Future directions

Moving forward in the coming years (2010 - 2012) the project will continue building and focusing on community-oriented applications for deployment in the rural and marginalized areas. Having developed futher distinct eServices, the project will focus on re-engineering and extending the platform into a ubiquitous, user-driven community ICT service platform.

The key components of the project will be:

• implementing a middleware that facilitates heterogeneity , in terms of individual services, communication protocols, resource sharing and reuse on the platform as well as interoperability between service components;
• improving the mobility offering through fixed-mobile integration;
• developing further user-driven, user-centric eServices that leverage both the already deployed computing infrastructure and the available mobile devices in the rural communities in order to develop further eServices.

The project will also aim to develop and increase the human capacity in the field of ICT in general and ICTD (ICT for Development) in particular, to support the development and deployment of ICT systems in rural and marginalized communities which need them, moving this type of intervention onto a more solid, sound commercial footing. Rural and marginalized communities are typically excluded from the global knowledge economy but are seen as a growing and important emergent market in developing countries such as South Africa.