
digital divide is much more pronounced between men and women in the same rural
setting; it needs to be narrowed and more attention needs to be given to women
so they can embrace application of ICT in sharing information in production and
marketing value chains so they can improve their opportunities for better
income and household food security;
§ Information
sharing can be best be embraced if it focuses the entire value – chain linkage
as a process and not a one off event;
§ Information
sharing processes should be gender aware and apply the rights based approach if
they are to be successfully adopted by the target groups;
§ Information
sharing is critical in promoting citizen influence over the governance process;
therefore BIC should design products of information sharing that will
facilitate the decision making processes in the local governments;
§ Rural
information centres need to have clear self sustainability strategies right
from the start;
§ BIC
has to document and archive both processes and results of whatever it does for
future reference and/or replication;
§ Research
and timely feedback is critical in supporting information sharing processes
§ If
well mobilized the community has a huge potential of innovation and causing
change. Therefore if BIC is to move forward it must invest in mobilizing the
local resources other than over depending on the external inputs;
§ Meaningful
and sustainable community development is possible when people are well
mobilized, and are given space to exploit their own potentialities. This partly explains why BIC was able to
attain self sustainability in terms of recurrent costs within only six months
after launching. Therefore any future programs should be those that aim at
strengthening community empowerment.
By BIC
Coordinator
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