It is 7:00 oclock in the evening, and students at the University of Development Studies (UDS) Ghana, Navrongo campus are gathered in their various common rooms. All eyes are transfixed on a box, an electronic box: the television. They are watching Ghana Television News at Seven, the only source of up-to-date information for an information thirsty university.
The University of Development Studies is the fifth state university in Ghana. Built on a multi campus system, the university is scattered across the three northern regions of Ghana: Upper East, Upper West and the Northern region. Plans are advanced to extend the university to the fourth region, Brong Ahafo. The Navrongo Campus in the Upper East region is unique in many ways. The campus is home to the mathematics and computer science departments of the university and is the centre of the Faculty of Applied Sciences. With a student population of about 600 students, UDS Navrongo is a small campus, sited some 740km from Accra, Ghanas capital city. UDS is part of a government programme of extending University education to the deprived areas of Ghana.
But this experiment in higher education is not without its challenges, especially for the newly created mathematics and computer science department. For a campus with the sciences as its main focus, UDS Navrongo is in serious crisis: the university has a computer lab of about 30 computers with no Internet connection.
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Navrongo is the third biggest town in the Upper East region of Ghana after Bolgatanga and Bawku. The town enjoys electricity supply, water and telephony access. The only radio station that serves the whole region is URA Radio 87.9 FM; Ghana Television is the only source of television. There are no cyber cafes in Navrongo; the nearest is 18 miles away in Bolgatanga.
So for students of UDS Navrongo, access to timely information is a major challenge. Whilst other universities down south have two or more Internet cafes scattered around their campuses, and many more within walking distances from their universities, UDS Navrongo students have none. There are only two points of Internet access in Navrongo: Navrongo Health Research Centre and the Catholic Secretariat, both of which are wholly owned and used by their respective institution.
For Haruna Yakubu, a second-year mathematics student of UDS who comes from Tamale, the 18 mile journey to Bolgatanga to visit a cyber cafe is a big enough disincentive for him to not use the Internet. I know how to use the internet and I do so when am in Tamale (the more developed regional capital of northern region), but its too expensive to go all the way to Bolga to use the internet at a cost of 500 cedis (USD$3) per minute, he says. In compaison, cyber cafes in Accra, the more developed and sophisticated capital of Ghana, charge one dollar per minute.
Surprisingly Yakubu is now taking the Introduction into Computer Science course, as he claims he does not know how to use the computer apart from using it for Internet access. Though Yakubu is in his second year and is hoping to pursue mathematics and computer science as his major, only now is he being introduced to MS Word.
We the students are desperate for an Internet cafe on campus, but both the Student Representative Council (SRC) and the school authorities keep giving us empty promises, he adds. We have even suggested that the university should charge a extra fee to our usual fees in order to have a cyber cafe on campus, but still nothing seems to be happening.
But the Students Representative Councils secretary, Salifu Shiraz, says plans are under way to bring Internet access to the university. The challenge , he says, is we keep meeting a lot of dead ends. He adds, Our studies are impacted a lot because of the absence of fast information mediums.
In an attempt to meet the students demands for on-campus Internet access. The SRC decided to invest in Digital Satellite Television (DSTV), which they were told could be used for both Internet access and for TV. Shiraz comments that after the investment in one dish, they have not been able to connect to the Internet yet. Meanwhile, it is not being used for television either, because of a controversy over which of the two halls in the university should benefit from its use.
We only have access to URA radio and GTV, Shiraz says. Both stations are government owned as such we do not sometimes have the true picture of happenings in the country.
In Navrongo, the national newspapers arrive a day late. Yakubu puts it succinctly when he says, For us here we are usually a day behind in the news.
In an attempt to meet the students desperate need for information, the SRC embarked on an effort to launch a campus community radio station. We found a consultant who advised us on the equipments to purchase but until this date we still have not been able to find the initial 25 million cedis ($2800) that was required to set up the station, Shiraz laments.
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So where is the university administration in all this?
Mr. V.D. Kunkpeh, the assistant registrar of UDS Navrongo, says the challenges are daunting. We spend 20 to 30 percent of our work time traveling to the two other campuses in WA and Tamale just to exchange information, he explains.
He describes the poor conditions under which the universitys lecturers involved in research are reduced to using only CD-ROMs as the main sources of accessing information. You know this is not good enough, he adds.
Whilst promises have been made to network all three UDS campuses, that promise is taking forever to deliver. When we suggested they set up an Internet connection for this campus just to start with, the central administration objected on the grounds that a central network will eventually come into operation, Kunkpeh says. Until then, Kunkpeh and the members of the university community will continue to make those long journeys just to find or exchange rudimentary information.
Surprisingly, quite a number of students in UDS Navrongo are very savvy with information and communications technology. They say they are being left behind in this fast growing information age. But their enthusiasm lives on, for until Internet access reaches Navrongo, they have no choice but to make the expensive trip to Bolgatanga to use the Internet. And they still cry for the day they will have a choice in a radio or TV stations.
Kofi Mangesi (kofi@ginks.org) is coordinator of the Ghana Information Network for Knowledge Sharing (GINKS) in Accra, Ghana.
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