A Model To Facilitate The Establishment Of Sustainable Ict-Hubs For Informed And Innovative Communities: Experience From Tanzania

ABSTRACT

In this study, a model to facilitate the establishment of sustainable ICT Hubs into the community was developed. In developing the model, a study was performed on the community and on the existing similar facilities of telecentres and living labs to identify community ICT needs and factors and challenges facing the existing facilities. The study comprised of 133 respondents of which 63 respondents were community members from four (4) wards of Dodoma municipality and 60 were beneficiaries from three ICT community centres of Buni, Iringa RLab living labs and Sengerema telecentre. The instruments of data collection included questionnaire, interview, documentary review and observation. The data was coded and analysed in MS Excel based on themes and topics featured in the questionnaire. The findings from the study and insight from other sources such as literature review and document review revealed a strong relationship between the ICT needs, functions, methods and challenges in establishing community ICT facilities onto the community. In this study, an approach was made to come up with a model that forms a framework to streamline the process of establishing an ICT hub into the community to foster its sustainability and benefit to the community. The developed model serves as a unified approach to establishing ICT Hub centres into the community where ICT and related services will be available. The model took into account the notion of demand-driven public service to cater for the needs of the community contrast to donor or government envisioned services as was observed in the existing community ICT centres.