Wednesday, November 27, 2002

African tech firm sheds senior staff Interesting to see what countries in Africa they cover - check out their website. African tech firm sheds senior staff. African Lakes Corporation, which runs internet services across Africa, is trying to move into profit by slimming its executive roster. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition] 8:07:54 PM

Monday, November 18, 2002

Tanzanian women get online bug I attended a conference in Dar Es Salaam this summer, where we set up an Internet cafe in one of the conference rooms for the attendees. Internet access was pretty bad - the line that was pullled from the internet connection to our conference room was in bad shape - decayed from the humidity, I guess. We strung a new line and were able to surf OK. 7:28:53 PM

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Back from Bamako: Thoughts about NEPAD The small conference in Bamako was very stimulating, and I am still trying to wrap my head around how we can use IT to fascilitate the growth of the African judiciaries as well as make communications between African governments easier. Since I live in Bulgaia, I have a keen interest in the development of the EU. I wonder if an EU-style union - with guarantees for citizens rights and economic and monetary union will someday take place in Africa? The African Union's NEPAD program seems to be heading in this direction with its peer review mechanism and focus on sustainable development. Would it be possible for the AU to leapfrog the EU and use some truly modern methods of conducting their affairs to avoid building a very large and possibly unweildy governing apparatus? 11:38:13 AM

Monday, December 02, 2002

Travel: Bamako, Mali I'm heading to Bamako, Mali today - well, overnight in Paris and then on to Bamako via Abidjan. The travel is for work - two website development projects for African judicial ministers and government ministers. I'm not sure about the connectivity in Bamako; therefore, I may be posting a little less. Lately my GoogleBox (on the right) has been featuring a search for "Mali linux." 9:45:16 AM

Thursday, October 31, 2002

Open IT - Govt to rewrite source code in Linux My colleague Gordon e-mailed me this post, which is from the IndiaTimes. the title of the article is misleading - it's really about the Indian goverment's interest in promoting the use of Linux. "The Department of Information Technology has already devised a strategy to introduce Linux and open source software as a de-facto standard in academic institutions, especially in engineering colleges through course work that encourages use of such systems." During my last trip to Belgaum (central India), I visited the local tech college and checked out a nice Linux-based computer lab that used inexpensive black boxes that gave the user GUI sessions that were hosted on a Linux server. The campus had a t-1 connection to the internet. 11:49:39 AM

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

Radio E-mail in West Africa: The Complete Version I love solutions like this: using 2-way radio to build a network in Guinea, West Africa, for offices over 375 miles (600 kilometers) apart! 1:47:09 PM

Monday, October 07, 2002

Why the poor need technology Since I do alot of work in Africa and India, the issue of technology access for the poor is close to my heart. This BBC article is nice - preaching to the choir here; however, I still would like to read a more comprehensive - and convincing - analysis of why the poor need technology. Clean water and decent medicine are pretty high priorities... of course these needs are not mutually exclusive - there is no reason why technology access can't facilitate some of these more important (in my view) issues. Noted in the article is how there is an incorrect perception that the digital divide is "yesterday's issue;" my experience during a recent trip to India confirms this point. there isn't even a decent backbone connection to Europe from India - that connection is completely saturated in the afternoon, rendering web access completely useless to Europe. 8:47:44 PM

© Copyright 2002 Chris Kelley.