Kenya's government pledged on Wednesday to give poor rural communities better access to information and communication technologies. Information and Communications Minister Mutahi Kagwe said initiatives were planned aimed at "reducing the divide" in such access between rural areas and thriving urban centres.
"Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide developing nations, such as ours, with unprecedented opportunities to reduce poverty and achieve basic healthcare," he told a meeting of government officials and business people.
The government plans to promote "digital schools" that would provide students with online educational content, he said, adding that villages too would be offered Internet services.
"We will establish 'digital villages' to provide affordable ICT services to the rural and other under-served areas in every constituency (and) with locally assembled PCs," Kagwe said.
The east African country also planned to start laying an undersea fibre optic cable to link the port city of Mombasa to the United Arab Emirates. The link will provide cheap broadband and terrestrial cables across Kenya, especially to hospitals and schools, Kagwe added. Some 85 percent of Africans live in rural areas, according to the African Development Bank. The continent accounts for only 3.4 percent of global Internet users and 3.2 percent of computers. Kenya is not the only country in the region looking to tackle poverty with better ICT.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said late on Tuesday that 458 schools had already benefited from an aid agency-funded scheme providing televisions that offer remote learning from teachers based in South Africa.
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