Involving
higher education institutions in building African Information
Society
A nation's ability to fully develop an Information Society
depends on the capacity of its people to be educated, to assimilate,
and to process complex information. In this context, higher
education institutions play a critical role, whilst repositioning
themselves for the challenges of globalization and the information
age.
Worldwide,
academic communities have been part of a driving force in
creating the Information Society, including spearheading intellectual
leadership through a series of knowledge-building activities.
They constitute a tremendous reservoir of expertise that could
provide vital assistance working with governments, private
sector and civil society in an increasingly globalized and
complex world.
With respect
to information and knowledge management activities for African
academia, ECA considers the higher education community as
the intellectual backbone to lead Africa into the digital
age. The African Information Society Initiative (AISI) framework
document states that the AISI higher education and research
objective is “to act as a vehicle for pooling national
and regional intellectual and human resources to help contribute
to research and development efforts in the continent”.
In re-affirming the role of academia, universities and research
institutions in the Information Society, ECA set up the Africa
Learning Network (ALN) to facilitate the effective use of
ICTs in the learning and teaching process. The ALN was launched
during the first African Development Forum (ADF’99),
of which the theme was “The Challenge to Africa of Globalization
and the Information Age”. ALN’s activities are
based on the premise that transformation in education and
learning requires a shift from traditional methods where new
technologies can create the opportunity for the best minds
to exchange information across vast distances, both at the
national level and throughout the Diaspora.
ALN
has three pillars:
- SchoolNet Africa is a regional structure
that supports national and regional school networking activities.
The initiative started with networking schools in Africa and
has expanded to capacity-building activities for teachers,
as well as research on ICT and education. It is currently
operational in 31 countries in over 300 schools.
- VarsityNet
aims at establishing connectivity at universities and related
institutions of higher learning and research, and stimulates
the development of content production and information sharing
within this environment. The three mains areas of focus are
applications development, software solution on African languages
and build Academia research skills on Information Society
emergent issues .
- OOSYNET
is a youth networking initiative that addresses the needs
of Out-Of-School Youth (OOSY) at the national and regional
level. Some pilot activities underway include support to the
Imfundo project in Ethiopia focusing on enhancing the learning
experiences and livelihood skills of urban disadvantaged children
through information and communication technologies (ICTs).
Each of
the above-mentioned categories comprise four areas of focus:
· Curriculum Development and Access to Information
for Learning: Enriching learning of cultural, scientific
and social subjects, to lay the foundation for self-guided
learning and, adapting appropriate media for different learning
environments
· New Learning Approaches and Outcomes:
Promoting peer education, community learning ventures, public
debate and decision-making skills
· Knowledge Sharing and Building Intellectual
Capital: Promoting the creation and presentation
of content and knowledge by learners and teachers and to empower
them as global communicators
· Programme Sustainability and “Revenue”
Creation: Promoting the production of content for
sale in the knowledge marketplace (e.g. to Centres of African
Studies), to protect African intellectual property and to
reinforce human capacity in science, engineering and technology
- The
VarsityNet Pilot Programme : Applications Development and
Localisation
Under
the VarsityNet programme, a pilot Research & Development
in developing applications for e-Government and African language
through Open Source Software (OSS) have been undertaken, supported
by the Ford Foundation and implemented by the Addis Ababa
University and the Inter-University Council of East Africa
(IUCEA).
The IUCEA
project was jointly implemented by the Universities of Nairobi
(Kenya), Makerere (Uganda), Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania) and the
Jomo Kenyatta University of Science and Technology (Kenya).
A pilot
application, based on Open Source Software (OSS), that supports
the International Fellowships Programme (IFP) and the Inter-University
Students Exchange Programme for East Africa was successful
developed for the first phase. The second phase of VarsityNet
has scaled up the research and development activities, and
the knowledge and expertise accumulated during the first phase,
to develop an Inter-University Information System based on
Open Source Software (OSS) to manage students’ academic
records.
The IUCEA
research activities has provided a good ground for enhancing
cooperation between the participating institutions where the
main aim has been to facilitate the achievement of the research
goals of universities, while at the same time attempting to
provide cost-effective solutions to major challenges in the
region.
The project
in Ethiopia was implemented by the computer science department
of the Addis Ababa University (AAU) and has two sub-projects:
Sub-project 1: Multi-lingual E-government on-line document
management platform development based on Ahmaric.
