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WEEKLY PUBLICATION DEADLINE: 12 pm GMT Sunday.  ISSUE NO 108 ETHIOPIA - INFRASTRUCTURE ROLL-OUT GATHERS PACE BUT MONOPOLY REMAINS
Two developments over the past 12 months capture the nature of progress and challenge in IT in Ethiopia. The eventual completion of the UNDP financed project in Spring 2001 that has now added eight POPs (Points-of-Presence) in the provincial cities of Jimma, Awassa, Bahir Dar (not fully functional), Nazreth, Mekele, Dessie, Shashemene, and Dire Dawa and increased bandwidth available to internet users in Addis Ababa was a significant progress that was welcome by many IT enthusiasts in the country. On the other hand, the selective clamp down on Internet cafes by the Ethiopian Telecom Corporation (ETC) that went on for most of 2001, effectively neutralizing what had seemed to be a rapidly growing IT cottage industry only a year ago is, in many ways, indicative of the progress of IT in the country-one wrought with challenges and a slow pace. Obviously, the completion of the UNDP sponsored project was the biggest Internet story in the country for the year 2001. According to Naod Missale, one of the network engineers from ETC who had participated on the project: "Over a span of 4 weeks, we had traveled to different parts of the country to install four large POPs at Dire Dawa, Jimma, Mekele and Awassa and additional small POPs in Nazareth, Shashmene, Dessie and Bahir Dar. Overall the regional POPs have a capacity to serve about 5120 subscribers. Each POP is connected to the central system with 64Kbps speed using the data network backbone. In Addis, there are 720 modem pools for up to 7200 subscribers. ETC itself is the first user of this Digital Data Network (DDN). The data communication equipment’s have been already installed in many sites in Ethiopia easing bandwidth problems." Naod stressed the additional bandwidth being made available,"The gateway to international link will be 8 Mb/s. With the completion of the installation of the new system, a lot of new features have been added and will continue to be added such as free web-based e-mail, access to mail servers through HTTP [i.e., customers can reach their email boxes from anywhere through their web browser other than POP3 and SMTP], domain names with ".et" extensions, and last but not least getting leased Internet lines." The ".et" domain names and dedicated direct leased lines are not in place yet. In fact, it may be several months before these will be available, according to some engineers we talked to. "Currently, the speed of access is at 1 MBps and will increase in the next couple of weeks to 8 MBps according to the Manager of the service," says Ato Abebe Chekol, Head of Information Services at the British Council. Along with an increase in bandwidth, there is also a talk of revising the Internet service fees that the monopoly charges its customers. Our sources indicated that with the new fee schedule (based on usage instead of a flat-fee alone), Internet access may become a little bit cheaper than what it is now. Currently, the largest network in the country in terms of potential user-base is the AAUNet, the Addis Ababa University’s fiber-optics and microwave-based local network that has a capacity to serve as many as 30,000 users. A local IT company called Micro Sun and Solutions (MSS) won the bid in 1999 to complete the first-phase of the project for a reported sum of about 5 million Ethiopian Birr. MSS reportedly completed the first phase of this project in November 2001. The AAUNet is financed by grants from a British NGO (Ethiopian Aid) and, in its just completed initial phase, connects the different campuses of the AAU at Sidist Kilo, Amst Kilo, and Arat Kilo. In the next phase of the project, AAUNet will connect the Building College at Lideta, the Medical Faculty at Black Lion Hospital, and the Faculty of the Veterinary Medical College at Debre Zeit to the network. SIDA (Swedish International Development Agency) is planning to support the completion, future extension, maintenance and initial running of the project, according to an instructor at SISA (School of Information Science for Africa) whom we had approached to comment on this project. While the Sidist, Amst and Arat Kilo campuses are connected by a fiber-optics local area network, the Lideta Campus that houses the Building College, the Medical Faculty and the Veterinary Faculty are to be connected in the next phase using either a micro-wave link-up or the new DDN service introduced by ETC. There is an ambitious plan to extend the AAUNet as a National Educational Networking Center that will eventually connect the country¹s private and public educational institutions. As of now, a 128 Kbps dedicated line is already installed that connects the AAUNet with the Internet through ETC. This connection is currently under test. However, the 128 Kbps connection does not adequately meet the bandwidth requirements of the anticipated user-base and the University is, we were told, looking forward to get a better bandwidth either through the ETC or through a direct satellite link. What the completion of this project would mean for the quality of education