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On 14 February 2023, with a simple notice on the wall at our kiosks, we slightly opened up the access to internet to the rural communities around Domwe trading center and from M’dala village in Blantyre district.

And none of them visited, including the agents themselves. This was a test.

We learnt that putting a simple notice without attachment of insights or names of popular NGOs is less likely to make “internet” attractive to the rural people.

We now have the assumption that the rural people might either truly find it necessary to use internet after exposure to insights or falsely feel urged to use the internet when some big names are attached.

Why?

In most cases, some could be attracted with the notice, but once they learn it’s a private kiosk, they turned back and say, “ah, ndimaona ngati ndi za mabungwe.” (“I thought it’s from NGOs”).

At one time, one woman asked, “so after learning a [agricultural] lesson from your internet, when will we receive the inputs?“. When the agent said there’s nothing like that, she told him that then it’s not worth it.

In other two cases, another married woman and a young female secondary school student also made similar sentiments.

But all this was expected. This has been already pointed out and it is essence of our existence – to fix that;

• what people need often misalign with what they desire or expect.

• people may need change, but are rarely ready to.

We already have a number of strategies in place. As we prepare to roll out a few of the available strategies, here’s what has happened;

• A little more links have been added under agricultural and healthy sectors.
• A single personal internet visit was registered – for testing purposes.
• A new critical category of the internet and tech centers visitors was registered – seeking market for their newly harvested maize, providing an opportunity to capture indepth info about food security and farm incomes strategies
• With little incentives, the village leaders and development committees “somehow” “naturally” accepted the invitation to “sign in” on the Village Internet, to build their village profile and shared some current social-economic development affairs – becoming the leading Village Internet users.
• About 8 social-economic cases under agricultural, healthy, safety/wellbeing and transport sectors have been recorded.
• Most interestingly,
  • One local agent has mobilized a local community initiative which has been backed up by the village headman and member of parliament – an outcome that was thought would not be possible.
  • A village civil protection committee leader has made a “natural” request for a support over early childhood education.

Visit the data pages to track the villages’ recovery and coping strategies.