João Caholo stressed this desire whilst speaking during the opening ceremony of the SADC meeting of the telecommunication ministers, and justified it with the fact that SADC successfully started a process of implementing efficient legal and guiding frameworks, as well as predictable policies characterised by confidence in the market.

He also defended that the region registered a high competitive level, regular investments and sustainable growth of the sector of Telecommunication and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).

On the other hand, and in face of the challenged resulting from the dynamic observed in terms of technological development, SADC’s assistant executive secretary stressed the essential need for investors of this sector to obtain returns from investments before overcoming the technology.

The source said that SADC needs to take advantage from the convergence of platforms of information and communication technologies, taking into account the experiences recorded in the technological industry.

According to João Caholo, these convergences quickly increased the region’s capacity to use a unique communication network to provide several integrated services through a unique one stop shop.

In this 26th meeting, the ministers of Telecommunication and Information and Communication Technology of SADC are discussing issues relating to internal and regional roaming services in the community, the evaluation study of the regulating impact, the guidelines for the defence of consumers and their rights in the field of ICTs and the implementation plan of migration for digital television in the region.

Source:   www.portalangop.co.ao
Photo: www.zambianwatchdog.com

Not only would the MeerKAT project’s success secure South Africa’s position at the forefront of the bidding for SKA, it would enable the global scientific community to look back through time to galaxies created not long after the Big Bang.

The MeerKAT success is seen as a major boost for South Africa’s scientific ambition. By proving the accuracy of the Karoo antennae, the South Africans have demonstrated they are ready to star gaze anywhere in the universe. The MeerKAT images were produced by combining data from four large radio antennae – MeerKAT has seven in total and will eventually have 80 – which were aimed at the Centaurus A galaxy 14-million light years away.

The galaxy, which has a black hole at its centre, is normally obscured by a lane of dust and gas. “The data were recorded to a computer disk and processed with advanced software to produce an image of a jet being ejected from the black hole at the core of this amazing galaxy,” the team said in a statement.

The head of the South African team, Dr Bernie Fanaroff, said: “This shows that we are well on track with the development of our SKA site, and the development of the systems and understanding required to build and operate advanced scientific instruments such as MeerKAT and the SKA. We have a world-class team and we are proud of them.”

The Centaurus images were also proof that the South African site was “radio quiet” or relatively free of “interfering” radio signals from satellites, cellphones and TV antennae, according to MeerKAT science processing sub-system manager Dr Jasper Horrell. “In this particular observation we didn’t do any editing out of radio noise. The fact that we were able to do that [and still get good images] is a good indication that we have a very good radio-quiet site,” Horrell said.

Source:  timeslive online
Photo by: namibsands.wordpress.com

He noted that the company, which was investing ZAR 5 billion in new network infra- structure this year, “strongly” believed that mobile termination rates (MTRs) in South Africa had to come down.

With a 4.34-score, Tunisia has kept its regional standing, given the fact that the number of the classified countries went up by 12 in relation to the previous edition which counted 122 countries.

The report, an authoritative reference in matters of investment in the ICTs area, conducts its survey on three basic elements, namely the country’s political and economic environment, its technological level and the degree of ICTs utilisation.

In the present report, Tunisia is ahead of such countries like Hungary (41st), Italy (45th), Greece (55th), Romania (58th), Brazil (59th), Turkey (61st) and Poland (69th).

At the African level, Tunisia keeps its leadership and is by far ahead of Egypt (76th), Morocco (86th) and South Africa (52nd).

In the Arab world, Tunisia follows closely three countries: United Arab Emirates (27th), Qatar (29th) and Bahrain (37th). By sections, Tunisia has achieved excellent results on the world scale.

Thus, it ranked third in terms of government success in ICTs promotion and 8th in government prioritisation of ICTs. According to the report, Tunisia is able to improve its ranking in the e-government section, given the determinant role of e-government in providing reliable and quality services made available to citizens and companies.

It is worth pointing out that the ICTs sector, a high added value sector, grew in 2008 at the high rate of 17.8%, bringing its GDP share up to 10% now, compared with 9% in 2007 and 5.9% in 2004.

Tunisia has bet on the ICTs sector to boost the socio- economic growth. It is within this framework that rests the project for the expansion of the El Ghezala Technological Park which will be carried out in several sections in the governorates of Ariana and Manouba.

