For every successful corporate social investment project that we hear about, there are other stories of dreadful mismanagement of funds.
Computers being donated to schools without electricity, media centres being established in huts that have no locking doors, seeds being supplied to community gardens with no running water; the list is endless.
I think that sometimes, for people who are actively involved in the day-to-day rigours of corporate life, to take a step back and assess the actual needs of far-flung communities is almost impossible.
For me, an example of the gap left by the digital divide could be felt when I was studying journalism. I was studying with a number of black students who came from fairly privileged backgrounds, but who had never grown up with a computer in their household.
For me, an example of the gap left by the digital divide could be felt when I was studying journalism.
Georgina Guedes, editor, ITWeb Brainstorm
When we went to our first lesson in media studies, the lecturer set about educating us in how to create borders, change fonts and generally make documents look pretty. One of the black students sitting near me called me over after the first five minutes.
"Look what it`s doing!" he said indignantly, pointing to his screen.
And there were the words that we had been asked to type, all squashed together with no spaces between them. I introduced him, for the first time in his life, to the spacebar.
This was the difference between a privileged white student, and an educated black student. He had his matric, he was a smart guy, but he lacked the social background to be immediately comfortable with a computer.
Now, take this example and magnify the divide a thousand times, and we can begin to see the problems encountered by rural communities, where children still have to wade through rivers to attend lessons held in the shade of thorn trees, who are presented with the gift of technology.
I think there should be some sort of central regulatory body that assesses the impact of corporate social investment initiatives. Companies get tax rebates for making donations to needy causes, but if their donations are ineffective or unusable, they shouldn`t receive the tax rebate.
I`m not trying to take away from the many companies that are actively involved in the roll-out of technology implementations in rural areas from start to finish, but there should be a better measurement standard of the value of these projects.
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