News

The Community telecentres network of Congo is expanding

See the pictures here and be inspired!

Upcoming event : training workshop on maintenance and marketing for telecentres leaders
The Community Telecentre network in Congo and AZUR Développement are planning a training workshop to be held in Pointe-Noire, Congo by end of the year. More information will be posted soon.

National workshop of telecentres leaders in Congo

AZUR Développement and the Community Telecentre network in Congo held a national telecentres leaders workshop with funding from telecentre.org gtom 18 to 20 April 2007 in Brazzaville, Congo. Resources people from DRC and Mali attended the workshop. A plan of action of the telecentres network  aimed to enable telecentres to play a key role in the development of their communities. Telecentre.org is a joint initiative of IDRC, Microsoft and SDC. Read the workshop report here in French.

Telecentres reject sporadic development in Congo Brazzaville

The first telecentres in Congo with internet access date back to 1999-2000, also offer a range of other services such as computerization of documents, printing, photocopying, document scanning, CD burning,  telephone calls and training in various areas. Brought together at a three-day workshop in Brazzaville with the financial support of telecentre.org, telecentre leaders identified the priority focal points of their action in bringing the advantages of information and communication technologies to the Congolese people.

They emphasized an appropriate methodological approach so that telecentres would be capable of meeting the needs of their target group in terms of information and training. Examples of telecentres which disseminate information on HIV/AIDS, agriculture and livestock production were cited, amongst others, such as those offering services to entrepreneurs. Source APC News.

The network of community telecentres of the Congo

During July 2006 a network of community telecentres was created in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo. The network consists of ten community telecentres and will gradually capture all telecentres in the entire country.. A conference set to examine the findings of the inquiry into the Congo’s telecentres was organized in April 2006. It was vital we meet and commence dialogue among the telecentres. The telecentres’ administrators organized other conferences and hence the seed was grown. The network has proposed to reach the following four main objectives: To know how:

• To facilitate and encourage the implantation of community telecentres in rural and urban areas;
• To provide the general population and marginalized groups (women, children, illiterate and handicapped persons) access to ICTs;
• Formalize the collaboration and increase information and experience-sharing between telecentres and lastly;
• Strengthen the ability of telecentres’ members. More information.

Why do we train female journalists on the Internet in the Congo?

We have trained ten young women from media-related fields in the Congo to use the Internet in our telecentre. The women come from different media avenues: rural radio, national Congolese television and the New Republic journal (Nouvelle République). The young female journalists generally did not know much of the Internet, while some of them had never had an email account. In two weeks, they learnt the basics needed to participate in the group discussions; however, they do not have access to the Internet at their respective places of work, and must take it upon themselves to remain motivated and search the Internet at cyber cafes. See pictures here.

Experience sharing workshop on telecentres

Under the initiative of the associations COMETE International, AZUR Development and the Centre Multimédia Pour Tous (the Multimedia Centre for All) an experience-sharing workshop on telecentres will be organized in Brazzaville on July 31, 12006. The following themes will be discussed: lessons learnt in the administration of a telecentre - drawing on the experience of the Centre Multimédia Pour Tous project in Pointe-Noire, the presentation of Mali’s network of multimedia centres – while addressing plea strategies, obtained results and the recognition of the gender approach in telecentres, the question of gender in telecentres, lessons learnt from the training of users on a large-scale, and lastly, investigating how a network of telecentres may resolve the issue of connecting to the Internet.

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