AYF-News> Insight on IT projects in Africa

["Donavan" <donavan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Ms. Jansen,

Reference to your presentation in ESG Bonn on 13 June 2001,
about AYFs IT projects in Africa, I have been pondering over
this issue for a while. As an IT expert in Europe who is
also involved in some IT projects in Developing countries, I
find this project a bit lacking in terms of Infrastructure,
activity action and information dissemination especially in
Africa. 

My reasons for this scepticism are:
a) a development Organisation’s activity is merely an
idea unless it is documented as a project proposal given to
funding agencies and then funded.

b) after the approval of the project, usually, the funding
agencies ask for tangible deliverables. Deliverables such as
impacts and life change of the participants, job creation,
publications after a research, proceedings for congresses or
conferences sponsored by the development organisation (using
the funds given by the funding agencies), follow ups and
more are expected.

In your presentation, you laid emphasis on the sustenance of
the projects only at the University level, whilst exempting
the sensibilisation of the content of the project for the
masses that are not in the universities, as well as the
dissemination of information for the public. Elements were
chosen on constructive unique ideas. 

How do you convince stakeholders that in countries with such
poor infrastructures, and laid back system of information
dissemination, AYF would be able to abridge this pattern of
building a triangular structure, that would connect all the
regions involved in this project informatively, and how are
the participants of these projects going to extend their
learnt skills to those who don’t have the chance?

What about the relationship between major projects like
those organised by organistaions like the UN for example,
which gave birth to smaller activities?

Has AYF got an employment scheme or co-operation with the
Labour ministries in the different countries? Could the
Directors of AYF give some insight about this planned IT
project?

Thanks

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