IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The conference, which is entitled 'Driving Development with ICT and the Internet' is being held under the patronage of H.E. Sheikha Lubna Al-Qasimi, Minister of Economy, and will be attended by high profile government delegations from Egypt, Jordan.

The chairman of the Sharjah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, or SCCI, Ahmed Mohammed Al Midfa and Chief Executive Officer of Infopark Kochi, Siddhartha Bhattacharya, signed a Memorandum of Understanding as the first step towards the initiative, which will provide Sharjah-based businesses access to top-end talent and knowledge-based resources in Kerala’ world-class companies.

This is a mandatory 2% annual levy on the revenue made by all licensed telecommunications companies operating in the country towards the UCC managed Rural Communications Development Fund (RCDF).

MTN chief, Mazen Mroué, presented the sh15,925,352,350 to UCC’s Godfrey Mutabazi yesterday. Mroué said: “Telecommunications plays an increasingly important role UCC in plans to spread ICT literacy countrywide.

Speaking at the Uganda Institute of ICT in Kampala on Friday, Bob Lyazi, the Director of the Rural Communication Development Fund at UCC said about $10m had been invested in the initiative.

Each of these laboratories carries at least 40 custom made computers built to suit conditions in Uganda’s secondary schools.

For instance, despite the requirement that every student pays Shs30,000 per academic year for purposes of developing ICT in the National Teachers’ Colleges on top of budgetary provisions by the Ministry of Education, it is disheartening to report the high level of resistance arising out of the beliefs and practices of the students. The other main obstacle can be categorised under organisational management support structures.

Digital governments take such dimensions as; service delivery, access to public information, open data and citizen engagement.

The 21st century dynamics arguably provide a smart way for governments to go against the step by step development theory as posited by Walt Rostow back in the 1960s.

To realize this, an information communication technology (ICT) approach in gender reporting has been recommended to speed up justice for victims of sexual violence.

The call was made by the director of Centre for Justice Studies and Innovations (CJSI), Valentine Namakula.

The digital Hub is part of the ‘Connecting Classrooms’ project being implemented by the British Council across Sub Saharan Africa. In Uganda the project will see 14 hubs set up in 10 districts.

In his remarks, Peter Brown, British Council Country Director noted that the hubs will have high speed internet connection freely provided for the next three years in partnership with Airtel Uganda.

Speaking at a function where 28 informal artisans were certified after undergoing training at the Uganda Institute of Information Technology (UICT), Nasasira, in a speech read by the permanent secretary, Patrick Samanya, said mixing informal and formal ICT training will help in seeing that a good base of ICT is formed.

Speaking at the Transform Africa Summit 2013 in Rwanda, the Ugandan leader said that “ICT must not only be used to assist agricultural development, manufacturing, education and the services sector but also handled as a sector by itself especially in out-sourcing of jobs' abroad. It must also be optimally applied in solving challenges in automation of machines, storing and retrieving of information, identifying of persons to eliminate crime, in democratic voting systems, sorting out the wage bill and in defence systems.”

While presenting the research findings of 2011 information economic report yesterday at Makerere University, he said that the research finding reflect frequent absence of ICT dimension from Private Sector development strategies.

This in turn hinders the sector’s competitiveness, Ndiwalana noted. He added that there is need for government to create environments for greater ICT adoption for private sector development.

The BC's Representative Daudi Mulongo while addressing the gathering said that, "The British Council is willing and ready to support the secondary schools in Uganda with equipment in order to enhance the Information, Computer and Technology era to students who cannot afford to buy computers and get to internet."

The ministry has developed the National ICT for Disability Policy as an intervention to close gaps in the use of ICTs by PWDs

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become the leading medium for communicating, transacting, informing, educating and entertaining all over the world.

Usage of technologies such as television, radio, fixed and mobile telephony, has become a basic and indispensable feature in the lives of people across the globe.

Commissioned by Minister of Information and Communications Technology Aggrey Awori, the project aims at serving Eastern Uganda and the areas bordering Kenya.

ICT minister Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda attributed Uganda’s success on Universities and other tertiary institutions, which had engaged fully in information technology.

Globally, Uganda is among the 82 world nations which have advanced technological and innovation capabilities. The rest of African countries were not ranked for lack of data to measure the relative standing on technology, innovation, human capital and other measures of economic competitiveness.

The ministry of communications said that it was “hopeful that by increasing IT education for Ugandan students, we will be able to improve those interested in becoming leaders in the sector.”

The government has entered an agreement with China in which Uganda would receive a US$120m (about Shs219.6 billion) loan for development of the national Information Communication Technology (ICT) system infrastructure.

The NBI was one of the best ideas that came with the creation of the new Information and Communication technology Ministry. The same project was supposed to facilitate the operations of its other half the Electronic Government Infrastructure (EGI) project.

Legislators on the ICT Committee of Parliament last week questioned the $126 million (about Shs252 billion) cost for the national ICT project, arguing that Rwanda is carrying out a similar project across 2,300 km for only $38 million (about Shs76 billion).

However the latter is not happening as it should be, according to Uganda's ICT Minister Dr Ham-Mukasa Mulira (pictured)and that realisation is partly the centre of intense deliberations by the ongoing e-Governance Forum on how citizens can be primed to effectively utilise ICT tools.