Technology enhances information and communication. It has made Apac more accessible to the world in a situation where distance has been a challenge. People in Apac can now rely on Communication and Information Centres equipped with computers, telephones and the Internet, to carry out their day to day activities.

The Apac e-society was formulated as a joint effort between IICD, Hivos, local partners Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) and I-Network.

The International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) promotes local, national and global knowledge sharing that stimulates sustainable ICT-enabled development. In Uganda, it is the key funder for the activities and operations of I-Network, one of the Initiators of Apac e-society together with Hivos a development partner of WOUGNET.

It was never dreamt that ICT could actually mean a lot in supporting the development needs of local and rural communities, the Apac e-Society programme aims at promoting collaboration between the civil society, private sector and local government through using databases to share their development plans, budgets and work plans as well as provide development information to the communities which are mainly farmers and fishermen. It is hoped that this will facilitate the district to optimally use their resources for faster development.

The idea of the e-society was coined when Hivos, IICD together with their partners in Uganda I-Network and WOUGNET discussed the possibilities of getting community service providers together so as to realize the benefits of working together by sharing the meager resources they had for enhancing the faster development of their communities. A research into the needs of the people of Apac was carried out in November 2006 given the fact that they were targeted for the first test case. It was discovered that the needs of the Apac community were not so different from that of the rest of Uganda, the biggest number of people being farmers, fishermen and traders of agricultural produce.

I-Network and WOUGNET with their partners therefore embarked on planning how to support the farmers, fishermen and agro-traders by Introducing ICT and hence the plan to first of all support the service providers (local government and civil society) on  how best they could work together to help their community and second how to provide relevant content to the community for improved farming and fishing but also agro-business by mostly the youthful people and other services to the women and community based organizations.

The plan which became the Apac e-Society programme there after was implemented starting early this year. Established in Apac right now is a well equipped e-Library of local government plans and budgets and soon NGO plans and budgets. All interested parties will soon be able to monitor progress on these systems. Content has also been collected for the community and will soon be re-packaged for consumption by even the illiterate.

The purpose of the e-society programme is to have an improved service delivery and community participation through Local Government, Private sector and Civil Society collaboration.

Richard Okuti
I-Network
July 2008