Business Plan Development Workshop for members of Tanzania Telecentres Network

Business Plan Development Workshop for members of Tanzania Telecentres Network
From 26th of October to 2nd Of November, 2009

Introduction
As part to IICD's planned Capacity Building activities for it's partners, the idea of developing the entrepreneurial skills and knowledge of has been discussed and implemented in a number of workshops and other occasions. Earlier in the year in August, there was a successful Business Plan Development workshop for staff and management of the ten (10) supported CICs in Northern Ghana.
From the 26th of October to the 2nd Of November, it was the turn of the national Telecentre Network in Tanzania, TTN.

Participation, Content and Observations
With representation from 18 telecentres across Tanzania, the 5 day event at the Crop Marketing and Research Bureau (CROMABU) in Magu, Mwanza sought to ensure that all participants would develop their own Business Plans/Proposals by the end of the period.
Deliberately organised and executed in an informal manner, the five days of brainstorming and fun veered from the conventional way of building capacity on entrepreneurship and business plan development in that it was a practical hands on training through out the period. Miep Lenoir, Knowledge Sharing Officer, and Bernadette Huizinga, Capacity Development Officer were the lead organisers with Coordination from CROMABU, the hosts.
True to the initial objectives, at the end of the workshop every participant had developed a final draft of a personalised business plan and demonstrated a good understanding of the various segments of a business plan. Participants further went on to do a SWOT analysis of the the national network, TTN, to which they belong.

For a Ghanaian trainer who had conducted a similar training on the same topic to a Ghanaian audience a few months earlier, this was an opportunity to learn a few things on inter-cultural domains.



Very noticeable in the plans of the participants was the ambition of the Tanzanian telecentres of owning an FM Station by virtually every telecentre. They considered more, the information needs of the immediate society and how they (telecentres) could offer these services for free or at highly subsidised rates. This was markedly different from the Ghanaian CIC managers' plans. None of the ten (10) participating CICs in Ghana indicated plans of owning an FM Station. They concentrated more on equipment such as Video cameras and photocopiers – equipment that had the potential of raising immediate income for the CIC. Is this observation perhaps linked to Ghana's switch from socialism much earlier than Tanzania's?
Julius Nyerere (the first present of Tanzania – socialist) left the political scene in the 1990s, his party is still in power and so the socialist ideas are still stronger. In Ghana, socialism was overthrown with Kwame Nkrumah in the 1960s, his party no longer in power.
Noticeable also is the fact that although both telecentre groups have founding roots in government funding, the Tanzanian telecentres still enjoy tremendous government support.
At the end of it all, it was clearly visible how telecentre managers who are relatively underpaid are struggling their best to run their telecentres. Job satisfaction seems to stem from the fact that the telecentre managers see themselves as their own bosses with a substantial amount of room to operate with little need for instructions from above. This is true for both Ghanaian and Tanzanian managers.



Possible relevant ideas for Ghanaian telecentres
Not directly linked to the training; it was easy to notice the use of xerophytic plants in the desert like Mwanza for greening the land. It will be interesting to see how the CICs in Ghana can generate relevant content to encourage farmers and other community members to use plants to battle the growth of the Sahara Desert.
The visit to the CROMABU beneficiary community where women are making strides in their livelihoods through improved poultry breeding due to access to information from CROMABU is also worth trying in Ghana.
The Navrongo CIC already has a similar programme with rural women. The Navrongo CIC can adopt some of the modes of communicating information from the telecentre to the beneficiary women. For example, the Navrongo CIC can of the use of notice boards in centralised locations in the beneficiary communities to provide relevant information.

Final Thoughts
On the whole however, the idea of empowering telecentres in partner countries by IICD is a very laudable one and must be encouraged. All efforts should be put into sustaining this initiative and especially to encourage knowledge sharing at the local level or beneficiary level.