PICTA Bulletin is a monthly
publication that provides information on activities of members in the Partnership for ICTs
in Africa (PICTA), as well as news on ICT-related activities in Africa.
NEWS: PICTA Members ....
NEWS: PICTA Members …. NEWS: PICTA Members ....
PICTA Annual Meeting
The annual meeting is scheduled for 10th
-11th September 2004, in Mauritius after the ACT 2004 Summit (see http://www.aitecafrica.c
om/act2004/index.htm). An agenda with will be disseminated shortly but in the mean time
members should confirm their availability to attend to Ms Aida Opoku-Mensah (aopoku-mensah@uneca.org).
UNESCO, UNDP launch
Community Multimedia Centres in Bahir Dar and Lalibella, Ethiopia
UNESCO in collaboration with UNDP launched
Community Multimedia Centres (CMCs) in Bahir Dar and Lalibella where more than 6,000
people are expected to use the centres. Representatives from the two organizations
together with the Ministry of Information officials told journalists, that the centres
will enable members of the community in the towns to become recognized actors of knowledge
for development. More: http://allafrica.com/stories/200406180460.html
ECA and ITU to hold regional meetings on information society
indicators
ECA and ITU are planning to jointly host two
regional meetings on information society indicators. One of the meetings will be convened
for Anglophone countries in November 2004 in Botswana and another one for Francophone in
December 2004 in a Francophone country not yet identified. The objective will be to
discuss a methodology, which will enable national statistical offices to collect, process
and disseminate information society indicators. The meeting, which will be part of a
series of meetings to be organized by the UN Regional Commissions in 5 continents, will
feed into a thematic meeting on indicators to be organized by the UN Regional Commissions,
ITU, UNCTAD, OECD, UNESCO, the UN ICT Task Force and the World Bank. For further
information, contact Makane Faye (mfaye@uneca.org).
New Release: Africa Networking: Development Information and
Governance
ECA’s Development Information Services
Division has recently released a new book focusing on the relationship between good
governance and development information in Africa. “Africa Networking; Development
Information and Governance” builds on discussions held during the Third meeting of
the Committee on Development Information (CODI-3) held last year in Addis Ababa on ways
information systems can help support and promote better governance. The book presents
analysis on decentralization of public administrative systems and transparent public
financial management. It also deals with the role of the private sector, civil society and
systems and policies on governance. The essays in the book draw on a range of expertise in
statistics, ICTs, libraries and geo-information. To request a copy of the book, send an
email to: ecapubs@uneca.org More: http://www.uneca.org/aisi/new.htm
Academics Brainstorm on the Information Society
A three-day brainstorming meeting of the
Academia Research Network (ARN) on the Information Society organized by ECA and the Ford
Foundation was held from 9 to 11 June 2004 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The event launched
five thematic research networks, whereby researchers across Africa will work on the
following topics:
Capacity building for the information society
in Africa;
Creating the enabling environment;
African languages and content development in
the cyberspace;
Measuring the impact of the African
information society; and
The industrialization of ICTs in Africa.
Launched in Geneva in December 2003 during
the first phase of the WSIS, ARN provides a space for a select group of leading African
academics and researchers to reflect on key research questions and activities in ICTs,
policy and society. The networks will kick start their activities in the coming months.
For further info, contact Aida Opoku-Mensah (aopoku-mensah@uneca.org)
iLaw Africa Meeting. This event was organised by OSI, OSIWA and
OSISA on June 22, 2004 in Accra, Ghana
The meeting discussed training mechanisms on
advanced ICT laws and policies (iLaw Africa) for policy-makers, activists, academics,
technologists, and business leaders. The preliminary date for this training is beginning
of 2005. The discussion focused on questions such as: Who should be reached and at what
level? Should the training programme have a geographic focus (in terms of content and
audience)? What should the target audience/trainees be, and in what format should the
issues be presented? More: Ben Akoh (bakoh@osiwa.org),
Ashraf Patel (ashrafp@osiafrica.org) or Vera
Franz (vfranz@osieurope.org).
