By Vanessa Malila

The SANGONeT ICTs for Civil Society conference comes to a close today and what is striking about the discussions taking place is that having jumped into ICT4D-type projects, civil society are now thinking about the real challenges facing the communities they are serving.

The papers presented at this morning's session (you can see the full programme on the SANGONeT website: http://www.sangonet.org.za/conference2006) were a real eye opener! They pointed to some of the challenges of providing access to ICTs to urban and rural under-serviced communities and many of the day to day issues that these communities face. How many of us think about issues such as whether telecentres or other ICT access points have toilets within walking range? Not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about providing access to people without, but definitely an issue for those people. Another very real issue is what time these telecentres or access points are open. Many close at 5pm, so when are employed community members supposed to have access?

We speak so often about challenges like the lack of infrastructure or the cost of providing services, but providing REAL access means considering a range of very real issues such as social networks, political affiliation, education, training, and the relevance of content available to community members.

I leave this conference with a sense that civil society is starting to get this, they are starting to see the big picture and now have to figure out how to work around these challenges to help the communities they work with. Civil society organisations and NGOs (even government) take ownership of the 'projects' they work in or with, but how often do they give communities that sense of ownership and the sense that they are really thinking about them and their needs when they provide a service. Perhaps not as much as they should, but the encouraging thing is that they are starting to.