This project provides for fitting out, at a first stage, several technological spaces covering an area of 100,000 square metres to host innovating companies and create over 5,000 jobs. The covered area of the whole project will reach approximately 500,000 square metres (including 200,000, in the area of Ennahli and 300,000 in Manouba).

To this area are added 100,000 more square metres for the extension of the technological parks of Sousse and Sfax.

Source: Africanmanager.com

“How will IE9 browser look?”. This is the headline of a feature published today by ‘ITNewsAfrica.com – IT news, Telecom news and Mobile news from an African perspective’.

The new Microsoft’s browser Internet Explorer 9 should support “HTML5, DOM and CSS3 standards” according to the African technology website.

“So far, the IE9 platform gives an insight in the new browser’s JavaScript capabilities, with no beta release in sight or the common features usually found in the browser interface”, ITnewsAfrica.com reports.

IE9 will not be available on WindowsXP operating system but only on Windows 7 and Vista.

Source: Itnewsafrica.com

Source: ntv.co.ke

“We have worked very hard to find avenues through which we can offer value added services to our growing customer base,” said Salim Amin, Chairman, A24 Media.

To this end A24 Media now offers readers the opportunity to catch up on the region’s latest stories, while accessing rich video content and images from Africa’s most extensive photo archives. Users will also be able to retrieve exclusive African content from top media houses and content providers on the continent, through A24 Media’s extensive network.

A24 Media has quickly developed a global reputation as the number one go-to source for high quality local content on African issues for international and local broadcasters. This positioning will continue to be solidified as the company now seeks to provide relevant content to airlines across the world, in order to augment their existing offerings.

“In addition to our growth strategy, we are also embracing and pushing the concept of citizen journalism to harvest news and other content at all levels of society. We have said from the very beginning that we want to be Africa’s Voice and that voice comes from the grass roots,” emphasised Amin.

A24 Media is Africa’s first online delivery site for material from journalists, African broadcasters and NGO’s from around the Continent. A24 Media’s business model ensures that all contributors receive a wide and previously unknown exposure to their content, thereby generating sustainable and generous revenues from the sale of their stories on a 60:40 basis in favour of the contributor. Most importantly, the contributor will continue to OWN the copyright of the original footage.

Content generators from around Africa send their material to our main office in Nairobi where it is verified and re-edited as necessary to create a slick, marketable and branded story.

 A unique and easily navigable system has been developed to allow broadcasters to view and purchase high-quality video for broadcast on their TV Channels. This enhances their ability to continue sending high-quality content to us and to reach a global audience with their stories… An African Voice telling the African Story.

The region could no longer rely on its resources alone to promote economic growth. It had to find ways of taking advantage of the opportunities inherent in technological change because economic growth was increasingly dependent on technology and knowledge, he said. Skills development deserved priority because better skills improved economic management and innovation, Mr. Yusuf said. 

Quality was also vitally important because it was the quality of skills development that had the strongest bearing on growth, he said.  The improvement of educational and training quality needed to cover primary and secondary schooling, and tertiary and vocational education and training, he said.

Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor, speaking at the same event, said Africa needed large numbers of high-quality undergraduate institutions producing people with professional and vocational skills that met its economic needs.

SA had to improve its research capacity because countries with an internal capacity to research local issues were better positioned to participate in global networks, Min. Pandor said. This meant that SA’s higher education system needed to be differentiated, with some institutions focusing on research and others on teaching, she said, adding her voice to that of Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande. 

He has also called recently for differentiation in the higher education system.  The idea of differentiation has been hotly debated in SA’s academic circles for a long time. African Union (AU) Commission Human Resources, Science and Technology Commissioner Prof Jean Pierre Ezin said science was “the powerhouse of development”, and only two African countries — SA being one — had met the AU goal of spending 1% of gross domestic product on research and development. Because of this, the AU had decided to develop a Pan-African University that would be developed in “institutes” hosted in existing universities across the continent and led by a rector or vice-chancellor.

The university would research the basic sciences, innovation and technology, water and climate issues, the development of indigenous knowledge, space science and governance and human studies.