Local Governance and ICT Workshop
The United Nations Capital Development Fund
(UNCDF), the International Development Research Center (IDRC) of Canada and ECA
co-organized a workshop dedicated to local governance and ICT, which took place from 7 to
9 June 2004 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As part of the implementation of the PICTA Plan of
Action, the workshop reviewed innovative ICT research and development as well as
initiatives in support of local governance with a view to assisting local administrations
in enhancing transparency, accountability and efficiency and providing improved public
services. The workshop identified research needs and areas of collaboration to facilitate
ICT introduction and usage at the local level and produced a concrete plan of action to
assist member States to prepare for the WSIS 2005. For further information, contact Atsuko
Okuda (aokuda@uneca.org).
UNESCO and ITU support the Adaptive Technology Center for the
Blind (ATCB) in Ethiopia
On June 3, 2004 the ATCB in cooperation with
UNESCO and ITU organised a press conference in the presence of the President of Ethiopia
in order to publicise the activities being undertaken in a project called “ICT
training for capacity building, empowerment and poverty reduction among the blind
community in Ethiopia”. ATCB was established in Ethiopia in May 2001 to promote and
enhance the use of ICTs by visually impaired sections of the society. UNESCO’s
regional office in Addis Ababa is considering extending the project to other African
countries, particularly Tanzania. For further information, contact Guenther Cyranek (gcyranek@unesco.org)
Mainstreaming Gender in National Gender Machineries
A training workshop on reinforcing capacities
of National Gender Machineries (NGM) through the use of ICTs was organised by the UN
Division for Advancement of Women and the ministère de la famille, du developpement
social et de la solidarité nationale, in Dakar, Senegal from 24 to 28 May 2004.
Thirty-nine representatives of NGMs from 11 countries participated in the workshop. A
resource person from ECA facilitated various sessions of the workshop including practical
Internet training, plans for national networking for gender activities, formulation and
implementation of ICT policies and plans, and mainstreaming gender in e-strategies. More:
Mohammed Timoulali (mtimoulali@uneca.org)
CTO and ECDL-F to develop global e-Citizen programmes
The Commonwealth Telecommunications
Organisation (CTO) and the European Computer Driving License Foundation (ECDL-F) have
signed an MoU to jointly promote global digital literacy initiatives utilising the
ECDL-F’s e-Citizen programme. The collaboration is part of the efforts by both
organizations to develop partnerships to foster the use of ICT for achieving development
goals. Both organisations offer knowledge-sharing programmes in IT and telecommunications
to help bridge the digital divide. The e-Citizen programme is expected to encompass
economic, social and political dimensions by extending the benefits of electronic
communication to government (e.g. health, online tax payment, distance learning,
participatory democracy, etc), businesses (e.g. online banking and finance, e-commerce,
etc) and civil society. More: http://www.cto.int/index.php?dir=06&sd=11&id=107
IDRC, IICD and CTA to fund a review workshop of GEnardis (Gender Agriculture and ICTs)
Award Winners
Genardis is an awards project that was
jointly funded by CTA, IICD and IDRC that supported activities that focused on the
relationship between gender, agriculture and ICTs in ACP countries. The workshop is
scheduled to take place from 9 to 10 August 2004 in Arusha, Tanzania, directly after the
AITEC International Conference on “Women and ICT: Challenges and Opportunities”.
For more information, please contact Laurent Elder (lelder@idrc.org.sn)
IDRC-Acacia supports project at University of Cape Town Lung
Institute
IDRC's Acacia program is supporting a project
with the University of Cape Town Lung Institute, which will test the use of PDAs, to
support and evaluate the ARV (Anti-retroviral) roll out therapy in the Free State province
of South Africa. The project will support the development of a HIV/AIDS clinical research
and evaluation data collection system; support Patient monitoring and clinician feedback;
the undertaking of molecular epidemiology and bio-informatics; support epidemiological
tracking; day-to-day management information; integration and data mining and the
integration of this system into a WAN. For more information please contact Heloise Emdon (hemdon@idrc.ca)
IDRC-Connectivity Africa supports project on pre-paid GSM roaming
in West Africa
IDRC, through Connectivity Africa, will
support the formation of a technical group on facilitating pre-paid GSM roaming in West
Africa, which will be coordinated by ECOWAS. It is a well-known fact most Africans have
pre-paid subscriptions to cellular telephony. However most of those subscriptions don't
allow roaming across networks in different countries. This hinders regional integration
and cross-border commerce. An initial workshop will take place in Lome, Togo in August to
come up with a strategy to deal with this problem.
