Once a former US president Jimmy Carter said once said “You
are talking about the internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking
about computers,” Carter said “This doesn’t affect two-third of the people in
the world” to me that is the power of the handheld devices whether is a PDA,
basic cell phone, a smart phone or amazing weird gadget on your palm as long as
it connect you to the outside world through the giant networks called internet
then you are in.
In recent days the government have been speaking about a lot
of plans in e-learning from the primary school level to higher learning institution
and there have been a lot of challenges and politics about these plans some
people criticizing them as being a failure for example the local T.V ad about
the teacher teaching ICT without having the computer itself in front of the student.
The ad was produced by the NGO “hakielimu”, I don’t want to go deeper into those
things but I believe technological advancement in our communities start with
the individual effort before going to the national level.
Let’s get back into our topic I went to “SabaSaba” last year
during the trade fair season I got a chance to visit the space allocated for
University of Dar es Salaam to portray their works and projects. Then I saw
something very interesting there was a project about e-learning but it was just
a model of the real project were by students and teachers can interact with a
certain software teaching basic subjects being taught in Tanzania local
schools. The software was amazing I got a chance to try it. It was user
friendly and the interface was cool. I looked at the software and I asked
myself a lot of questions. Some of them were: how would a student or a teacher
without knowledge in computers at all be able to operate this software, what will
be the cost of implementation, but the biggest question was, will it be able to
cover the largest part of the community and give them the information and
detail they need to attain the knowledge in time. In my head the answer was
next to impossible a big capital “NO”.
Recently a study of young people from Ghana, Morocco, Uganda
and Maharashtra was done aiming at improving education through mobile
technology. The study looks at these countries and the Maharashtra state of
India identifying youth aspirations and priorities, exploring education and
employment challenges they face and scrutinizing their mobile phone usage. Elsie
Kanza of the Word Economic Forum mentioned mobile phones are increasingly tremendously
in poor countries, which now account for four in every five connections worldwide.
Realizing that Professor Traxler of Wolverhampton in United Kingdom
consolidated the issues by adding that when they hear its profitable it will
encourage youth to go out there and do something.
This something is what we call innovation, we need people
with skills and credibility to work with the government and advise them to move
to mobile learning since it is the easiest way to reach 36 million people who
are mobile subscribers living in Tanzania by the year 2015 and to be able to
provide them with any kind of knowledge or awareness they need to preach to
them. When I was in India it was a normal thing to receive a lot of SMS talking
about different stuffs whether is about social, political or economic matters
since it was the easiest way for the local authorities and companies to reach
so many people
Am very glad to see the emerging of companies like
HudumaFasta and having around the giants like Push Mobile in our country and several
others out there who are doing the same stuffs it is a massive task although
they make profit but it is something we should be proud of. I like to see
Tanzania dwelling into technology and see the power of technology and the ways
it can be used to simplify life. Few years back people were moving here and
there on the load sweating in the hot conditions of Dar es Salaam looking for
jobs these days we have Zoom Tanzania and others simplifying the task for us
that is the power of technology.
Putting the challenge on the table I would like companies
using or making USSD applications to sit down with mobile services providers
and the government to come up with the strategy to take us to the new level of
mobile innovation “m-learning” I can’t wait for that thing to occur. Just remember
36 million Tanzanians who are mobile subscribers would have the chance to receive
the information you give or service you provide whether it’s a HIV awareness
program or a certain topic in geography. Just remember technology can make a
significant difference if given a chance.By Jumanne Mtambalike