Source: www.businessday.co.za

• H.E. Dr Tarek Mohamed Kamel, Minister of Communications & IT;
• Nancy Thomas, Vice President, IBM;
• Kiran Karnik, Board Member NASSCOM;
• Detlev Hoch, Director McKinsey;
• Randeep Sudan, ICT Policy Specialist World Bank;
• Graham Vickery, Head of Information Economy Group OECD;
• Jon Theuerkauf, Head of Centers of Excellence Credit Suisse.

In areas where piped drinking water just isn’t available or of questionable quality, solar water disinfection is a cheap and effective method for decentralized water treatment as it can be applied at household level.

It is a simple method that’s easy to teach and is designed for small scale production.

SODIS uses solar radiation to destroy pathogenic microorganisms which cause water borne diseases: Sunlight is treating the contaminated water through two synergetic mechanisms: Radiation in the spectrum of UV-A (wavelength 320-400nm) and increased water temperature. If the water temperature raises above 50°C, the disinfection process is three times faster. (source)

The World Health Organization (WHO) even recommends SODIS as a viable method for household water treatment and safe storage.

All you will need are clean & transparent PET bottles, ?ll them up with water and expose them to direct sunlight for at least 6 hours.

Many people also put them on a corrugated roof (to increase temperature) and saturate the oxygen content inside the bottles prior to the sun treatment by ?lling them up three quarters, shaking them for 20 seconds with a closed cap on and then ?ll them up completely.

source: afrigadget.com

During the latest TED Global conference held in Oxford (UK) from 21 to 24 of July, the fantasy and the skills of Africans people came out.

“The speaker was William Kamkwamba from Malawi”, BBC news reports.

William Kamkwamba came to the conference to tell people how “at the age of just 14, he had built his own wind generator“.

In the report by BBC news William Kamkwamba details all the issues he had to overcome and how it happened to him to end building such a great tool for his family and his community.

“Before I discovered the wonders of science I was just a simple farmer,” he said. But after the family’s maize crop failed in 2001, they could no longer afford to pay for him to go to school. “It was a future I could not accept,” he said.

Source: BBC News

According to the news published on Globavoices.org, “Kelele is an annual African bloggers’ conference which will be held for the first time in August 13th – 16th 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya”.

“According to event organisers – it’s written on the same website – Kelele is a gathering of African bloggers in the tradition of historical African societies where everyone has a voice. Kelele is a Swahili word for noise. So, African bloggers make some noise! The theme for Kelele ‘09 is “Nairobi Beat Your Drum”.

This year is their second edition.

W.TEC is now accepting nominations for the 2nd edition of its Girls Technology Camp.

Targeted at Nigerian secondary school girls, the 1-week residential camp will take place in Lagos in August 2009.

It is aimed at helping girls develop an early interest in computers and other ICTs, as well as enabling them develop positive images of technology-related careers.

Nominations should be sent by Friday, May 29th, 2009 via:
1. E-mail: info@w-teconline.org
2. Mail: W.TEC, P.O. Box 50389, Falomo, Ikoyi, Lagos
3. Online submission from our website: http://www.w-teconline.org
4. Hand delivery to our office: W.TEC, Suite 88, Block A-4, Sura Shopping Complex, Simpson Street, Lagos Island , Lagos

Visit http://www.w-teconline.org or email info@w-teconline.org for more information.

W.TEC is a Nigerian non-governmental organization working to encourage Nigerian girls and women to use ICTs to empower themselves socially and economically.

Mobile phones text messages in Kenya are quite a good tool for the country’s democracy, one of the strongest in Africa.

The Kenyan newspaper Daily Nation reports on its website, recalling “a global press freedom group”.

The Norwegian council for Afrika published yesterday a web page of some of the most well known African bloggers.

Su www.afrika.no/blog sarà possibile avere un panorama degli ultimi post dall’Africa.

These are the African bloggers listed by the Norwegian council for Afrika:

• Khaya Dlanga, winner of the African Digital Citizen Award 2008. He is very famous for his YouTube channel.
  
