An Effort Started Well
Adding another gold star to an effort started well, can mean quite a lot to a community especially if a substantial amount of the community’s livelihood is linked to it. In the context of Afghanistan, none other fits the scenario better than Roshan Telecom. Although it is a far-off comparison, Roshan Telecom’s hinged support in transforming the ICT Industry of Afghanistan can be equated with Finland’s Nokia. As covered in our previous posts, the many achievements of Roshan Telecom that have truly made it a success story include:
- The largest rate of market penetration covering 6 million customers. Held jointly by The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED), Monaco Telecom International (MTI) and TeliaSonera, Roshan Telecom has invested an amount exceeding $550 million in Afghanistan’s network infrastructure extending high speed data services to 60% of Afghanistan’s population;
- It is the only telecom company based out of Afghanistan, offering customized data packages to the different market segments;
- Driving ICT-led innovation, Roshan Telecom was the creator of mobile money market in Afghanistan with the introduction of M-Paisa in 2008 in partnership with Vodafone. It was the second country in the world to partner with Vodafone towards expansion of mobile money.
- Facilitating the 97% of the Afghanistan’s unbanked; Roshan Telecom took the facility international in March 2012. In collaboration with Western Union, Roshan opened ways for international money transfers into the mobile accounts of Afghans, connecting these with the ones residing outside the country.
An effort that needs to be lauded above all, is the activity-level maintained by the Corporate Social Responsibility wing of Roshan Telecom, also known as Roshan Social Programs. Enabled by Roshan Social Programs for internet connectivity, One-Laptop-Per-Child (OLPC) Project Afghanistan was brought to the country in 2008. Initiated by the USAID/Afghanistan Small and Medium Enterprise Development, XO laptops were distributed to schools under the OLPC Project, programmed in Dari and Pashto languages by the IT company, Paiwastoon.
A multi-stakeholder driven cause, OLPC Project Afghanistan was truly an offspring of a public-private unison. Distributed by USAID, and enabled by Paiwastoon and Roshan Telecom, the project was backed by Ministry of Education (MoE) and Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) Afghanistan.
With an aim to distribute 5,000 laptops to fourth-to-sixth graders throughout the country when the project was brought to the country, approximately 2000 laptops were distributed to schools in Nangarhar Province and Kabul by 2009. The laptops distributed under the program meant to revolutionize the concept of learning in Afghanistan by providing the students with a browser software, email, and word processing in addition to various other training/education programs all in Dari and Pashto with hardware specifications three times lighter than a normal laptop and an extremely affordable cost structure.
Commenced well, what is a bit difficult to trace is the progress made till date. Whether it is SEETA, OLPC Afghanistan’s official page, or any other technology blog narrating the success of Afghanistan’s ICT Industry within less than a decade, numbers on XO laptops distributed within the country reiterate the deployments made till 2009 and not beyond.
This in particular, rests an interpretation of how successful was the effort indeed, vague when it shouldn’t be. The impetus, with which the project saw daylight in Afghanistan, makes an eventual failure difficult to believe. From the facts on hand from 2009, on an in-the-process transformation of Afghanistan’s educational domain with mobilized support from the largest telecom operator of the country in alliance with other public-private players, appears to be a story larger than of Roshan Telecom itself.
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