Tanzania: Digital Village Planned for Loliondo, Ngorongoro District

THE UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and Samsung have teamed up to launch an ambitious project in Tanzania -- the Digital Village (DV) -- with key components of education and health fully furnished by the most recent and innovative Samsung equipment: tablets, computers, and mobiles.
According to the UN agency, the components will realise education, healthcare system establishment, information sharing and business management in long distance and will be operated by solar power.
The solar power system will also generate electricity for several existing small businesses in the project community while UNESCO will enhance the adoption of the digital technology by customising its use to the needs and specific context where the DV will be placed.
This project will be implemented in Loliondo Division because of its importance as habitat for Maasai pastoralists. Loliondo, particularly Ololosokwan village, is part of the Serengeti ecosystem. Loliondo is one of the six districts of Arusha Region well known to its natural and cultural resources.
This has resulted in the denomination of the area as the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) in 1959 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. It is also a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve nominated under the Man and Biosphere Programme.

The area's main characteristic is wildlife coexistence with semi-nomadic Maasai pastoralists practising traditional livestock grazing; it includes the spectacular Ngorongoro Crater, the world's largest caldera which has a global importance for biodiversity conservation due to the presence of threatened species, the density of wildlife inhabiting the area, and the annual migration of wildebeest, zebra, gazelles and other animals into the northern plains.
Ololosokwan village is near Maasai Mara in Kenya and the famous wildebeest migration route and part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site and Biosphere Reserve. Many holidaymakers visit the proposed area but very little of it benefits the community.
In addition, Ololosokwan community has limited access to education and health services since the selected area does not have reliable communication infrastructure, access to newspapers and grid electricity is practically non-existent.
In the chosen area, farming activities are restricted due to the danger of degradation and attraction of wild animals reducing food security of the local communities.
Project planners say those challenges have led UNESCO and Samsung to select the site for insertion of a digital village (DV). DV aims at increasing access to information, knowledge and services to the remote populations of Maasai pastoralists in Loliondo.
On the medium term, this project will help to inform Tanzanian policies on use of ICTs and in particular digital means for rural development, and finally, inspire similar approaches in Africa.
To improve access to information of local communities, the DV project will enhance the role of the local government in the provision of social services to the population in particular the ones who are excluded.
It will facilitate the provision of education to the pastoralists out-of-school boys and youth using distance education modalities, as well as literacy and non-formal education for adults, with specific attention to women and out-of-school girls.
Furthermore, support will be provided for improving sexual reproductive health education, including HIV&AIDS with a focus on prevention as a complementarity to the care and treatment services to be delivered by the mobile health modalities that are to be developed in cooperation with the local health authorities, under the leadership of World Health Organisation.
In that regard, community sensitization and mobilization using appropriate socio-cultural appropriate approaches are to be undertaken to reduce early marriage and female genital mutilation practices that are proved to increase mother and child mortality and infringe in the fulfilment of the education, sexual and reproductive rights of young girls.
The DV project will seek as well to strengthen the economic situation of communities around Ololosokwan village in generating income from cultural tourism promotion, including the development of local capacities to manage market and deliver cultural tourism services and products.
The digital resources will enlarge marketing opportunities of the Maasai in the production and selling of improved products from livestock, natural resources related goods and their associated value chains.
In that regard, support of additional partners will be sought for the materialization of the economic component of the project. The appropriation of DV by local and community partners is paramount to ensure sustainability of results; hence specific attention will be given to capacity building of relevant actors.
This project will be implemented in close collaboration with the central and local government education and health authorities, as well as national and international NGOs and CBOs. In that regard the project will seek the participation and contribution of other UN Agencies such as WHO, FAO, UN Women, and ILO.
The project complies with the MDGs and other International agreed goals and is part of the Delivering as One framework in Tanzania and in particular the UNDAP (United Nations Development Assistance Plan).
Culturally, according to UNESCO, Ngorongoro is an area with a long pastoralist tradition and of high archaeological and paleontological interest since many fossils remain, including those of early hominids, making it to one of the major areas in the world for research on the evolution of the human species.
Those features led in 2010 to the re-nomination of the Site a World Heritage Mixed Site. This further added to the complexity of the site, and posed new challenges for integrated protection and management.
According to the 2010 state of the media report, nationwide, television was accessed by only 5 per cent of the population, while about 15 million Tanzanians own radio sets.