• Moreblessing Mbire, a blogger from Harare, Zimbabwe.
• Patrick Gathara, commentator and cartoonist from Kenya
• Khadija Sharife, political activist from South Africa
• Ory Okolloh, a Harvard graduated lawyer from Kenya. She blogs from South Africa.
• Steve Mugiri from Kenya, who likes to blog about music and technology
• Dipo Tepede from Nigeria blogs about entrepreneurship, personal finance and relationships
• Samuel Chinedu, a poet from Nigeria
• Natasha Monza, “who likes to blog about political and personal reflections from the perspective of an ordinary Zimbabwean citizen” as written on www.afrika.no/blog
• “Writefreak” from Nigeria. She offers her woman’s point of view on Africa’s daily life.

Some of these blogger also took part to the famous Highway Africa conference, an award for citizen journalists in Africa.

“E-governance for development” – is written in a press release – “is the new Italian initiative to promote and strengthen, among the activities of the Italian presidency of the G8, cooperation and partnership with the developing countries in the fields of innovation and best practices based on ICT for “public governance”.

The initiative will initially be funded by the Italian Cooperation with 20 million euros. The goal is ambitious: overcoming the “digital divide“.

The objective of the “e-governance for development” is to promote, through the use of ICT programs of reform, modernisation and institutional building of the public sector, digitisation projects of public services, initiatives to improve democratic processes.

These are the characteristics:

• A more ‘close coordination between the Unita’ for e-Government and innovation for the development of the Innovation and Technology Department and the Italian Cooperation, which will form ‘the nucleus of a Hub and Spoke aimed to involve and in aggregate systemic way other public and private actors;
• An expansion of operations to include over a draft e-Government initiatives to improve the democratic and participatory processes (e-governance);
• A concentration of operations in areas of excellence for Italian made available to developing countries and countries emerging best practices Ict;
• A gradual shift from pilot projects to significant programs to be implemented in synergy with international organizations;
• Involvement of foundations and private sponsors to catalyze additional resources.

It will be the first time that such event takes place in the Continent.

The meeting, which will be hosted by the President hotel right in the centre of Ivory Coast, West Africa, is organised by the Ivory Coast government and the International organisation of francophony. 

As cyber crimes flourish in Africa, Ivory Coast has decided to organise such conference.

These are some of the reasons why crimes related to computers and the internet flourish in Africa, as explained clearly on whiteafrican.com:

• Bad knowledge of Information Technologies by the populations;
• Absence of a suitable legal system ;
• Inexistence on the level of the States of cybersecurity structures;
• Absence of a framework for dialogue and coordination of strategies at the regional level

The conference has these goals: to discuss on cybersecurity best practices, to define the basis of cooperation between countries.

The meeting will gather private and public sectors actors, as well as African civil society and international institutions experts.

For more informations: whiteafrican.com, cipaco.org

It is a very important event because it stresses the importance of access to new technologies as this is supposed to bring social and economical growth.

The conference is organised by The Information and Communication Technologies Association of Malawi (ICTAM) in partnership with The Royal Swedish Institute of Technology (KTH) and The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA).

Just a little before the opening of Open Access 2008, Lilongwe will also host the UbuntuNet Connect Conference, “Driving effective Research and Education Networking in Africa”.

“There is currently a high momentum – it is written in the website introducing the conference – in the deployment of infrastructures such as optic fiber, wireless and the like. Also, the advancement in the use of ICT in general such as mobile phones, multipurpose telecentres. If used wisely, we believe these developments can facilitate provisioning of relatively inexpensive, easily accessible, diversified and expandable ICT services. The objective of this workshop is to identify and share experiences on affordable and cost effective ICT technologies around the globe”.

The new Ushahidi, a Swahili word for ‘testimony’, is online. The video you can watch below is a great testimony of how Africa is changing. This ‘change’ is leaded by new technologies that mix mobile phones and the internet.

As said on the video, more than this the group behind Ushahidi is the demonstration that a new generations of Africa is changing the Continent and that this change is geared by technology.

We believe that beside the news of violences and wars in the Continent, all media should stress these positive news as well.

Made in Africa – my PopTech 08 Talk

MobileActive08 is hosted by Southern African NGO Network and MobileActive.org and it will last until the 15 of October at the Wanderers Club in Johannesburg.

“With more than 350 confirmed participants – it is written in a press release – from over 40 countries, this will be the largest international event to date focusing on this topic and one of the most important ICT4D events to be hosted in Africa in 2008.

