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ship of the school IT infrastructure while reducing significantly
the implementation cost. Local staff were hired, maintaining
the gender balance to cater to the underrepresented female
segment of the local society and to help empower women in
Siwa. School principals, teachers and students started to get
exposed to high-speed Internet and to advanced educational
digital content introduced into the oasis for the first time
through the project.
The project also applied different methods to reduce the cost
of introducing ICT in education. Open source software and
innovative hardware solutions were used, including the ‘4-for-
1’ computer model, where four students share the same CPU
with separate monitors, keyboards and mice.
The Community Development Portal and the Community
Knowledge Generation and e-Library (CKGeL) project witnessed
a huge influx of content from the community. Communities
started to mobilize in exploring new opportunities for socioe-
conomic development. Teachers, students and other community
members such as farmers, traders and youth are developing an
understanding of how to use ICT resources to respond to their
immediate needs, such as date and olive exports, attracting
tourism, combating environmental pollution, and document-
ing cultural and natural heritage. Technology is now considered
more accessible and relevant to the day-to-day life of local
communities in Siwa.
Another project of the Egypt trust fund, ICT for Basic Literacy,
was deployed in Siwa. Illiteracy eradication classes were
conducted in the schools. In addition, when the issue of extend-
ing the outreach to local women was raised with local leaders,
they suggested that a separate women’s working group,
conducted by a trusted female community development expert,
be organized in a private home. The project management devel-
oped ways to adapt the in-home training facilities to local
customs and house organization.
Most of the women were interested to learn more about
computers, as it would help improve their economic status,
and their awareness of information on subjects of interest, such
as the raising of children. Several initiatives of the Egypt ICT
Trust Fund have been integrated in Siwa to provide a holistic
and people-centred approach to the introduction of ICT for
development. Such an approach is necessary to help commu-
nities understand and appreciate the potential and possibilities
that ICT, and new technology in general, offers. The imple-
mentation approaches adopted also overcame hurdles of local
culture to empower women. These initiatives also go hand in
hand with those of the Ministry of Communications and
Information Technology in Egypt, among which are broadband
access, free Internet, IT clubs, and the goal of having a PC in
every home.
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Beautiful Siwa
A view of Siwa
Palms in Siwa