Issues concerning an assisted-access information model for Africa

Abstract

The majority of people in developing countries are without information access, despite the significant potential this access has to improve their standard of living and to enable local efforts at environmental conservation and participatory government. This thesis seeks to identify a practical means of overcoming the current lack of information access in developing country contexts by examining the utility and practicality of information specialists as a medium for accessing information (an assisted-access model). To this end, this thesis is broken into two major sections. The first section is an introduction to the assisted-access model, with a general overview of the issues and obstacles involved in the African context. The second section is a project proposal towards evaluating and implementing this model in a developing country context. It was found that although there exists substantial barriers to the implementation of information provision services at the local level. these obstacles can be mitigated or reduced through proper needs assessment, design and operation of the kiosk. To this end. further study is necessary to verify the effectiveness of the model and identify obstacles. This evaluation could be undertaken on a limited scale by providing assisted-access services from existing telecenters.