APC members set up 10 new ICT policy portals
Ten civil society organisations, which are
members of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), have created national ICT
policy portal websites in their countries in a joint initiative. The portals which are all
uniquely adapted to address each country's particular situation use free software that
allows content-sharing in different languages and between multiple information databases
hosted in different parts of the world. More: http://rights.apc.org/policy_sites_list.shtml
IICD websites moved to Open Source platform
As of July 1, 2004, the International
Institute for Communication and Development’s (IICD) corporate website
(www.iicd.org), the website of ICT Stories (www.iicd.org/stories), and iConnect-Online
(www.iconnect-online.org) are now on a new Open Source content management system. Although
the sites look the same, almost every page has moved to a new location on the Internet.
The sites, developed by the Amsterdam-based IT company OSC, are customised versions of the
Plone Content Management System (www.plone.org). IICD intended to move the sites to a
stable and flexible platform that will meet its needs for several years to come and was
able to find an Open Source solution to offer multilingual sites in English, French,
Spanish, to enable fast loading, with a plain text version available to low-bandwidth
visitors, and carry RSS news feeds from partners as well as being accessible to persons
with disabilities. For more information: webmaster@iicd.org
How to embed Country Programme activities in a wider sector
development context
Held in alongside meetings of IICD’s
International Advisory Board (IAB) in June 2004, the organization explored issues
associated with how to efficiently embed ICT-related projects and programmes in sector and
national policies. Four project partners from IICD’s focal countries presented and
reviewed ways in which local IICD activities can be scaled up to a larger group of
end-users at sector and national levels. Through an Open Space meeting, participants
discussed issues they considered most important to the role of IICD in this embedding
process. Amongst priority areas recognised were: development of embedding strategies,
involving key actors in the process and defining performance criteria. For more
information: Mr. Tjalling Vonk (tvonk@iicd.org)
OTHER NEWS ..... OTHER NEWS
..... OTHER NEWS .....
Ghana to host
African Regional WSIS (Second Phase) Preparatory Conference
Ghana 2-4 February 2005. A proposal to hold
the regional preparatory conference in Accra from 2-5 February 2005 was adopted by the
African Ministerial meeting held in April 2004 in Dakar, Senegal. The decision was
subsequently endorsed by ITU. The proposal will be submitted to the African Union (AU) for
formal endorsement. The Government of Ghana has appointed a planning committee with
members drawn from government, private sector, civil society organizations, academia,
gender and youth. For further information, contact Aida Opoku-Mensah (aopoku-mensah@uneca.org).
PrepCom 1 of Second phase WSIS (Tunis 2005) makes decisions on
the focus, output and preparatory process of the Tunis Phase
The preparatory meeting decided that the
Tunis Phase will focus on follow-up and implementation of the Geneva Declaration of
Principles and Plan of Action by stakeholders at national, regional and international
levels. The Tunis phase will pay particular attention to the challenges facing the Least
Developed Countries and the reports of the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) and
the Task Force on Financial Mechanisms (TFFM). It was also decided that PrepCom-2 would
take place in Geneva for 7 days starting 17 February 2005. More: http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/pc1/doc5.doc
UN Regional Commissions express renewed commitment to the WSIS
process
In a statement read by ECA representing all
the five UN Regional Commissions, at the PrepCom1 of the WSIS-2, the Regional Commissions
said that they “are deeply committed to the WSIS and are assisting their member
States on a permanent basis on the relevant issues required by the process”. The
statement further noted that “based on the positive experience gained from the first
phase, the Regional Commissions will continue, as mandated by the UN General Assembly, to
bring regional perspectives to the global process”. For further information, contact
Makane Faye (mfaye@uneca.org).
