YAF Workshop: Bridging the information gap in Kalangala using ICT’s

[Edwin Galiwango]

On March the 17th, 2009, a group of young professionals, area politicians and local leaders converged at the Islands Club on Bugala of the Ssese Islands to discuss the use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to bridge the information gap on the island district of Kalangala. Ms. Natalie Kimbugwe of BDE Consult conceived the idea of involving, training and sensitising local leaders to the value of ICT after discovering that the only Internet provider and Information Centre on the island was underutilised. Kalangala District MP Ruth Kavuma discussed the needs and challenges of a district comprising 84 islands to include communication, administrative and social aspects coupled with the nature of the population that consists largely of subsistence farmers and fishermen, to whom ICT is a vague concept. Furthermore, with underdeveloped infrastructure and no central supply of electricity, powering any information and communication technologies is that much more difficult.

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