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Abstract
Rural areas in the country lag behind with regard to ICT access and in terms of economic development, such as literacy, computer skills and higher income.To understand the benefits ordinary South Africans could derive from having increased access to ICT, data from the annual South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS) from 2003 to 2009 was analyzed.The center is carrying out teaching, research and development with an aim to build ICT-based systems and methodologies to accelerate Indian agriculture and rural development. The faculty is involved in imparting knowledge regarding sustainable agricultural production systems and environmental issues so that students can carry out research in the area of societal development by extending development in ICTs. An analysis of selected other media showed that access to the various types of media were lower in rural areas compared to urban areas. An important factor in this respect was rural access to the electricity grid, which grew notably from approximately 51% in 2003 to 78% in 2009. From the survey it was clear that the rural population made less use of the internet than city dwellers. While the internet was mainly used for information purposes in urban areas in 2003 and 2004, interestingly, in 2005 it was mainly used for entertainment.