Village Phones in Uganda

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2004-2-1

This is Robert Cohen with the VOA Special English Development
Report.

A program in Uganda aims to provide telephone service to villages
away from cities. Nineteen million people live in these communities.
The goal is to provide service to a large part of them within five
years.

The Grameen Foundation USA organized the program with MTN Uganda.
That is the largest provider of telecommunications service in the
country. The program is called "MTN villagePhone."

Organizers have already given
cellular telephones to more than one-hundred people throughout
Uganda. The people are called micro-entrepreneurs. They will charge
other people to use the mobile phones. The organizers say they hope
to train as many as three-thousand village telephone operators over
the next three years.

Five Ugandan groups provided small loans to pay for the
equipment. The operators are expected to repay the loans over a
period of up to twelve months. Such loans are known as
micro-finance. Most micro-finance groups charge interest. But they
often use their earnings to reach more people.

The Grameen Foundation says operating the pay phone service will
permit thousands of women to earn extra money for their families. It
will also save business people and villagers money and time. The
organizers estimate that a call that costs ten cents could save a
person about one dollar in lost wages or business.

This is how much it would cost the person to take a day to travel
to the nearest city to place the call. The phones could also help
save lives. Villagers will be able to call for help in case of an
emergency.

The project in Uganda is based on a program that the Grameen
Foundation established in Bangladesh. The Grameen Telecom program
began six years ago. Officials say it has permitted forty-thousand
village operators to sell phone time to local citizens. Operators
are said to earn about seven-hundred dollars a year. This is about
two times the national average for wages in Bangladesh.

Ugandan officials say the village phone program will help connect
farming villages to the world's information economy. They see the
program as a step toward building support for private investment in
developing countries. They say it is another way to reduce poverty
and improve the lives of people.

This VOA Special English Development Report was written by Jill
Moss. This is Bob Cohen.