WSIS-2005 Fundraising Campaign picks up momentum
In response to the ITU
Secretary-General’s open appeal to the international community for voluntary
contributions, governments, international organizations and NGOs demonstrated their
commitment to the success of the Summit by announcing new financial contributions to the
WSIS 2005 Fund to support the core preparatory process of the Tunis phase. Governments
that announced their contribution at the first PrepCom of the second phase include Japan
(CHF 383’000), Norway (CHF 180’000), Spain (CHF 150’000), the Netherlands
(CHF 75’000), Senegal (CHF 46’000), Azerbaijan (CHF 15,000), Namibia (CHF
12’500) and the Holy See (CHF 4’000). They were joined by intergovernmental and
non-governmental organizations including the World Meteorological Organization
(15’000), the United Nations Federal Credit Union (CHF 1’250) and the
International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies (CHF 200). The ITU Secretary-General
thanked donors for their support, and added “with these new contributions for the
WSIS Fund, we have reached 25 per cent of our goal for the WSIS-2005 Fundraising Campaign.
This is up from just 8 per cent of the campaign goal prior to the Hammamet meeting”.
More: http://www.itu.int/wsis
Provisional governmental Bureau nominates candidate for the
Presidency of the Preparatory Committee
At a meeting held on 10 June 2004, the
provisional governmental Bureau of the Tunis phase nominated Ambassador Janis Karklins
from Latvia as candidate for the Presidency of the Preparatory Committee. The final
decision on the Presidency of the Preparatory Committee of the Tunis phase will be taken
at the first Plenary of PrepCom-1 in Hammamet. Information on the composition of the
provisional Bureau is posted on the WSIS website at: http://www.itu.int/wsis
7 – 9 July
2004, ICT Stakeholders' Forum: Special Focus on Least Developed Countries, Mauritius
The Commonwealth Business Council in
conjunction with the International Telecommunications Union, the Government of Mauritius
and the E-Africa Commission (NEPAD) will hold a three-day Forum aimed at examining
concrete projects, proposals and models to help integrate least developed countries into
the global economy through the effective deployment of ICTs. The goal of the Forum is to
challenge delegates to provide deployable ICT solutions for development and to encourage
practitioners and high-level participants to brainstorm real world ICT driven solutions.
More: http://www.cbcglobelink.org/cbcglobelink/events/ICT04/
7 – 9 July 2004, ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Countering
Spam, Geneva, Switzerland
Organised by the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU), the meeting is open to member States of ITU and member
States of the United Nations, international organizations, ITU Sector Members, and to WSIS
accredited NGOs, civil society and business entities, as well as to media. Regularly
updated information about the event, including a draft agenda, can be found at the ITU
website (http://www.itu.int)
18 – 23 July 2004, APC/CATIA Regional ICT Policy Advocacy
Workshop, Nairobi, Kenya
The Association for Progressive
Communications (APC) and Catalysing Access to ICTs in Africa (CATIA) are organising this
regional workshop to be held at Landmark Hotel (Nairobi, Kenya). The workshop will focus
on building expertise in ICT policy issues and advocacy techniques, while creating
opportunities for participants to map out their own ICT policy contexts and relate them to
local needs and priorities. As well as enabling them to interrogate some of the
complexities of ICT policy processes at regional and global levels. More: www.apc.org OR www.catia.ws
21 – 23 July 2004, ICTs and the library; experiences,
opportunities and challenges for libraries in Africa workshop, Johannesburg, South Africa
A three-day workshop (by invitation only) for
Carnegie Corporation of New York grantees in Africa. The theme of the workshop is
“Sustainable use of ICTs in African libraries”. The objectives of the workshop
include sharing experiences of the use of ICTs in CCNY-supported libraries; providing an
overview of the issues involved in the adoption, implementation and sustainable use of
ICTs within libraries; exposing participants to new ICT developments in libraries;
identifying best practice for key challenges still to be faced in the effective use and
implementation of ICTs in libraries in Africa; and identifying which areas of ICT use in
