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Euro-Africa / ICT News


Research and development cooperation between Europe and Africa in the field of ICTs.

AU 2010 Summit and AU ICT Exhibition (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia / Jan. 29 - Feb. 2, 2009)
02 12 2009 ICT have fundamentally changed the way people communicate, work and earn their livelihood. It has forged new ways to create knowledge, educate people and disseminate information. It has restructured the way the world conducts economic and business practices, runs governments and engages politically. Considering this reality, the Assembly of the Heads of State at the Second Ordinary Session of the African Union Summit held in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia in January 2009 approved the Decision (Assembly/AU/Dec. 232(XII)) to have the January 2010 Summit theme on �Information and Communications Technologies in Africa: Challenges and Prospects for Development�. During this Summit, key issues for consideration will be: The Enabling Environment for Growth / ICT Infrastructure Development / Africa in the Economics of the Internet / Capacity Building and Research & Development.

The UN Economic Commission for Africa (UN-ECA) promotes the use of iCT for Africa�s socio-economic development, through policy analysis, advocacy and capacity building of its member States. ECA is also a bridge that brings emerging global UN issues on ICT to Africa, and takes Africa�s ICT issues to the UN. It achieves its objectives through alliances and partnerships, most notably with the AU, the AfDB and with African Information Society communities. The recent repositioning of ECA to better serve Africa�s development needs has created a new, focused Division of ICT, Science and Technology (ISTD), thus aligning ICT more closely with AU partners for enhanced collaboration. The ICT world, its cyberspace and the information Society in general reflect the increasing importance of access to knowledge for socio-economic development. A knowledge based economy is one in which the exploitation of knowledge has come to play the predominant part in the creation of wealth and prosperity for the communities. The importance of knowledge in economic growth is widely acknowledged worldwide and it is evident that the creation of a knowledge economy and knowledge-based industries does not happen in isolation, but is highly correlated with An efficient innovation system of firms, research centers, universities, and other organisations that can tap into the growing stock of global knowledge, assimilate and adapt it to local needs and create new knowledge.

In order to showcase innovative ICT projects and to demonstrate the role that ICT can play in Africa�s socio- economic development, the AU Department of Human Resources Science and Technology, is organising an exhibition on ICT and innovation for Africa with the technical cooperation of the ECA. The exhibition will run in parallel with the 2010 Summit of Heads of States and Governments.

Information Letter / Exhibitor Manual / Contact: Auguste Yankey (S&T and ICT Division - Department of Human Resources Science and Technology - African Union Commission)

FP7-ICT-2009-6 ICT Call for Porposals is now open! (closing date: April 13, 2010)
01 12 2009 The next FP7/ICT Call for Proposals (FP7-ICT-2009-6) is now open. The call fiche, the associated work programme, guides for applicants relevant to the funding schemes used in this call, an overview of the basic features of this programme, and other key documents required for the preparation of project proposals are available at: FP7-ICT-2009-6

Rural Data Collection Boosted by Mobile Tech (source: SciDev Net)
30 11 2009 Scientists have harnessed a free operating system to turn a mobile phone into a device for collecting data in the developing world. The Open Data Kit (ODK), developed by scientists at the University of Washington, United States, is a free set of tools that helps organisations collect information in areas with poor infrastructure. It uses Android, an open-source mobile operating system launched two years ago by a number of companies including Google. "There are many organisations working on all kinds of projects to improve different aspects in developing regions. In order for these organisations to make decisions or determine the effects of their projects, they need to collect various kinds of information," study co-author Carl Hartung told SciDev.Net. ODK enables users to collect a range of data including GPS locations and barcode scans. "The tools we've developed can help them collect a wide variety of data, create visualisations, and analyse it very quickly," Hartung said. "We've found a lot of organisations were building a lot of one-off tools that were very similar," he says, adding that they're trying to make theirs as compatible and flexible as possible. One example where ODK has been successfully trialled is the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH), said Hartung, a partnership between Kenya's Moi University and Indiana University in the United States. The programme seeks to train Kenyan community health workers testing patients in rural areas for diseases. In field trials, health workers used the phones to scan patients' identity codes - rather than entering them manually - locate themselves within seconds using GPS, and upload the data automatically. Following the success of the trial AMPATH will deploy 100 ODK phones by the end of this year, with an eventual goal of 300 phones. "This opens doors by allowing us to bring data collected in the field directly into our medical records system," said Burke Mamlin, assistant professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine. "Now we have a phone, all the personal digital assistant capability, the ability to read barcodes, and the ability to capture images or video, all in one unit."

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