At Last: Web Access For The World's Poor?

God bless Maureen, Andrius! Well, it does seem to me that WorkNets has come in at a most opportune time indeed. Perhaps we can now actualise our collective dream of making the web accessible to people in rural Africa as well as the continent's large population of the urban poor?

Providence is smiling on you and your fellow thinkers at Mencius Soda. Let us think of ways of enabling those amongst us who are interested in doing so, enable others get web access - whiles making a good income for ourselves too.

Perhaps we could use the same collaborative method you used in applying for the UK research grant, Andrius?

Recently, I have been having a series of rather distressing exchanges with the broadband support staff of my ISP Vodafone/Ghana Telecom, which charges me the cedi equivalent of US$60: for a most appalling broadband internet access service - which is also happens to be a pre-paid service too, to add insult to injury!

Well, I don't know about you gentle and caring thinkers at Mencius Sodas/Mendenyo, but that is a small fortune for an impecunious African organic farmer and writer to pay every month in advance - for such atrocious web access.

If someone came up with a value-for-money alternative, targeting hard-up organic farmers and writers (amongst other equally financially- challenged members of society!), I'd be the first to sign up.

It would cheer me up even more, if I could be part of a collaborative effort by fellow Mencius Sodas/Mendenyo thinkers, to design a suitably "inclusive business model" for such a value-for-money ISP.

To all our friends at Mendenyo who haven't yet come on board, but want to, I can report here that you have now made joining WorkNets idiot-proof, Andrius - even grumpy old Kofi Thompson has just joined: and without the assistance of anyone from his online network, too!

Do stay blessed, all at Mendenyo!

Kofi.

PS For those who read my blog that might be interested in it, I reproduce the generous-spirited Maureen's marvellous email to Andrius, below.

"> Hi, Andrius.>
> We met at Journalism That Matters at Yahoo. I thought you might be
> interested in the following.>
> The World Wide Web Foundation was announced Sept. 14. It's founded by Tim
> Berners-Lee and led by Steve Bratt. The Knight Foundation has given it $5> million.>
> Goals of the Web Foundation include:
> * To learn from people in socially or economically deprived
> communities how the Web can better serve them.
> * To leverage the Web to empower people, especially in under-served
> populations, by lowering barriers to life-critical services.
> * To ensure the Web is accessible and useful to people, including
> people with disabilities, from different cultures, and language and
> literacy skills that span the range of the Earth's population.>
> URL: http://www.webfoundation.org/"

Posted by Thoughts on Ghana