Web and Mobile, Content and Services

I had the honor of attending on Saturday 21-April 2012; a meeting organized by some Sudanese academicians and youth aiming at establishing an organization for promoting a Knowledge-based Society in Sudan.

The initiative aims at establishing a non-governmental society or organization with branches all over Sudan and the goals have been defined to raise awareness and education about KM (Knowledge Management) through the provision of training courses on electronic learning using the Internet sharing experiences ,organizing competitions and KM system development .

The World Health Organization (WHO) has released their May 2012 Bulletin chronicling many such innovations in global health, under the theme of "eHealth".

While there is celebration in order for the many eHealth initiatives designed and deployed everyday across the globe, this WHO Bulletin prompts one to wonder as well: just because impressive technologies exist, are they making a difference? Do they immediately lead to improved care quality, cost savings, or lives saved?

Mobile operator Vodacom, South African budget airline Mango and Internet service provider Wireless-G teamed up last week to bring the country and the Southern Hemisphere one step further to in-flight wifi.

Over a hundred guests boarded the maiden Wi-Fi flight in Lanseria, just outside Johannesburg, to take to the skies while staying in contact with friends and family on the internet. But the excitement was only limited to a few passengers, as 70% of the eager surfers were unable to connect to the network.

The World Bank is in the process of developing the next Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) FY13-FY16 for Ethiopia. As part of the CPS preparation process and in order to gain a better understanding of the development context and the needs of the ultimate beneficiaries of World Bank support, the Bank is conducting consultations with a wide range of stakeholders throughout the country and abroad.

The ‘Kony 2012’ YouTube video was a phenomenon previously unseen in new media. Attracting over one hundred million views, it has been described as the most viral online campaign in history.

It made Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony a household name, and pushed discussion about his Lord’s Resistance Army, who have been terrorising East and Central Africa for 26 years, to the top of the agenda.

It also attracted a lot of criticism from across the world, and in particular, from some of Uganda’s online community, many of whom said the film ignored Ugandan voices.

Radio astronomers in Africa and across the globe will benefit from faster collaboration through a dedicated, high speed 15,000 km network link between the pan-European GÉANT and African UbuntuNet Alliance education networks announced last week.

The 2Gbps point-to-point circuit will enable astronomers at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) in South Africa to stream observational data to the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE) in the Netherlands for processing and correlation, and is the first point-to-point circuit between GÉANT and UbuntuNet. 

Would you publicly come clean you paid a bribe to get a service? Probably not. But an app customized for Kenya is making it easier for citizens to report bribery incidences across the country, anonymously.

I Paid a Bribe (IPaB) is a desktop, mobile web and SMS app that gives Kenyans a platform to share their experiences with bribery. Through a user-friendly interface, a user can post an incident where they had to pay a bribe because a public officer expressly asked for it or a situation where the officer asked for it but they refused to pay the bribe.

The Namibia Tourism Board (NTB) has launched an online marketing campaign called 'Conservation Destination' to showcase remarkable conservation stories about Namibia, and inspire locals to make contributions.

NTB spokesperson Maggy Mbako said in a media statement issued on Tuesday that the campaign will run until June 1 this year.

The 'Conservation Destination' campaign was launched last Sunday to coincide with World Earth Day.

A media blackout is being enforced by the military junta in Guinea-Bissau that staged a coup d'état on April 12, 2012.

The Media Foundation for West Africa's (MFWA) source in the country reported that on the day of the coup, the coup makers forced all the media houses to close down.

Chris Haye Onanuga, the man at the center of the purported hijacking of the judges’ verdict for the Miss Liberia 2011/2012 crown, said he had to step in to avoid confusion because the judges were “ignorant” of the rules and regulations governing the pageant, which was created by the organizer, CT.Com.

Onanuga said the panel of judges, headed by Maxine Menson of Ghana (an Executive Producer of the ECOWAS Peace Pageant and Consultant to the Miss Ghana Beauty Pageant), failed to follow the rules and regulation of Miss Liberia 2011/2012.