Digital Community Hub and Telecentres
The Ilembe District Growth and Development Summit identified ICT as one of the areas that the District has a competitive advantages in. This is due to the location of iLembe and the urban/rural structure of its economy. ICT will be a catalyst to business development in particular in the area of SMME development. Recognising that SMMEs are a key to economic development and job creation the Municipality saw it fit that specific interventions aimed at responding to the needs of existing and aspiring entrepreneurs are developed.
Based on the above the establishment of ICT Hubs will facilitate economic activities by providing content programmes that target the small business, youth and the community at large through exploiting ICT as a means of providing support to local economic development programmes in the area as well as enhancing service delivery of the municipality.
The ICT Hub project aims to attract investment and critical support programmes for growth through small business support and advisory for the area. The rural nature of the municipality’s area of jurisdiction is at the core of the rationale for establishing an ICT Hub to ensure that communities in the local municipality rightfully gain access to ICTs as a result of the ICT Hub proposed content programmes and activities, as well as promote economic activity through addressing unemployment levels, skills development, access to ICTs within the context of the knowledge economy and public service delivery to communities.
This opportunity is essential aimed at capitalising on ICT in order to develop new SMMEs and capacitate the existing ones. This would be achieved by providing among other things the following:
- Combination of technologies offering various ICT services solutions
- Advanced ICT facilities to provide human capacity building.
- Applications such as e-government services
- Business advisory services, i.e. product development and marketing, business plan development, access to finance, business management skills, government tendering processes and tender bulletins
- Access to business finance institutions, i.e. Ithala Bank and other commercial banks.
- National Youth Development Agency(NYDA), DTI institutions etc.
- Basic ICT services i.e. internet, photocopying, fax, phones, typing and printing
- Skills development (particularly entrepreneurship) linked to government initiatives such as JIPSA and the Department of Labour initiatives