Uganda

The Research and Education Network of Uganda (RENU) hosted UbuntuNet-Connect 2009 from 12th-13th November 2009 at Hotel Africana in Kampala, Uganda. UbuntuNet-Connect is the premier event in the area of research and education networking in Africa and brings together policy makers, regulators, service providers, researchers, teachers, content providers, and ICT professionals from around the world. Conference proceedings are available from the conference website.

The SPIDER Board has approved a new project within the area of eHealth. The proof of concept project “ICT4MPOWER” is a collaboration between many partners including the Ministry of Health, UCC, the Ministry of ICT, Makerere University, Karolinska Unversity Hospital in Sweden and Ericsson AB, among other. 

In collaboration with The Millennium Villages and Ericsson, SPIDER and AIESEC are now looking for a Junior ICT Expert to join the Millennium Villages Cluster in rural Uganda in order to support the launch of mHealth activities.

During discussions with the Ministry of ICT and the Ugandan Communication Commission (UCC) in August 2008, SPIDER was asked to support the development of eHealth in Uganda within the context of rural development.

A lot has been said about mobile phone usage and its potential to spur development in Africa. But have we really seen anything interesting that goes beyond voice communication and simple SMS? Well, many may have heard about the developments in the Philippines, and in Kenya the m-banking application called M-PESA is fairly well known, and a few might have heard of the innovative usage of FrontlineSMS (a SMS bulk tool and management system that allows mass-messaging to mobile phones) by civil society organisations in the region. Apart from that, what else? The first M4D Workshop in East Africa, sponsored by Sida and organised by DICTS at Makerere University, Knowledge Consulting Ltd and UPGRAID, clearly showed that there are far more applications around than the well known m-banking and mass-messaging tools.

This fall, Makerere University in Uganda together with the Linux Users Group of Uganda carried out a Red Hat Linux certification training program targeted at IT professionals and academics. The training was supported by the “EU-ACP Centre for the Development of Enterprise” (CDE) and SPIDER.

At the end of August, during meetings with the Ministry of ICT and the Swedish Embassy in Kampala, Uganda, it was agreed that SPIDER would host a delegation from the Ugandan Parliament and Ministry of ICT to visit Sweden. The purpose would be to study the potential of a well-developed eSociety, such as Sweden, where the country virtually stops if the internet were to go down. Not only does the Swedish government and parliament use ICT as a tool to increase transparency, communicate with the citizens and provide access to online services, but the average citizens of Sweden also pays the bills online, declares  taxes via e-mail or SMS, refers to online services such as http://www.eniro.se/  for finding a telephone number, accessing maps for a certain area or to get the information on best route by public transport or by own car from one address to another.

In response to the needs for onsite ICT expert assistance in developing countries, SPIDER sends skilled and motivated junior ICT experts to organizations in developing regions. The developing country gains from knowledge transfer, whilst the individual experts broaden their horizons and learn to work in challenging environment with limited resources.