Sub-project
2: Software development assessment
Both phases
of AAU VarsityNet have been successfully implemented at the
Addis Ababa University. Their impact on the research and development
capacity of the department has been highly positive. They
have introduced the research team, the university and also
the country to localization, FOSS and software development
assessment. The research output of the department of computer
science increased significantly thanks to the project. Also
the visibility of the department has increased and many funding
agencies are showing interest in funding research projects
of the department.
The department
is now ready to go one step further by capitalizing on its
major assets. In particular it has gained valuable expertise
in the area of localization and FOSS. This expertise can be
used to support the country and the continent’s ICT
ambitions. The recommendation of this project is to establish
a center of FOSS and localization at the department of computer
science, Addis Ababa University.
- AAU
VarsiTynet applications
Based
on the above successful achievements, the next phase of the
AAU VarsiTynet, with the support of the Government of Finland,
will focus on the following applications:
a)
Medical Information System, Ethiopia
In Ethiopia,
a Medical Information System project based at the Addis Ababa
University’s (AAU) department of Computer Science will
attempt to create pervasive medical systems to enable health
practitioners to access health information anywhere, anytime,
using mobile devices, such as mobile phones and PDAs. This
project will be implemented in collaboration with the INSA-Lyon
institution in France.
b)
The use of “Ethiopic” script in Hand Held Devices
ARN is
also collaborating with AAU VarisityNet on studying the challenges
of integrating Ethiopic script and on-line handwriting recognition
on PDAs. The research will focus on developing an acceptable
amount of Ethiopic characters for on-line recognition as well
as a simplified Ethiopic script. Usability tests will also
be conducted in a realistic environment
c)
E-payment systems
The next
phase of VarsityNet will build on previous research into e-payment
systems in Ethiopia. In partnership with selected private
sector and Diaspora companies, a pilot project will be developed
to demonstrate the viability of an e-payment system in a real
environment. It is expected that this pilot project will spearhead
the development of e-payment for Ethiopia, in particular,
for targeted services that stand to benefit.
The
WSIS Process and the Academia Research Network (ARN)
The launch
of the ARN took place in December 2003 during the first phase
of WSIS, having originated from a Visioning Retreat on the
theme “Intellectual Leadership and the African Information
Society Initiative: What Role for Africa’s Academic
Community?” The Retreat was organized by ECA and the
Ford Foundation in June 2003 to prepare the African academia
to reflect upon their role in the Information Society and
to sensitize them to the WSIS process.
To translate
vision into reality, the creation of an Academia Research
Network was proposed as a concrete follow up activity of the
Retreat. ECA in collaboration with the Ford Foundation has
since taken the lead in creating this network so as to provide
a platform and space for leading African academics and researchers
to enhance their role and to reflect on the many intellectual
issues related to the Information Society. Based on a consultative
process with key academics on the African continent, 4 thematic
research networks were launched in line with the objectives
of the African Information Society Initiative (AISI), the
ALN VarsityNet programme and the WSIS Action Plan. The ARN
thematic research networks were on the following themes:
·
Information Society Indicators
· African languages and content development in the
· cyberspace
· Industrialization of ICTs in Africa
· Creating enabling environment
a)
Information Society Indicators
The tremendous
growth in the use ICTs led to an increased interest in understanding
of its social and economic impact, giving rise to crosscutting
research to understand the effects on the academia community
in particular and the society at large. In addition, there
is a need to develop indicators for the targets set in the
WSIS Action Plan “as global references for improving
connectivity and access in the use of ICTs” which are
to be achieved by 2015.
Network
Outcomes: Indicators
The Network
for Research on Information society Indicators brought together
nine (9) academics, researchers from Tunisia, Morocco and
Rwanda who worked on three key research topics:
· Review and fine-tune Information Society indicators,
benchmarks and methodologies of initiatives, such as the SCAN-ICT,
with a view to monitoring the progress made in the local,
national and regional context;
· Undertake in-depth analysis on ICT penetration and
impacts on society by using the data and information collected
by various indicator initiatives;
· Build capacity among research institutions and researchers
on the Information Society indicators so as to ensure sustainable
involvement of African Academia in measuring impacts on society.
The ARN
group on Indicators accomplished the following:
·
Prepared a state of the art of the major Initiatives on Indicators
(International bodies, regional organizations)
· Reviewed available outcome of these initiatives in
real field applications with a special focus on African countries;
· Developed a Reference Model encompassing the main
features of the Geneva plan of action, and allowed a thorough
comparisons of the existing initiatives.