at the university and elsewhere in the country is easy to imagine and very much anticipated by some of the faculty members and students we talked to. Once the university gets its domain name and dedicated line, all faculty members will be able to get a 24/7 access to the Internet right from their desktops in their office, rather than waiting in line at the computer labs as they do right now. Graduate and undergraduate students will also have access to the immense research resources of the Web with this uninterrupted access. There is already a talk on how, with the help of the 24/7 Internet resources, the university could benefit from the service and skills of Ethiopian professors and researchers working abroad. A professor who wanted to remain anonymous was, however, cautiously optimistic when we asked him what this will mean to him and his colleagues. "Certainly, if and when it is completed, the dedicated Internet connection will benefit us a lot. However, I am not sure when it is going to happen. 1, 3, 5 years? I don’t know. We hope it is soon." Ato Abebe Chekol, who heads Information Services at the British Council and who was instrumental in organizing a successful IT conference in Addis Ababa in June of 2001 suggested that ETC is committed to providing more leased lines with its new upgraded system. "From what I hear, I think up to 30 leased line will be provided with the upgraded/improved capacity, " said Ato Abebe Chekol. The biggest issue is ETC’s insistence on its monopoly of Internet Cafes. For most of 2001, the monopoly was busy closing some of the visible Internet Cafes in the city. As a result, what looked like a fast growing cottage industry of Internet Cafes in Addis Ababa in the latter part of 2000 when as many as 4-5 Internet cafes were popping up almost on a weekly basis everywhere in the capital, has now subsided drastically. Faced with a growing criticism, ETC eventually opened its own Internet Café in the Legehar area. "As long as we claim that other private cyber cafés are operating illegally, we have to provide the service sufficiently to meet the market," Ato Fanta Adane, ETC’s Manager of Internet Service Division, told local media in 2001 according to Addis Ababa's business weekly, Fortune. Unfortunately, there were reportedly only 2 PCs at the whole Café that ETC opened and both were down at the time of our visit; in fact, only one of them is allocated for web-browsing. Further, ETC appears to have been selective in the Internet Cafes it actively sought to close. Intrigued by this selective closure of the city's few functioning Internet Cafes by ETC, we had attempted to talk to senior engineers and telecom executives at ETC about this and other issues. However, we were not successful. We asked the same question to an IT manager in town who asked to remain anonymous. He explained, "It seems to me that ETC is mainly against IP telephony service. In our discussion with ETC officials, we were told that ETC doesn’t opposes cyber cafés if they provide e-mail, Internet and other services as long as they are not involved in some other illegal activities - Internet telephony and the like. I think ETC is also working in preparing a guideline to give license and permit legal form of cyber cafe operation under its control." Most of the owners of the Internet Cafes that were closed by ETC have now tweaked their business model and seem to be concentrating mostly on basic IT services, like networking PCs, repair and sales. We visited some of these ex-Internet Cafes and talked to the owners who were very reluctant to discuss the issue. An entrepreneur who declined to give his name commented, "Running an Internet Café business was, of course, profitable and one that I enjoyed. But the constant threat from ETC was something I just disliked and we quit the business almost a year ago." We asked him if his customers were using VOIP (Voice Over IP ­ Internet Telephony) and he replied, "ETC had built a firewall blocking access to all sites that enabled VOIP and I can not understand why ETC is using that excuse." Given the effectiveness of Internet cafes in making Internet usage affordable and accessible to the masses and their popularity everywhere around the globe, ETC (and its policy-making counterpart ­ ETA) are increasingly facing sharp criticisms for their policy that discourages and clamps down on private Internet Cafes. We have often heard ETC arguing that reselling of its basic Internet services by third parties does not make business sense to it and hence is illegal. However, ETC itself is a reseller of Internet services from global Internet network to start with! Other African countries could be sited as excellent examples where Internet Cafés have actually brought the promises of Internet to millions. Given the economic potentials that these small industries carry, increasingly, there is a feeling that ETA and ETC can do the country a lot of economic good if such Internet businesses are encouraged. Another area the benefit of which is slowly being realized in the country is that of telemedicine ­ health care delivery where physicians examine distant patients through the use of telecommunications technologies. At least two publicly