Interview with Mohamed Habib Niasse, Secretairy General of the National Association of Rural Councils and President of the rural Commune of TAÏBA NIASSENE, a project training site 250 km from Dakar
Monsieur Moustapha Sarr Ndiaye (Technical director of the ICT Project):
Good day Monsieur Niasse. How do you feel about the way this project is going in your LGU? How do you judge this ICT project and its impacts in Taiba Niassene?
Monsieur Mohamed Habib Niasse:
The arrival of this project at Taiba Niassene has been a real opportunity for our population. The project fills a need which has already been latent for a certain time, and above all it corresponds to the felt needs of the population. You know, we talk about the digital divide as a North-South problem, but this divide also exists internally. The North-South divide is nothing compared to the differences we experience in our country between urban and rural areas. Therefore, we need first to correct this divide at the internal level. Alarming, preoccupying inequalities exist between the cities and the countryside, and eliminating this gap should be our priority. From this point of view, the Project comes at an opportune moment.
The fact is that in our LGU both all of the participants in the program, from the members of the local digital solidarity committee to the least educated participants, are equally crazed with the computers and committed to the project. And enrollment has been massive at every level of the population. Participants attend regularly and in spite of small problems, nothing has inteferred with our people’s enthusiasm and our need to satisfy their demands.
Monsieur Moustapha Sarr Ndiaye (Technical director of the ICT Project):
How do you envisage the future of this project in Taiba Niassene?
Monsieur Niasse: Up till now we have been focused on French-speaking learners. But we have noted since the beginning of the project that many illiterate persons also wanted to learn to use the computer. And with this project, we understand that we have the possibility of teaching them to use the computer in the Wolof language. This is another need we will have to satisfy which concerns a large swath of the population. We have very strong expections for computer literacy in Wolof in Taiba Niassene.
M. Ndiaye: In fact we currently are training trainers to deliver the program in Wolof, and we hope to be able to provide you with this training in future.