IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation has just released its 2018 Ibrahim Forum Report: Public Service in Africa.

This Report will inform the discussion of the 2018 Ibrahim Forum taking place in Kigali, Rwanda, on Saturday 28 April. The Forum will focus on Public Service in Africa: its key relation to good governance and effective leadership, new challenges and current shortcomings, and the ways and means to strengthen it and make it appealing to the next generation.

The cable has simultaneously launched in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa and Uganda on July 23. It is widely seen to be opening up opportunities for governments and business to use the network as a platform to compete globally and drive economic growth.

Charles Mbogori, the executive director of the East African Business Council, says e-government builds accountability by eliminating gatekeepers and standardising service delivery.

The Rockefeller Foundation has awarded a $630,100 project support grant to the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) to support the initial implementation this year of a global e-Health training program in sub-Saharan Africa designed for primary care providers, technical staff and health policy-makers. The Rockefeller grant will support Health Informatics Building Blocks (HIBBs), a program developed by AMIA in which distance-learning supports clinical and health informatics training in low-resource countries where greater understanding and use of informatics and databases can enable better support of community care and public health services. This education initiative will provide an infrastructure that enables a broad audience such as community health workers in developing countries to acquire skills and knowledge in informatics at little or no cost to indigenous institutions or individuals.

Collaboration between Africans and the rest of the world is important with regard to the development of ICT in Africa, he said at the opening of the EuroAfriCa-ICT Awareness Workshop in Kampala on Monday.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where roughly 60% of people still live in rural areas urbanisation is occurring faster than anywhere else in the world. The temptation to build new cities on greenfield sites, away from existing city centres is enormous.

Alison Groves, director: discipline lead: built ecology and WSP in Africa and Hlologelo Manthose, built ecology: sustainability consultant at WSP in Africa, are advocates for retrofitting buildings to make them more sustainable – environmentally, socially and economically – across Africa’s cityscapes.

The 14,000km West Africa Cable System (WACS) will connect around 12 countries in all — including Namibia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo and Togo — which have never had direct access to a submarine communications cable.

The WACS is said to guarantee a total capacity of 5.12tbit/sec and a policy of ‘open access’ to increase competition and encourage more widespread internet use, particularly in rural areas. Only about 10 per cent of Africans are web users, compared with 65 per cent of Europeans.

The Telecom Equipment and Services Export Promotion Council (TEPC), on Saturday called for the establishment of a greater Information and Communication Technology in Africa and the developing world.

The Director-General, TEPC, Shri Rajesk Kumar Bhatnagar said in a statement that the Indo-Africa ICT Expo and Summit 2017 was an avenue where African ICT experts would fashion the future of the industry.

According to a report released by Research ICT Africa, Tanzania is the number one African country when it comes to broadband affordability packages.

For 5GB of surfing data, Tanzanians averagely pay US$13.30 on prepaid and US$18.77 for ADSL.

Three activities are proposed: one focussing on the health workforce (scaling-up numbers, improving performance, increasing quality); a second on clinical services (increasing health service coverage, reaching isolated areas) and a third aimed at strengthening the intelligence gathering capacity of health systems and their ability to use information for decision making.

Characterised by discord, lawlessness, noise, high levels of pollution among other metrics; navigating oneself in most African cities has been a well-documented nightmare that the media and academic writers have written about; time and again. Owing to rapid African population growth and urbanisation, today’s cities have become critical centres of civilisation. Statistics by the world bank show that whilst 54% of the world’s population lives in urban areas 80% of global outputs (by value), measured by the gross domestic product (GDP), are produced in urbanised areas.

Now here’s the next frontier, data.

In terms of the capacity to use IT, Africa cannot be looked at as a single homogenous region – some areas are still under-developed and some are far along the development path. Most developing regions (and Africa is no exception) abound in examples of systems that are not used for lack of basic ICT education, a lack of secondary equipment, reliable power supply or adequate communications infrastructure.

Standard commercial PCs and IT equipment require "normal office conditions" to function effectively – reasonably temperature-controlled, relatively dust-free environments with stable power supplies. In rural areas, which constitute the greater part of Africa, these conditions simply do not prevail and do not suit the use of the typical, inexpensive, off-the-shelf PC.

Over the past two decades, Chinese companies have come to dominate the telecom infrastructure landscape in emerging markets. Around 50% of Africa’s 3G networks and 70% of its 4G networks are built by Huawei.

The Clean Network initiative was the central Trump administration policy aimed at curbing the expansion of Chinese technology infrastructure but has only found success in getting European countries to agree to use non-Chinese infrastructure in expanding telecom networks. Countries such as the United Kingdom (UK), Czech Republic, and Poland, as well as telecom companies such as Orange and Telstra, notably signed on to the initiative.

Ninety percent of rural Africa lives without electricity and majority of the population have to walk many miles to overcrowded schools without desks to learn. Few communities have libraries or resource centres and are thus socially and economically deprived of the much-needed resources of information, even information about their own country! There is no sense of belonging to the wider global village.

Data centre growth around the world is booming and business is on the cusp of a revolution, said Sanjay Kumar Sainani, SVP & CTO of Huawei’s Global Data Center Business.

Sainani, who has 30 years of experience with data centres, said that there are a few major trends emerging specifically in the segment of data centre facilities.

Technology has opened up new prospects in every aspect of our lives.

When Covid-19 struck, technology provided new platforms in education – dramatically changing the way learning and teaching was conducted.

The pandemic transformed ways of working, living, and relating on a global level. As a result, the education sector has had to adapt, driven by the need to digitalise education and training to remain competitive and provide high-quality education.

Connecting the unconnected and recognizing Africa’s women trailblazers will be focus at Africa Internet Summit.

The Internet Society (InternetSociety.org) will call for the adoption of policies and frameworks that expand access and create greater demand for the Internet during the 4th annual Africa Internet Summit (AIS) (InternetSummitAfrica.org) in Gaborone, Botswana from 29 May – 10 June, 2016. Urging policymakers to grasp the opportunity offered by the expansion and growth of the Internet across the continent, the Internet Society will advocate for greater collaboration by all Internet decision-makers in creating an accessible, trusted Internet that benefits all Africans.

For years, Kyle Spencer has been devoting countless hours of his free time to his passion: online gaming. The gaming community in East Africa, where Spencer lives, is woefully underdeveloped, but he has been doing his best to bring players together. It has always been an uphill battle; for games that rely on quick reflexes, the issue of latency makes connecting with other gaming enthusiasts across the region all but impossible.

The cables have gone a long way towards connecting the continent, says Ibrahim Guimba-Saidou, senior vice-president of SES Commercial Africa, but in themselves are unable to bridge the digital divide.