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Peace Corps to Wire Senegal

Posted by michael on from the goodwill-to-men dept.

An anonymous submitter wrote: "Peace Corps Online is reporting on the White House's Digital Freedom Initiative that will place volunteers from the Peace Corps, Hewlett-Packard and Cisco in a pilot program in Senegal where they will leverage nearly 200 cybercafes and 10,000 telecenters to provide opportunities for small businesses and entrepreneurs. The idea isn't new - David Rothman proposed an Electronic Peace Corps in 1984, the Geek Corps has been doing this kind of work in Ghana for years, and the Peace Corps already has about 1,500 volunteers working in information technology."

2 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Re:why? by droid_rage · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Maybe it's because most entrepreneurs and small business owners in Senegal can't afford a computer, and would be better off renting small amounts of time as needed. According to the world bank Senegal's GNP per capita for 1996 was only $570. I doubt it's gotten much higher.

  2. Always has to be hardware by jj_johny · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It seems that everyone who does development work does not feel that they have made a difference unless they leave behind something to point at: A dam, a tall building, an internet... Please although internet access maybe easy to get your hands around, accessible technology that the educated can support and widely available, it really is way behind other issues that need to be fixed. Most countries need better laws, courts, banks not IT infrastructure.

    Well at least Cisco and HP are branching into new market and away from the saturated ones.