Resumen de Community Telco: An acceptable solution for providing affordable communications in rural areas of South Africa
The effort that mobile network operators have made in the last years for increasing access to communications in rural areas of developing countries is undeniable. Despite of this, the development outcomes that increased connectivity promises to bring to underprivileged areas remain unmet, as digital communications technologies are not affordable for most. However, this has not stopped them from purchasing phone time, to the point that some studies describe that cost of mobile services represents a large proportion of their monthly income. This represents both a hazard in terms of health, food security and the well-being of children, and a drain on resources which could be used for investments in assets and entrepreneurial activities. Finding sustainable ways in which this cost can be reduced and the developmental return on the investment in ICTs be enhanced is thus a worthwhile research objective.
This PhD presents the results of a case study situated in Mankosi, a rural community in one of the most disadvantaged areas of South Africa, to study the acceptability for rural villages to become sustainable telecommunications operators to reduce these cost of communications. The initiative, which has been implemented along the guidelines to create sustainable ICT4D projects, has been studied by means of Ethnographic Action Research. For assessing the acceptability, a multidimensional framework developed by the doctoral student has been used. It contains four dimensions: legal, technical, financial and sociocultural. For each of the dimensions specific methods have been used: understanding thoroughly the regulatory framework in South Africa; measuring the network performance and co-designing solutions with the community; studying in detail the financial management of the initiative; developing and applying a framework to operationalise the sense of ownership that manifested in Mankosi. The impact has been measured via both a longitudinal stratified random sample survey of the households in each village in Mankosi, and the ethnography and participant observation of the doctoral student.
An analysis of the communication expenditures and usage patters of the people from Mankosi is presented first. Results show that while a high ratio of people have access to mobile phone services weekly, they spend a high proportion of their disposable income on a very constrained set of services. Apart from the high costs of airtime, factors like mobile phone charging and the mark-up of products in rural areas account for a considerable part of the total expenditure. The assessment of the acceptability of the intervention shows that major steps have been made in all four dimensions considered to the point that the community continues to be actively engaged with the initiative more than three years after it started. Still, for the long-term sustainability of this and similar initiatives, the creation of a second-level organisation is proposed as a way forward, to provide similar support and services to the ones provided by the doctoral student to Mankosi.
The impact of the intervention might have been limited with regards to modifying the communication expenditures and usage patterns of the people from Mankosi, but the acceptability of the intervention described above, and reflected in some of the unexpected effects, sheds a different light on the future. Having unveiled the complexities behind this limited impact enables continued exploration of ways of designing more locally acceptable solutions that have a positive impact on the communication expenditures and usage patterns of the people from Mankosi. Additionally, the results obtained are key to influencing industry, government and civil society to partner in making this a reality in other communities.
