By NKURUNZIZA Jean Paul

BCTN, under the support from CTA held the strategic plan workshop. It was at “Centre Communautaire de Bujumbura” from 25 to 27th January 2010. The workshop was also an opportunity for us to advertise the existence of B.C.T.N in Burundi.

Burundi Community Telecentre Network was legally registered in Burundi on July 11th 2008 as an non for profit organisation. The main founders were practitioners from BYTC, Digital center of Kiremba and GIHETA CMC owned by DUSHIREHAMWE.
BCTNs’ missiom is “to contribute to the prosperity of rural areas of Burundi through the use of ICT”. This can be achieved by the multiplication of rural telecentres.
The workshop was officially launched by the Director of ICT division at the Ministry of Transport, Posts and Telecommunication of Burundi an attended by 60 participants.
The participants were drawn from various professional horizons from governmental institutions, especially the National Secretariat of ICTs, telecom operators, local governmental structures ( district administrators) Bilateral  cooperation structures ( Belgian Cooperation) and International Development agencies ( UNESCO).

Others are representatives of local NGOs, representatives of other community information access centres ( ADEN project centres), representatives of media ( journalists) and representatives of farmers’ associations from rural areas, etc….
For the first day, (after the official launch) as the word “Telecentre” was unfamiliar to most of the participants, several presentations were made allowing participants to understand it. Participants discussed the strategy to be used in order to bring different stakeholders to get involved in the multiplication of telecentre initiatives in Burundi.

On the second day, discussions focused around capacity building for practitioners, content production, community baseline researches and the coordination of the implementation of the action plan.
Finally, the third day was devoted to the confection of BCTN’s strategic plan for the period from 2010 to 2014.
Four strategic axes were agreed on by participants :
Sensitisation for the multiplication of telecentre initiatives in Burundi,
Capacity Building for telecentre practitioners,
Baseline research and content production
Empower the network ( BCTN) to so that it can be a platform of exchange for efficiency of telecentres.
This first workshop will be followed by a one-day validation workshop to be held in 30 days.  
Before the validation workshop, the consultant and the B.C.T.N ‘s team are expected to fine tuning the plan of action that came from the first workshop

Nkurunziza  is Chairman of BCTN