Training started, but yet no internet access

This is a first posting from an internet training course for lecturers of journalism and library and information services at Tumaini University Dar es Salaam College (TUDARCO) in Tanzania. The training will run for this week here at the Kinondoni Campus of the college. We’re altogether twelve people in a computer class, seven lecturers from the Department of journalism and mass communications, four from the Department of library and information services, and myself, journalist from YLE Radio Finland and the facilitator of the course.

The course is funded by the VIKES Foundation from Finland (The Finnish Foundation for Media, Communication and Development), an international solidarity organization of the Union of Journalists and other journalists associations in Finland.

Some of the participants I know already from years back as students at Tumaini University in Iringa, where I have had the opportunity to teach them internet courses and digital media. After graduating from Iringa, three former journalism students have joined the journalism staff here at Tumaini in Dar es Salaam.

Today has been more like an introduction to the topics. While writing this, we have yet no internet access at all, but it’s promised to be available in the morning, when we are planning to launch our blogs and this commentary is to be published.

Because the lack of the network, the programme today has also been a bit improvised, focusing on some more theoretical issues which don’t necessarily need the internet access. We have seen statistics of internet use in different parts of the world and discussed why Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda have multiplied the number of internet users in the last years, but Tanzania not. The language question was given as one reason, English being a lingua franca of the other countries mentioned, whereas in Tanzania the main language is Kiswahili.

In the afternoon, after a break for snacks and sodas, I gave a brief introduction to the history of the internet and explained a bit about different technologies using the internet. In addition to websites and emails, you can today do instant messaging, streaming media, and voice telephone. By using a VPN connection (standing for Virtual Private Network), you can remotely access all your office files even while on a business trip on the other side of the world.