Open and Distance Learning for Sustainable Development

Connectivity
The first barrier to e-learning on the far side of the digital divide is connectivity. ACDE
members have little opportunity to increase that directly, but you can influence political
decisions on telecoms liberalisation and taxation by publicising the developmental benefits of
connectivity. And you can make more efficient use of the connectivity that you have.
Two figures are particularly telling (The Economist, 2008). First, studies find that in a typical
developing country an increase in penetration of mobile phones of 10% boosts GDP growth
by around one percentage point. Second, on average, the mobile industry, which accounts for
4% of GDP, contributes 7% of tax revenue. We give you these figures for mobile phones
because the connectivity for other ICTs, such as laptops, will grow on the back of mobile
telecommunications. What governments need to do is to foster a lively and competitive
telecommunications market and not to tax it too heavily because mobile-specific taxes reduce
demand.
One calculation suggests that if governments did away with mobile-specific taxes and
charged only value-added tax (VAT), total tax revenues from the mobile industry would be
3% higher by 2012 and the average penetration rate would increase from 33 to 41%, which
would, as we just mentioned, increase GDP growth by one per cent.
You can also do things to use more efficiently the limited connectivity that you have. COL
has published advice on how to do this (see for example Daniel & West, 2005). One example
of better use of bandwidth is provided by COL's WikiEducator, a collaborative website for
developing Open Education Resources (OER). It shows teachers how to use the open source
software OpenOffice for authoring content offline. It can be exported into the wiki format and
uploaded onto the site when teachers have the opportunity to connect to the Net at their place
of work, community media centre or Internet café.
Equipment
E-learning on the far side of the digital divide obviously requires equipment. This is
becoming more widely available: rapidly in the case of mobile phones, less rapidly in the case
of computers. However, the cost of computers, in relation to their processing power, is
dropping steadily and there are many schemes to recycle good used computers from richer
countries. If sending organisations ensure that the equipment they donate is in good working
condition it can be a godsend for local NGOs and other bodies. Responsible people on both
sides of these deals should check that electronic junk is recycled properly in the rich country
and only good working equipment is shipped to developing countries.
The Tuxlab project is an African innovation where computer laboratories running on the
GNU/LINUX free software operating system are installed in schools. It is a smart project
because it connects refurbished computers as dumb terminals to a new server, which is far
cheaper than installing a new laboratory. Schools need only maintain one installation of
software and teachers can be taught to wire and set up the lab themselves
(http://www.tuxlabs.org.za/). SchoolNet Namibia has widened access to ICTs using a similar
model.
Another trend is the attempt to make a functional laptop for less than $100 and make it widely
available in the schools under the One Laptop Per Child or OLPC programme. This initiative,
launched by the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has spawned a brisk
competition to create viable machines.
10