While Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool may feel proud of his province`s achievements in bringing ICT to its communities, civil society activists say ICT roll-outs to communities have been a "disaster" in the rest of the country.
Speaking at the provincial government`s launch of the Information Society Week to be held in Cape Town next week, Rasool praised the roll-out of multi-purpose community centres in city libraries that have given poor people access to ICT tools to enhance their lives.
"At these centres they are able to access the Internet for free and respond to government tenders and find other information they need," he said.
However, Tracy Naughton, civil society activist and advisor to the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, told ITWeb that the multi-purpose community centre model has not worked in the rest of the country.
"The Universal Services Agency is rolling out 17 of these centres a year. It will take them 457 years to install the 6 000 centres that are needed," she said.
Naughton also said that of the estimated 2 300 African languages in existence, "there are barely traces of 23 on the Internet".
She said a lot must be done by government, civil society and business to ensure local content is made available to encourage communities to use ICT as a means to uplift themselves.
Dale Isaacs, MD of community business organisation Sonke, said many people within the poorer communities were still not aware that ICT was a means to an end.
"In the townships, we used to think that cellphones were fashion statements and computers were for playing games on. We did not realise there is a gap between a small business and its client base that can be closed using ICT tools," she said.
Harold Wesso, head of PGWC`s e-government initiative, said the province was actively working with national government (the Presidential National Commission on Information Society and Development) to develop a framework to analyse the country`s ICT needs.
"The President [Thabo Mbeki] will be given a paper to take to the World Summit on Information Society in Tunis that will analyse what is happening in SA," he said.
Information Society Week will take place in Cape Town from 22 to 31 August.
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