By Spy Uganda
In a bid to boost access to technology for all Ugandans, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) is partnering with Uganda Institute of Information and Communication Technology (UICT) to train digital skilling community instructors who will, in turn, impart digital skills among local communities in Uganda.
Through the commission’s Rural Communication Development Fund (RCDF), the project aims to harness ICT enabled opportunities for social and economic transformation.
Additionally, the fund aims to facilitate universal access to high capacity broadband for all Ugandans through targeted interventions that address barriers such as location, physical inability, gender and cost.
Rural Communication Development Fund has in the past relied on schools with computer laboratory infrastructure as a platform to provide digital literacy skills to the communities around these schools, which has gone a long way to reduce the digital divide in the country.
The main objective of this training programme is to enable the trainees to become people who can work for ICT facilities or operate their own ICT based business ventures.
To date, over 50,000 people in communities across the country have been skilled. In the past, the training was conducted through physical presence but with the advent of COVID-19 and thus the need to observe social distancing, a new model is being sought to enable the continuation of digital literacy skilling amongst the local communities in Uganda.
With digital skills becoming more and more important in the labour market and in everyday life today and in the foreseeable future, it is no longer optional to be digital literate.
To realise the objectives of the community digital skilling initiative, UCC is collaborating with UICT whereby training is to be conducted based on an online transmission model. Online video conferencing technology will be utilised, involving UICT instructors who are to disseminate content to participants in different training locations.