announced initiatives are being pursued in the country. The first one involves about ten hospitals in the country (Zewditu, Paulos, Nazret, Jijiga, Hosanna, Gondar Medical University Hospital, Mekelle, and Jimma Medical University Hospital) connected via the Internet to the Medical Faculty of the Addis Ababa University and Black Lion Hospital in a single telemedicine network. The focus of this initiative is to provide the necessary telemedicine network infrastructure for consultation on dermatology between physicians at the various hospitals and the Medical Faculty. There is also a talk about extending the network to include smaller clinics and provincial health centers. Obviously, if and when completed, this will allow for specialty care for patients in the various provinces and regions of the country. We were told that ECA (Economic Commission for Africa), WHO, Worldspace and a Japanese university have committed themselves to the project which is scheduled to be completed by 2002 or 2003.The second initiative involves that of the Balcha Hospital, the Russian Red Cross and some Russian Hospitals in tele-radiology. This project will require equipping Balcha Hospital with an X-ray computer tomograph along with the required telemedical equipment. However, despite what we heard about the commitment of the Russian Red Cross and the Ethiopian Ministry of Health itself, we feel that the steep cost of the project in the neighborhood of $5 million may prevent it from seeing light of day. Besides, there seems to be the necessary skill inside Ethiopia in radiology and the need to connect Balcha hospital does not seem very compelling. The past 8 to 9 years seem to have highlighted the obstacle imposed by a monopoly on the growth of Internet penetration in the country. While ETC still deserves some praises for its critical role in getting Internet connectivity in the country in the first place, the absence of competition in the ISP area has been one of the major obstacles for the dismal level of growth rate in Internet connectivity in the country. ETC has been long arguing that a free and unregulated ISP market will hurt customers. Few seem to be convinced with this line of argument, however. Further, results in other countries including the more pertinent examples of African countries like Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and Egypt overwhelmingly show that monopoly definitely hurts Internet penetration and deregulation helps foster its growth. Surprisingly enough, there has been a talk on a semi-privatization of the telecom monopoly for many years now (at least 8 years!) along the lines of finding a suitable strategic partner. The service of the UK offices of PriceWaterhouse has been sought to help ETC in finding a minority stake holder. From what we have heard, PriceWaterhouse will be ready to submit its findings as early as May of this year. There are some who expect that ETC may even select its minority share holder as early as the beginning of 2003. So, the obvious question will be: Will Ethiopian current and potential Internet users benefit from this? Undoubtedly, any relaxation of the current outdated and lethargic regulations will bring some tangible benefits such as quick response to customer demands, reduced interference with private Internet-based businesses (particularly Internet Cafes), etc. It still remains difficult, however, to suggest that anything less than a free atmosphere for ISP-business will bring very significant changes in Internet penetration. This is not to say that there is a lack of will from the country's telecom executives; but the fact that the decision making processes, particularly those related with policy and regulations, require a tacit approval from top government leaders is simply non-conducive to the type of unbridled growth Internet penetration has seen time and again in every other part of the world. To make matters worse from a policy point of view, one of the government ministerial bodies just recommended on April 12, 2002 that Internet access in Ethiopia be exclusively offered by the government! This is clearly worrisome and raises legitimate concerns about the prospects of telecom, particularly Internet, in the country. Some are, however, optimistic that with ETC, at last, having the counsel of a minority stake-holder will improve conditions for Internet penetration, services and Internet-based businesses. A source in Addis Ababa who wanted to remain anonymous said, "At least if not a full privatization, this development would also help development of the telecom sector and also to the provision of a better service to the public. I think this would also help pave the way for full privatization. However, if all of a sudden the government goes for full privatization and that one operator remains hold of the sector again the same or worst problem may also arise. And in fact the government’s main reason for not privatizing the telecom service (at least the basic one i.e. telephone) is because of its aim to reach the disadvantaged rural community. I think for this or other reasons, a careful process of privatization should be undertaken." The writer may be reached at
bikila_97@yahoo.com.
