kurayako.com reaches Tanzanians of all walks of life
 
2005-09-25 07:34:15
By Simon Kivamwo

	Some of the staff at Infocom Technologies Limited ,From left are Steve Katabarwa, Robert Shija, Dinna David, Juma Akilimali and David Shilatu.

The Tanzanian website industry has recorded another boost following the recent start up of kurayako.com, a gateway with massive potentialities in the sense that it reaches Tanzanians from all walks of life worldwide.

Master-minders of the gateway say kurayako.com is user-friendly and is open for Tanzanians to air their views on the coming General Elections.

David Shillatu, the website coordinator, granted an interview to this columnist on Thursday, from which excerpts follow:

Q: What is kurayako.com all about?

A: Kurayako.com is a special IPP Media website designed for the coverage of the 2005 Tanzania General Elections for Presidential and Parliamentary posts.

Q: How did you arrive at the decision to start kurayako.com?

A: The decision was based on the core role of the media, in the sense that people expect to be informed about all matters pertaining to their wellbeing, the issues of the General Election being amongst them.

This is a fundamental media service as far as development in any country is concerned.

Thus, we therefore decided to come up with this idea, for the purpose of informing wananchi on various issues before the General Elections set for October the 30th.

Q: What are the potentials of kurayako.com?

A: Socially, kurayako.com has massive potentialities in the sense that it reaches Tanzanians from all walks of life worldwide, in the cheapest way.

Being reachable, they are in a position to air their views on the coming General Elections, since the website allows visitors to air their views and in so doing their individual voices are being heard.

Later on, especially if the government agrees to authorize dual citizenship, Tanzanians residing outside the country may be allowed to cast their votes online.

I’m quite sure that by using our current level of science and technology, this will be realised.

Businesswise, kurayako.com is like any other media service.

At the end of the day, we do expect advertisers from within and outside the country to advertise their products and services.

Potential advertisers will discover that this is one of the best ways to advertise their products as it is cost effective and their advertising reaches millions of people worldwide in just a few seconds.

Q: Is it (kurayako.com) going to be a permanent gateway or will it just cease immediately after the general elections come to an end, say next month?

A: Kurayako.com is a permanent project. The website will be there to provide all necessary information concerning elections and other activities thereafter, including any by-elections which follow. kurayako.com also will cater as a platform for the wananchi to air their views concerning the fulfilled and unfulfilled promises made by not only constituency members of Parliament but also by the President to see to it that all those promises which were made during the election processes are perfectly adhered to.

Q: With the existing competition in the online business/activities in Tanzania can you see a bright future for kurayako.com? How is it going to make a difference?

A: kurayako.com is of its own kind. It is the first Tanzanian website that covers all aspects concerning the elections in the country.

Apart from providing news, comments, opinion polls, facts about Tanzania, the website provides a complete fact file of all aspirants for the Presidency .

Q: What do you see as the challenges ahead of you. Is this in any way a risky venture? (kurayako.com)

A: In all initiatives there are challenges. This is normal, and kurayako.com is not an exception to that general rule.

One of our major challenges is on the question of content gathering, despite the fact that our idea is to be objective, and fair to all political parties (we are non partisan).

However, we have found out in the course of this work that some of the Political Parties are not cooperative.

When you reach them for comments, they are reluctant to talk.

This has been a major setback on our side, as you may find that there are some political parties with less information, and facts compared with other parties on the same website.

We also faced difficulties with the National Electoral Commission (NEC), as they have been delaying the release of the names of all the parliamentary candidates from around the country.

NEC is the statutory authority, authorized by Laws of the Land to supervise the country’s electoral process.

They were, in fact, supposed to be cooperative in order to enable people to get accurate information on the general election.

Q: What other online services (gateways) apart from kurayako.com do you offer?

A: Kurayako.com is designed and developed by Infocom Technologies Ltd, an information technology company that offers inter alia, website solutions in the sense that we do design, develop, host and maintain, domain, name, and registration.

We also offer Software development and IT consultancy services.

Apart from kurayako.com, Infocom Technologies also is in the house of the ippmedia.com. Actually, you could call it the ’National’ news website if you like.

With hits averaging from 250,000 per day, ippmedia.com is certainly Tanzania’s leading online news website.

We also have a portal in the name of darhotwire.com with an average of 190,000 hits per day. darhotwire.com is our leading infotainment and education web portal with a major focus on the youth.

gulio.com is another new portal coming your way from Infocom Technologies, which will deliver all the classified materials in the form of advertisements to various institutions here and abroad.

I’m telling you this is the best platform for all serious business men/women who want to keep pace with the wind of change that is blowing so strongly in this era of globalization.

Q: How difficult is it to manage and run online services/businesses in Tanzania?

A: It is a new technology to most of the third world countries, (Tanzania being one of them).

Although the technology is being adopted too slowly , but we hope the technology will soon become familiar to the people of Tanzania.

This is prompted by the fact that the price of internet and its allied services is dropping day by day.
Another problem is purely technical.

That is to say it is related with Internet Service Providers (ISP) who provide band width (internet speed) fairly slowly, compared with the developed world.

As a result, our visitors/clients keep on blaming us, though we strongly believe that this kind of problem will soon become history.

Q: What is your personal role in kurayako.com?
A: I’m the coordinator of the project. My major role is to see to it that the website is running effectively, and in so doing, make kurayako.com a reliable source of information concerning the election in the country, and I’m telling you, so far the response from members of the public has been phenomenal .

Q: What is the organizational secret behind kurayako.com’s apparently speedy, and successful take off ?

A: I can tell you, kurayako.com depends on team work, a lot of people have been involved and are still involved in the process of making kurayako.com a success.

It is a joint effort involving all the IPP media channels.

It took off as KEROYANGU, where we jointly collected problems facing Tanzanians in the country, region-wise.

Thereafter, this was followed by a programme on ITV, KEROYANGU, aired every Tuesday and Friday that goes mutatis mutandis with a weekly supplement in Nipashe Newspaper.

Soon, a special segment will be introduced in East Africa Radio and Radio One, where we expect updates and feedback from the website to be aired on those two channels.

We expect various aspirants and their political parties to respond to those feedbacks and updates.

• SOURCE: Sunday Observer