Matt Villano
4 December 2006
Kampala — NEAR Fort Portal, where power outages occur daily, four remote villages are harnessing solar-powered computers, wireless networks and telephones to help farmers compete in the regional economy. The computer-and-telephone system, designed by the San Francisco-based non-profit group, Inveneo, also enables villagers to surf the web, build databases, use e-mail and make phone calls over the Internet.
This is a big boost considering that the nearest land-line phone is two miles away.
The impact has been immediate. Computer literacy among the 3,200 residents is on the rise. The local governments also use the technology to organise records and cut back on paper files.
In an e-mail message, Jane Nabwire, the information technology officer of the project said farmers used the technology to obtain market prices for their produce.
"The technology has brought services to people. They can access developmental information at any time," Nabwire wrote.
To users in the United States who can pay bills online and answer e-mail on their cellphones, these technologies may not seem so vital. But in countries like Uganda, the gift of information and communications technology can change an entire area's perspective on the world.
Inveneo sells its technology to non-governmental organisations, which supply it to areas in need. Another non-profit organisation, the AED-Satellife Centre for Health Information and Technology in Watertown, gets financing through grants and gives the technology away.
Jody Mahoney, the senior director of international development at TechSoup, a non-profit technology assistance agency in San Francisco, US, said the two groups arranged for payment for these projects.
"The best way to get technology into these nations is to create an ecosystem of partners that give people the tools they need to get things done," she said.
Inveneo's efforts revolve around these partners. In 2003, two of its co-founders, Mark Summer and Robert Marsh, developed a wireless communications system for villagers in Laos while volunteering for a non-governmental organisation there. Last year, they brought the technology to Uganda, teaming with ActionAid.
Summer, who is Inveneo's chief executive, said by the end of the year, it would be supporting 18 projects in Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana, Mali and Guinea-Bissau.
At the AED-Satellife Centre, the focus is on medicine with two goals: to disseminate information to health workers all over the world and to give nations like Uganda and Rwanda the ability to use technology to revolutionise the way they keep medical records.
With the help of a special wireless access point, the hand-held devices transmit information about patients from field offices to regional ministries of health.
The network, much like computers from Inveneo, runs on solar and battery power and is meant to replace the paper-based record-keeping that characterised so many of these countries for years.
Andrew Sideman, AED-Satellife's director of development, said this information was important because it helped doctors decide how resources were allocated.
So far in Uganda, Satellife has accomplished that goal. For years, when pregnant women gave birth, doctors had 72 hours afterward to dispatch a messenger to pick up a refrigerated dose of Nevirapine, a drug that kills HIV in newborns and is routinely administered.
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