libraries are priorities for further support. Contact: Martin Belcher (mbelcher@inasp.info)
5 – 7 August 2004, Women and ICT: Challenges and
Opportunities, Arusha, Tanzania
23 – 27 August 2004, Kabissa “Time to get Online”
Training-of-Trainers Workshop, Accra, Ghana
Kabissa has launched the next phase of its
“Time to Get Online” project, training African civil society organizations on
how to integrate the Internet into their work. Kabissa invites West African civil society
organizations interested in conducting their own “Time to Get Online” workshop
to apply for the upcoming Training-of-Trainers program in Accra. http://www.timetogetonline.org/workshops.php
31 August - 2 September, 2005: Second World Information
Technology Forum (WITFOR), Gaborone, Botswana
The purpose of the WITFOR Conferences is to
help implement information for development strategies and projects in developing
countries. The conference is a partnership between the host government and Federation for
Information Processing (IFIP). The outcome of the second conference will be the Gaborone
Protocol addressing the following themes: building the infrastructure, economic
opportunity, empowerment and participation, health, education, environment, agriculture,
social and ethical aspects, which will be submitted to the UNESCO General Conference 2005
for adoption. More: http://www.witfor.org/
16 – 18 September 2004, Highway Africa Conference 2004,
Grahamstown, South Africa
The eighth Highway Africa Conference,
“Media making the Information Society”, in September 2004 will have a strong
alignment to the unfolding processes of the World Summit on the Information Summit (WSIS).
The overarching theme of the Highway Africa Conference 2004 is technology. The conference
will seek to address the interface of technology with society, development, policy,
access, content and the media. The conference concentrates on new media issues relevant
for journalists, encompassing the policy, economics, development and technology questions
around Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). More: https://www.comminit.com/africa/events_cal/2004/181-event.html
9 – 11 November 2005, Second World Summit of Cities and
Local Authorities on the Information Society – WSLAIS, Bilbao, Spain
The main mission of the 2nd World Summit of
Cities and Local Authorities on the Information Society will be to shape the position of
the Local Authorities into a Plan of Action, which will be presented during the second
phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (Tunis, 16-18 November 2005). For two
and a half days, some 2,000 local government representatives from all around the world
will discuss different sectors and aspects of the Information Society in plenary and
parallel sessions and also in thematic workshops, while a concurrent exhibition will
display information concerning local, regional and international initiatives and projects.
More: http://www.it4all-bilbao.org/
ANNOUNCEMENTS .....ANNOUNCEMENTS .....
AISI Media Awards 2004: Application Deadline Extended
The deadline for application to the AISI Media Awards 2004 has been extended to 31 July
2004 The AISI Media Awards were introduced in 2003 to encourage more informed coverage of
the information society and ICT for development issues in Africa as part of ECA’s
Information Society Outreach and Communication Programme. The Awards are aimed at
individual journalists and media institutions based in Africa that are “promoting
journalism which contributes to a better understanding of the information society in
Africa. The winners will be announced in September 2004. More: http://www.uneca.org/aisi/mediaaward.htm
UNESCO’s WSIS Action Directory Launched
UNESCO’s WSIS Action Directory, an
online platform providing access to information on UNESCO’s contribution to the
implementation of the Plan of Action adopted by the World Summit on the Information
Society in December 2003 has been launched. The address is: http://www.unesco.org/wsisdirectory
Registrations open for Highway Africa 2004
Registrations have now opened for Highway
Africa 2004 conference. Highway Africa is the largest annual gathering of African media
professionals on the continent. It is the only event of its kind in Africa, with over 340
delegates attending from 22 countries attending last year. For more information on the
conference, registration and award nominations please visit www.highwayafrica.org.za or contact Luthando
Kitit (L.Kitit@ru.ac.za).
Archives:
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