The first article on this subject was published on MediaETHIOPIA
in February 2001. Click here for article:
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SIEMENS IN BRIBERY PROBE OVER ALEGERIAN NETWORK EXPANSION DEAL Bribery probe against Siemens in Algerian network expansion deal The Algerian police have ordered a probe into allegations of bribery recently raised against German technology giant Siemens. The company had been awarded a tender in March 2002 to provide the state-owned Algérie Télécom with an additional 400,000 GSM lines. The investigation may eventually lead to the nullification of the deal and consequently the re-opening of the tender, reported Algeria Interface. Algeria's regulatory commission first became suspicious when reviewing the final bidding report submitted to it by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication (MPT). The watchdog branded MPT's justifications for ruling out bidders Alcatel, Motorola and Ericsson, as insubstantial. It was then alleged by local newspaper Liberté that MPT officials had been flown to Munich via Paris at the expense of Siemens, prior to the announcement of the tender's winner. Moreover, an MPT official was said to have altered the final bidding report so as to favor Siemens’ offer. Algérie Télécom sources stated that two suppliers ruled out in the early phases of the tender would be allowed back in the running if the bid is re-issued. Chinese companies, Huawei Technologies and Zhongxing Telecom (ZTE), both claim to have been sidelined for having 'inadequate' track records. Yet Huawei has installed some 12 million lines in a score of countries, has a research center in the California Silicon Valley and supplies switch hardware to Motorola. The expansion tender calls for the provision of infrastructure to expand the Country’s mobile phone network run by state-owned operator Algérie Télécom, which intends to increase its subscriber base from 100,000 currently to 500,000. Algérie Télécom was established in 2001 with an authorized capital is 100 million Algerian dinar, broken down into 20,000 shareholdings of AD 5,000 each and held by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. (source: http://www.menareport.com) NIGERIAN WIRELESS LICENCES - NCC SHORT-LISTS 35 FIRMS The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has selected 35 firms to bid for the Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) Licence.The 35 companies were short listed from the original 186 firms, which submitted applications for the 37 territorial regions.Mr. Dave Imoko, NCC spokesman, who disclosed this, said that at the end of the demand evaluation stage, there were more demands for FWA licence in 22 regions. Licences in these regions will be sold by auction stage and there will be final award of licences to successful bidders, he said.NCC sources said that licences in the 22 regions where demand exceeds supply would be sold at a price to be determined by the bids submitted in the auction. NAMITECH OPENS TANXANIAN OFFICE AND LOOKS TO CONTINENTAL EXPANSION NamITech limited has announced it will be opening a new office in Tanzania. The company has teamed up with a Tanzanian consortium headed by Ami Mpungwe and will be opening an office in Dar es Salaam in June. Ami Mpungwe was the first South Africa ambassador to Tanzania and currently sits on the Board of Illovo Sugar Ltd SA and Multichoice in Tanzania. NamITech East Africa is the first step in the implementation of NamITech’s pan-African strategy. The company intends to increase its local presence in East African countries and through NamITech East Africa will provide secure technology solutions to its customers in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and the DRC.NamITech will use East Africa as a hub and if it works positively, would consider other hubs on the continent. EGYPT GETS FIBRE-OPTIC IN ITS SEWERS The Florida-based fiber optic deployment company CableRunner North America, in conjunction with their parent company, Vienna’s Austria Water and Sewer (WKA), announced that they have awarded Egypt’s National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) exclusive rights to use CableRunner technology for installing fiber optic networks in the country. (source: http://www.menareport.com) SA’S ISPS WANT TELKOM’S ACCOUNTING SEPARATED The Internet Service Providers’ Association and SA Value-Added Network Services Association (SAVA) are asking the Competition Commission to force Telkom to separate the accounting of its telephony and data businesses. In a complaint lodged with the commission yesterday, the organisations cite Telkom’s continued refusal to provide their members with the facilities they require as reason for penalties to be imposed on the company. Telkom has not yet responded to the action. (source: http://www.itweb.co.za) ZAMBIA’S COPPERBELT ENERGY CORP SIGNS WITH INTRINSIC Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC) and Intrinsic Technology of South Africa have signed a multi-million dollar agreement to replace CEC’s telecommunication infrastructure and improve service to its clients. CEC acting chief executive officer Charles Milupi said at a signing ceremony in Kitwe yesterday the firm had decided to invest in more modern and advanced telecommunication technology to improve the electricity network that mainly supplies the mines. "The company has made a strategic corporate decision to replace some of the existing telecommunication infrastructure with a more modern, reliable and flexible system based on fibre optic cables," Mr Milupi said. He said the project, which would be fully funded by CEC, would begin in April 2002 and was expected to be commissioned by the end of October. Mr Milupi said CEC would be the only company to have such kind of technology in Zambia, which he described as efficient and more reliable. IN BRIEF - Five world-leading companies, including Nortel, Alcatel, and Motorola, have applied for equipping and operating the third mobile phone network due to be launched in Egypt late this year, according to Arabic daily Al Shark Al Awsat. - Lagos-based internet services provider, Prodigy International Limited, is fighting a winding up petition in the Federal High Court. - The South African Government should appoint an "e-Minister" to oversee the implementation of a national e-Strategy, according to Cape Town based international NGO bridges.org - Africa Online, Kenya’s leading Internet service provider yesterday announced the launch of a high speed dial-up Internet connection service for its customers. - The University of Pretoria, together with Dimension Data, is rolling out a new campus network solution to meet the institution’s growing data communication requirements into the foreseeable future. - Unconfirmed reports suggest that 6 companies have applied for shares in Ghana Telecom; including Vodaphone and British Telecom.