Circulation of newspapers is limited and the low purchasing power of most citizens, the high cost of batteries for radio sets and the inadequate electricity provision to rural dwellers, form the major challenges to access to information.
The 2010/11 National Panel Survey shows that citizen's access to electricity stood at only 17 per cent between 2008 and 2011 while in the rural areas, where 70 per cent of Tanzanians live, access to electricity was a merely 5 per cent.
These figures clearly demonstrate why radio is still the preferred medium of communication, especially in the rural areas.The 2003 National Information Communication Technology (ICT) Policy sets forth the need for ICT infrastructure in rural areas as a way to bridge the digital divide. H owever, the implementation of the policy has been slow.
Even with the current 80 per cent of the districts connected by optic fibre, the challenge remains in taking the high speed Internet connection the "last mile" towards the end user.
On average, only 11 per cent of Tanzanians access and use Internet services. Much of the Tanzanian fibre capacity is underutilized as only 65 per cent of its bandwidth is in use. Internet subscriptions are however on the increase with figures showing a total of 9.3 million internet users per subscription type by December 2013.
The majority of those accessing the internet were household subscribers (5,718,352), followed with workplaces (3,359,200). Very few Tanzanians accessed the internet through internet cafes (234,720).
While this trend shows that users are moving towards mobile internet, it also proves that internet subscriptions are predominantly for the wealthy. The increasing mobile phone penetration rates are also an opportunity that can be harnessed in providing Internet connectivity to all.
According to the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA), there are about 27.4 million active subscribers to mobile phones (December 2013), whereas the 2010 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey shows that 40 per cent of the population do not have access to any form of mass media. The digital resources will complement the Community radio information and knowledge services being currently offered to the population.
This indicates an opportunity for increased delivery of government services to the population using digital devices to support sustainable development.
Like other countries, Tanzania recognises the value and efficacy of ICTs as vehicles for improving access and quality in the education system, as well as the development of the overall national economy.
However, government's efforts have been hampered by key challenges such as connectivity, devices availability and lack of electrical power, especially in remote and hard to reach areas like Loliondo. In addition, capacity to deliver social services through ICT modalities are nearly inexistent.
Lack of access to formal education facilities and pastoralist practices in Ngorongoro district, impacts clearly on the literacy levels of the Maasai population and hence on their access to information and knowledge and capacity to engage in governance and decision making processes concerning the management of the Site.
The 2012 Population Census reveals a literacy rate of 27 per cent in the district, which is extremely low compared to the national average of 73 per cent, according to Country Profile 2012. Literacy rates are though highest among women (37 per cent) compared to men).
This disparity is likely linked to the fact that traditionally, boys have to herd the cattle of the family and hence are not able to go to school. Large distance to school will also hinder the enrolment of children and in particular girls as only 27 per cent of the households in the district are to be found within 30 minutes walking distance from the nearest school.
Cultural practices impacts negatively on girls' retention in school and subject them to serious health risks due to early marriage and female genital mutilation that are part of the cultural initiation rites of girls.
Boys and girls are also poorly informed on the sexual reproductive health issues and hence vulnerable to sexual transmitted infections including HIV and AIDS and early pregnancy.
Tourism coupled with extreme poverty often increases sexual interactions between visitors and local communities and this leads again to higher risk to contract sexual transmitted infections and diseases. In addition rural urban migration of young Maasai has also impacted the HIV prevalence in the district. Maternal and infant mortality rates are respectively 125/1000 and 150/1000 as compared to 153/1000, 75/1000 nationwide profile.
115 out of 1000 children die before becoming 5 years old. In addition barely 12 per cent of the households are located within 30 minutes walking distance of healthcare facilities. Access to and exploitation of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) knowledge is a key to increased productivity.
In Tanzania, extensive internet access has made it possible to share scientific knowledge that is relevant to local developmental needs wider than ever before. Local programmes can be developed for improved livelihoods through access to digital libraries, education materials and other electronic resources.
Adequate and competent human resources are though crucial. Lack of innovation hampers the development of adequate mechanisms for identifying and linking existing knowledge and available resources. Over the past decades the Maasai communities have abandoned nomadic practices and started to settle down in permanent settings. In an effort to secure livelihoods agricultural practices were commonly adopted.
The changed practices have however contributed to environmental degradation and to conflict with wildlife that is attracted to the easy available gardens.