This model
highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of those initiatives,
thus suggesting ways for improvements; This work could help
in analysing any on-going (e.g WSIS partnership) or new initiatives.
It could also be used to define a complete set of reference
indicators.
Country
case study: Tunisia
Building
on lessons learnt from the first research phase, the next
phase aims to provide a unique opportunity to further the
research with a focus on poverty reduction and attainment
of MDGs.
In addition
the project will come up with a number of reports, which include:
·
a state-of-the-art report on benchmarking of the indicators
of socio-economic impact and
· additional reports on core composite indicators for
Information Society measurement and benchmarking (indicators
of penetration, usage and impacts);
· Manual for index cards of indicators (every index
card includes a definition and the method of calculation for
every indicator); and
· Partial indicators and composite indicators: definition
and methodology of calculation;
b)
African languages and content development in cyberspace
With over
2,000 languages, which represents a third of all the languages
worldwide, Africa cannot afford to ignore the issue of language
in the development and building of an Information Society.
Yet, local African languages can become marginalized because
of the Internet revolution where English has become the dominant
language.
Consequently,
the ARN group on African languages and content development
in cyberspace focuses on technical aspects of the use of extended
Latin-based character sets and non-Western scripts on computers
and the Internet. Other issues include synchronization of
content development in local languages and ICT policies in
African countries, and:
·
Determine the economic, political and technological aspects
of language development in the Information Society;
· Build individual and institutional capacities for
addressing language needs in the academic community;
· Provide an information and knowledge infrastructure
for local language exchange and dissemination;
· Create a continental team of teacher and researchers
in computational linguistics;
· Undertake a baseline study on the current state of
African languages and content development in the cyberspace;
· Launch an optional pilot program in computational
linguistics in computer at Bamako University on the Information
Society indicators so as to ensure sustainable involvement
of African Academia in measuring impacts on society.
Country
case study: Cameroun
ARN intends
to experiment, during a period of three years, a generalizable
model for the utilization of ICTs in African languages, in
Cameroonian rural schools. In addition:
·
Four university teachers will be trained in Applied Computational
Linguistics (ACL) and will be ready to start off the teaching
of this subject in the Departments of African Languages and
Linguistics at the University of Yaounde 1 and the University
of Dschang as from October 2006;
· Six schoolteachers belonging to two primary schools
shall have been trained and will be ready to start off the
experimentation of the use of ICTs in two African languages
in their respective schools on the basis of a well-defined
content.
c)
ICT Industrialization
The research
group on the potential for ICT Industrialization in Africa
conducted research in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Tanzania and
identified pre-requisites for successful ICT industrialization
in Africa. The group also identified the limitations, impediments
and gaps, which prevent academia and the private sector from
fully participating in the process.
The thematic
group undertook research to identify areas where Africa has
the potential to succeed as well as requirements for African
countries to embark on ICT industrialization. After conducting
research in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Tanzania, the team made
the following recommendations for further research:
·
Development of Open Source Software applications, especially
to address rural and local challenges, with emphasis on capacity
building in ICT was a potential area to be explored by African
countries.
· Development of ICT industrialization models, where
researchers and academics would collaborate with the governments
to implement some flagship projects. Use the results in other
to get the political will.
· Encourage Governments to provide incentives such
as start funds for an industrial environment and market.
The research
group identified the following issues as for follow-up: capacity
building; cncubation; hardware and software development; R&D;
knowledge creation.
Country
case study: Mozambique
In Mozambique,
in addition to the above activities, the project will assist
the country’s ICT Policy and Strategy Committee with
incorporating ICT Industrialization/Innovation and research
components in the policy and implementation process. E-learning
centres, and a Technology Applications Development Centre
are expected to be established.
d)
Creating an Enabling Environment
Members
of the network assessed the global and regional environments
in African and recognized the importance of working within
the framework of AISI and the New Partnership for African
Development (NEPAD) in line with discussions, which took place
during the first phase of WSIS with the overall objective
of increasing awareness among African policy-makers on the
role of the Information Society. The specific objectives of
the research team was to:
·
Identify obstacles and shortcomings with respect to access
(universal and equitable, interconnection;
· Address issues of standards at local, national, regional
and international levels (e-fraud) as well as determine the
efficient use of documents and etransactions that can lead
to the development of an e-economy in Africa; and
· Identify the different components to identity and
cultural, linguistic, traditional and religious values with
respect to the Information Society
More information
on ALN is available at http://www.uneca.org/aisi/
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