SWAZILAND CUT OFF FROM I.T. WORLD

News that the University of Swaziland (UNISWA) has taken delivery of 41 new computers – courtesy of a business donor has caused some excitement in the Swazi media.

The Swazi Observer thought the story was so important it published two news reports on the event on the same day (Wednesday 11 March 2008).

For those who missed the story, MTN gave UNISWA the computers and the university has created what is being called a ‘cyberzone’ at its Luyengo campus.

According to one of the Observer reports, the MTN Board of Directors Chairperson Senator Winnie Magagula handed over the computers and said, ‘The country’s ability to achieve and maintain a high standard of living and remain internationally competitive depends on the extent to which it can harness science and technology.’

In its second report the Observer called it a ‘world-class laboratory’.

The Observer reported UNISWA Vice-Chancellor Professor Cisco Magagula saying, ‘the state-of-the-art computer laboratory would make it possible for both staff and students to prepare their lectures, assignments, manuscripts, search for information through the internet and communicate as well as interact through the internet with experts throughout the globe.’

I don’t want to spoil anyone’s party and I certainly believe that UNISWA needs more computers, but all this stuff about ‘world class’ and interacting with experts ‘throughout the globe’ is not true.

What both the Observer reporters missed was that the computers have limited use because the Internet coverage in Swaziland is pretty useless.

It doesn’t matter how expensive the computers are (and the Observer says the total cost of the computers and refurbishing a room for them cost E750,000 – about 110,000 US Dollars) if you can’t connect them to cyberspace.

I work at UNISWA and I can tell you that it is impossible to get on the Internet for most hours of the day. If you want to get on the World Wide Web on weekdays you need to do it before 8am and after 7pm. Sunday mornings is also a good time (when the rest of the Swazi population is at church).

I am not the only one in Swaziland having trouble getting on to the Internet. The Internet World Stats (IWS) website puts Internet ‘usage’ in Swaziland at 3.7 percent of the population or about 41,000 people. Unhelpfully, IWS doesn’t define ‘usage’, but I doubt very much of it means the number of people who have their own accounts with an Internet service provider company.

The African Media Barometer – Swaziland 2007 published in January 2008 by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)Swaziland Chapter reported that Internet is still unaffordable for most Swazis and is limited to the main towns. Most Internet cafés charge at least E20 (about 3 US dollars) for 15 minutes. Broadband is still not available, as the government is yet to license operators, so connections are slow and unreliable.

Add to this the fact that about 75 percent of the people in Swaziland live in rural areas and electricity doesn’t reach all of them, and that about 70 percent of the population live in abject poverty on an income of less than one US dollar (E7) per day and more than half the population presently rely on food aid from overseas organisations to stop them starving, the availability of an Internet connection is not an important consideration in the lives of most people.

I was at a workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, last week, which was attended by people from across southern Africa. One of the topics we were talking about was how the Internet ‘empowered’ people to make their own media.

Participants at the workshop gave examples of how people are publishing their own opinions for people to read on the Internet. It is also possible to publish your own ‘newspapers’ on line.

None of this is available to people in Swaziland. The technology isn’t there, but it wouldn’t take much to improve the system. The most obvious thing to do is to introduce broadband connections to Swaziland. This would enable more people to access the Internet and to have faster connections.

This is not an original idea and I wonder why it hasn’t already been done. Perhaps the answer is that Swaziland is not a democracy and that media in Swaziland are mostly under government control. With that kind of control why would the rulers want people finding things out for themselves by using the Internet?

So, until we have a government committed to freedom of expression that is willing to allow Swazis to properly access the Internet, UNISWA’s new computers will remain virtually idle.