centre in Zvimba, POTRAZ Director-General Gift Machengete said: “We have been leaving behind older persons as we focused more on other groups but now I am happy as Potraz we have programs which are meant to capacitate the older persons to be able to use technology available to them”24. In line with these policies, the government, through POTRAZ and funded through the Universal Service Fund (USF), partnered with its parent Ministry of Information Communication Technology, Postal and Courier Services, as well as the main Postal Service Operator (ZimPost), to implement the pilot programme to install 210 Information Communication Technology Centres across the country in 201625. As of January 2020, POTRAZ claims to have established 170 CICs or Containerised Village Information Centres (CVICs)26 The acceleration and commitment to CICs in Zimbabwe was a response to one of the key strategies of the Geneva Action Plan, which Heads of States agreed and signed during the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in December 2003, promising to connect villages with ICTs and community access points. The CICs seek to aid communities in accessing e-government services and information. In 2016 ZimPost became a partner in the CICs project as POTRAZ sought to leverage on the already existing underutilised post office infrastructure27. 3.0 FINDINGS FROM THE STUDY 3.1 Majority of users of the CICs are youths Of the 247 respondents, the majority were between 30 - 39 years old constituting 34 % and the 20 – 29-year age group at 33%, was the second highest. Those below 20 years were 22% as shown in the chart below. This shows that the majority of CICs users are the youth. In line with the needs of the youth many respondents highlighted that they rely on CICs mainly for the purposes of research and education. Figure 1: Age of respondents N=247 24 25 26 27 6 The NewsDay, 21 May, 2022. ICT ministry commissions community information centres Available at: https://www.newsday.co.zw/2022/05/ict-ministry-commissions-communityinformation-centres. (Accessed on 20 October 2022) POTRAZ (2017), Zimbabwe. www.potraz.co.zw The Sunday Mail. (2020). Government Bridges the Rural-Urban Divide...146 Community Information Centres Nationwide Digital Gap. Available at: https://www.sundaymail.co.zw/govt-bridges-rural-urban-digital-divide-146-community-information-centres-established-countrywide Zimpost, 2016 MISA Zimbabwe • The State of Access and Use of Community Information Centres (CICs) in Zimbabwe