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About

How It Started: The Open Digital Village concept was developed & concieved by OVF Co-founder & OVF Ghana Country Director Kafui Prebbie. Several years ago he began to realize the trend emerging towards wireless technologies and saw that the notion of a digital village or telecentre was changing because of this. Recent collaborations with wireless innovators like World Summits for Free Information Infrastructures (WSFII) and Green WiFI, Muni Wireless, Meraki and many others have only reinforced the process. Most recently Kafui & OVF Founder Joy Tang’s participation at the AirJaldi Summit further moved things towards the planning for the establishement of the first Open Digital Village in Winneba Ghana.

Founding Partners: Open Digital Villages are a project initiated by oneVIllage Foundation along with its key partner, the International Free & Open Source Software Foundation (iFOSSF), University of Education Winneba Ghana (UEW), Wireless Ghana, a umbrella group called the World Summits for Free Information Infrastructures and Commonwealth of Learning.

What ODiVs Do: ODiVs are designed as an R&D focused projects that will move towards financial self-sustainability by building its research programs around the formation of commercially successful businesses such as for example a cybercafe / printshop. The need make ODiVs self-funding will be balanced with the need to provide services to these commmunities. Under this model, the primary source of revenue will be cyber café, consulting and business development and incubation services. Centers will be designed to incorporate best practices not only from the ICT4D movement but also the sustainable development movement as well. The eventual goal is to make these centers as showcases for integrated development approach that includes all relevant disruptive technologies needed for community empowerment, thus we use the term ICT for EcoLiving.