eBusiness Weekly
Enacy Mapakame
HARARE – The Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (Potraz) has to date established 84 community information centres (CIC) across the country as efforts to enhance use of information and communication technology (ICT) to the people.
These are established at post offices while in remote areas the telcos regulator will establish tankers to cater for people, subject to demand. Potraz director general Dr Gift Machengete said, the world over had adopted the CIC approach as the quickest way of enhancing ICT knowledge among people in their respective countries.
He said businesses and education now revolved around ICT, making it a crucial sector in the economy therefore deserving attention.
“As Potraz, we are supposed to take ICT to the people. This is not only in Zimbabwe but other countries too are doing this, guided by international best practice,” said Dr Machengete during a tour of the Chinhoyi CIC.
“Everything is now evolving around ICT. CICs are therefore important in training people basic use of computers, the internet and how they can use these to enhance their education, businesses and lives,” he said.
In farming communities such as Chinhoyi, Dr Machengete said, CICs were crucial in providing knowledge on best agriculture practices, weather information from the internet while students from tertiary institutions use them to access information from digital libraries.
In remote areas, depending on demand, Potraz is using containers as the CICs. The same can be used as post offices. Within the next two months, 24 containerized CICs will be established across the country.
“We started with provincial CICs and now going to all the other post offices, we love to go to districts but right now we are targeting the existing post offices. In villages we put containers depending on the demand, that is if it warrants to have a CIC,” said Dr Machengete.
