ACDE PAPERS IN BOOK FORM 1.pdf - National Open University of ...

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
eLearning 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
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