Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Why there are more internet users in Kenya

The training participants have been posting their texts about their thoughts and reactions on the issues we covered yesterday.

Eleuter Mbilinyi, subeditor of The African, lists many of yesterday’s topics and says that he was delighted to learn about the statistics of internet usage in different countries and also about the most visited websites today globally, and in Tanzania in particular. He goes on to say that he was also impressed to hear about the history of the internet, as well as about some problems associated with the web, such as the digital divide, plagiarism, or IT security.

Bestina Magutu from TBC was happy to learn the different definitions of the internet and the World Wide Web. While the internet is a collection of interconnected physical and also wireless infrastructure of computer networks, the World Wide Web is the interconnected content which you can access by using the internet. “Many people use the two words interchangeably”, she writes, “probably because they are closely interrelated in the sense that the internet acts as a key bridge through which most of us can access the WWW contents.”

Rose Haji from the UN Women Tanzania and the IPS News Kiswahili section is writing about the statistics of internet users in different world regions and countries. She says that language breakdown is the main reason why Tanzania is lagging behind neighbouring Kenya in the use of internet. “The Google website has been translated into Kiswahili, but most citizens cannot afford to use it due to computer illiteracy”, she says. Computer skills are being taught in schools, yes, but teachers are usually not well trained and in most schools there is no access to computers. Most of the teaching is therefore done in theory only, with no practice.

Njonjo Mfaume, journalism lecturer from the University of Dar es Salaam School of Journalism and Mass Communications, writes about the discussion in class about the difficulties caused by the planned transformation from analogue to digital TV broadcasting in Tanzania. The truth is that most of the local TV audience don’t yet know the benefits or challenges and how they could prepare themselves to the coming change. The director of the government communications authority yesterday said that the TV broadcasts should be fully digital by the end of this year.

No comments:

Post a Comment