 ”The fact that 4 billion subscribers have been registered worldwide indicates that it is technically feasible to connect the world to the benefits of ICT and that it is a viable business opportunity”, Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), said.

How do you think ICT, internet and computers can help Africa?
Well, what it does it bridges the gap between Africa and the West. When it bridges the gap that means we can tap on the intellectual capital of the West which is really the source of wealth in a modern world, as well as help Africa increase its own intellectual capital which would alleviate poverty in Africa.

What are the next changes the ICT in Africa will do?
As we know Africa has lacked behind. With 922 million Africans, which represents 15% of the world population, we are still underrepresented on the websites because if you look at the websites most of them comes from the west, are in the United States, but it will grow slowly and gradually with time.

There are lots of new projects based on the web 2.0 principles and on new webdesign techniques. What do you think about them?
The proliferation of blogging is vast compared to what it was 10-15 years ago. And also what it does in politics in Africa, for example in Zimbabwe, it does a lot of good for activism because of the decentralisation of the internet. 10 years ago it was easy to shut down free newspaper, but today they can’t shut down more than 5 thousands political websites because they are based abroad.

“Africa will be better represented on the web”, Emeagwali

Video clips at Ustream

Reached by Africanews.it, Keller said that “the major difficulties we have are in funding. We produce this laptop for what it costs: 200 dollars. It’s not expensive, but still not enough. We’re trying to reduce the price”.

“OLPC is a 24 H/Day educational program” Matt Keller

The FOSS4G conference opened yesterday in Cape Town, South Africa, by the title “Open Source Geospatial: An Option for Developing Nations”.

Developing nations are very interested in this topic. Proving that open source software is a truly affordable solutions could lead to the development of a competitive geospatial industry for countries which could not afford it before.

“FOSS4G 2007 was presented in Victoria, Canada, bringing together 720 attendees from over 40 countries. As a truly international event, FOSS4G is an unequalled opportunity to learn from and compare notes with people from around the world”, this is what is written on the conference website.

Topics have a FOSS component or perspective are:

• New FOSS GIS developments
• Interoperability and standards – OGC, GEOSS
• Web processing services, Sensor Web enablement and the like
• Using FOSS with proprietary software
• Making the transition to FOSS GIS
• FOSS GIS support and training
• FOSS GIS business models
• FOSS GIS implementation and deployment
• Open data, open content, open architectures, open everything!
• Case studies of open source implementations
• Improving FOSS GIS cartography and map production
• Use Case driven FOSS GIS development and improving the user experience
• FOSS GIS Internationalisation and Localisation

Topics for applications, methodologies or theoretical geospatial work are not limited to a FOSS perspective:

• Sustainable development and the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals)
• Disaster management
• Health
• Energy
• Water
• Climate change
• Weather
• Ecosystem management
• Agriculture
• Biodiversity
• Land reform
• Education
• Government
• Local economic development, poverty alleviation
• Participatory GIS
• Semantic Web and ontologies in GIS
• Location based services, logistics, routing
• 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa
• NGOs, CBOs (Community-based organisations) and community development workers
• Mining, exploration, beneficiation
• Spatial economics
• Military

Other features

• Hands-on workshops and labs on using and developing open source geospatial tools
• Education-related outreach day
• Developers’ code sprint
• Technical visits
• Full exhibition hall and demonstration theatre
• Virtual market for FOSS GIS opportunities
• Launch of integrated ‘1-click’ FOSS GIS Linux and Windows distributions
• Competitions
• Launch of FreeGIS books
• Launch of online FOSS GIS courses
• Poster session
• ‘Birds-of-a-feather’ sessions
• Great social programme!,
  
  • Icebreaker dinner and drinks
  • Gala dinner at Moyo in Stellenbosch
  • Tour and travel opportunities before, during and after the conference

According to a press release of the Commision of the African Union, Microsoft and the AU will cooperate to promote and develop ICT solutions tailored for each African region.

Targeted people of this action will be teenager and persons living in rural areas. One of the goals of this cooperation will be to identify how Ict will be applied to make economic growth faster, allowing more people to access new technologies.

“Technology plays an essential role in the orientation of being competitive in the actual globalised economy” Elham Mahmoud Ahmed Ibrahim, ministry of Infrastructures for the African Union, said.