Hi Sue, the main thing is to identify the bandwidth and processing power available to the users in Ethiopia - not only what speed an individual user connects at (56kbs, 36kbs, etc.) but also what total bandwidth is available between the individual users and the internet backbone - depending on the region the connection to the backbone may limit the number of connections that can be made at 56k.
The other thing to find out is what is the processing power available to the lap tops -
AJAX/
javascript heavy features require more processing power on the end-users computers.
The best way to start a project like this is to test the courses you would like to deliver with users in Ethiopia ahead of time, test with a number of users from Ethiopia logged on, to see if there are any issues. Use traceroute to see if there are an slow points in the connection between Ethiopia and Vancouver during this test. Test the courses on an equivalent power laptop - ideally the same model, while building the courses to identify potential issues ahead of time.
The testing should identify if there are major issues with your expected use of the system, and then you can address these issues - using a lightweight theme, disabling AJAX, course design (for instance using a content module like
Lesson, Book or Flexpage to reduce the amount of content on the initial course page, etc.) are solutions that may come out of your testing.
By the way, we're doing a great deal of work with Cisco Systems now at Moodlerooms, for delivering rich media courses to low bandwidth environments. One of the solutions we're working on here is to integrate Moodle with
Cisco's ACNS system; the main thing with this project is to place the bandwidth heavy content like audio, video, and flash on a WAE on the local network, and thus reduce the amount of external bandwidth required. Let me know if you would like more information about this project.