Potraz Equips Zimbabweans With Digital Literacy

Digital literacy comprises the knowledge and skills, required to use digital devices smartphones, tablets, laptops etc for communication. To boost digital literacy in the country, Postal and Telecommunications Regulator of Zimbabwe (Potraz) has taken the roll to impart related skills in the binary language.

Digital literacy is on the rise in Zimbabwe, thanks to proactive government policies. With the internet shouldering more of the global economy as well as education, agriculture, healthcare, and government services the world’s unconnected are being left further and further behind. And Potraz is feeling that void.

Potraz director general Gift Machengete said Potraz has trained over 8 000 people in information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the last six months.

Students undergoing training at Chinhoyi CIC

He said evidence from other countries show that ICTs can contribute immensely to the national gross domestic product and the ICT sector, acting as an enabler, can result in the improved market competitiveness of a nation’s products and services.

The program is light on technical curriculum and heavy on customer service training. The great promise of internet inclusion from a development standpoint lies in empowering the newly connected to leverage the internet to create, think, and do in their own contexts, and to help accelerate their economic growth and well-being.

“Our mandate is to take ICTs to the people as everything in today’s world resonates around the evolving information technology sector,” he told journalists during a tour of the Community Information Centre in Chinhoyi on Saturday.

Potraz has managed to train 8 114 people across the country, and 800 people in Chinhoyi w having been trained here in Chinhoyi.

The regulator has to date unveiled more than 80 centers, where people can have access to the internet and get free training.

The modern printing press has existed since about 1440, and we still have not cracked universal literacy. Surely, we can move more quickly on digital literacy to ensure the expansion potential of today’s internet inclusion movement is not wasted.