Telecentres Impacting Education in Rural Areas

A research on the positive results of five of such centres was presented last Wednesday in Yaounde.

Results of a two-year study on five multi-purpose community telecentres in Cameroon indicates that the centres which are connected to the internet have greatly contributed in improving education in the rural areas. Carried out by an NGO PROTÉGÉ QV, the research aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of the centres which have been placed by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication as a social service to facilitate access by the population to electronic services offered by the internet.

Analysing the contribution of the telecentres located at Bankim, Bangang, Jakari, Ambam and Makenene localities, members of the NGO handed questionnaires to some 1,015 students and 235 teachers who constantly visited these centres to know how they have contributed in improving their studies and teaching exercise respectively. Statistics later indicated that close to 53 per cent of students who constantly went to telecentres for pedagogic reasons no longer repeat a class with a drastic improvement in their studies. This positive impact was noted most at the Jakiri multi-purpose community telecentres. The data also indicated that 62 per cent of teachers who went to telecentres obtained information which ameliorated their teaching exercise. This was remarkable at the Bankim telecentre.

However, teachers and students both complained about the location of telecentres which are far from school premises and homes, the constant lack of energy, as well as the lack of local capacity to reinforce machines when they go bad as constant setbacks.