SA’S IST GROUP ON THE ACQUISITION TRAIL WITH R54M WAR CHEST ELECTRONICS and engineering company IST Group said it was thinking about making an acquisition and was armed with a R54m "war chest" to do so, according to its annual report released yesterday.IST said this formed part of its plan to go on a "new growth path" by expanding its existing operations following the completion of its turnaround process. The group’s CE, Harry Coetzee, while giving few details, said the move was meant to strengthen the position of its various operations in the markets in which it operated, and to, where possible, push up hard-currency earnings. Caid: "R54m may seem a modest war chest but it should be borne in mind that our targets are mainly intellectual property companies that typically have a small capital base." The acquisition criteria are that the possible target should fit IST’s existing businesses, or have strong intellectual property, with an existing export operation. There was "a chance" that the acquisition would fit into IST’s electronics group, Coetzee said. (source: Business Day via http://www.allAfrica.com) SENTECH LICENCE COSTS IT DEARLY The two licences issued to Sentech this week, which turned it into a telecommunications operator overnight, will cost the company R50 million, but it will have to spend at least twice that much to establish school Internet laboratories throughout the country. The state-owned broadcast signal distributor received international gateway and multimedia services licences this week after Telkom’s five-year exclusivity came to an end.In terms of the licences, Sentech will pay a R25 million once-off fee for each, far below the combined R300 million originally envisaged by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA). It will also pay 0.5% of its revenues from each licence annually and make contributions to the Universal Service Fund. Far outweighing the direct licence costs, however, is the more than R100 million it will have to spend to connect 500 rural schools to the Internet within five years. The multimedia licence, which caused controversy when the Telecommunications Amendment Act that enabled it was debated, requires Sentech to install a minimum of 8 500 Internet-connected computers in schools in rural areas. Sentech will be responsible for providing the computers as well as upgrading buildings to house them and supplying furniture for these buildings. The workstations must feature word processing, anti-virus and e-mail software, and the networks, which will range from five to 25 workstations, must each support up to 1,500 user accounts. The hardware costs of the obligations are conservatively estimated at R100 million. Sentech will also be obliged to train 1 000 teachers to act as network administrators and to provide 2 500 teachers with "professional development opportunities" to enable them to use the new facilities to teach. Internet access must be provided by Sentech, but will be paid for by the schools at rates agreed on in consultation with the Department of Education and Schoolnet. (source: http://www.itweb.co.za) IN BRIEF - Directors of the once floundering Bytes Technology Group are so confident the firm is fighting fit again that it has become one of the few SA Information Technology groups to pay a dividend. - Technology distribution companies Mustek and Rectron are to merge, after the bulk of minority shareholders in Rectron accepted Mustek’s bid of 80c for their shares. - Ogun State Governor, Chief Olusegun Osoba said that his State’s N500million invested in the botched Nigerian Telecommunications Limited and Investors International (London) Limited (IILL) privatization deal will be returned.
WELCOME TO AFRICAN TECHNOLOGY ISSUES COLUMN (ISSUE 107) I am happy about the new column by John West. I like it particularly for attempting to go behind the scenes on the issues surrounding ICTs for development. He did a lot explaining about how ICT is not just about technology. Meddie Mayanja * Thanks to Bram for pointing out that the "liaison spécialisé" in the Sonatel story last week is a private line in English.
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LAW REPORTS TO BE LAUNCHED ON CD According to This Day, the Butterworths Nigeria Law Reports Series, a CDRom product featuring the All England Law Reports, the Weekly Reports of Nigeria and the monthly judgements of the Supreme Court was launched by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Muhammed Uwais on May 9, 2002, at the Agip Recital Hall, Muson Centre, Lagos. To effectively address the Nigerian market, Butterworths will be partnered by Legal text Publishing Company Limited, publishers of the Weekly Reports of Nigeria (Law Reports) since 2000, and appointed distributors for All England Law Reports (electronic format) for Nigeria by Butterworths. The Nigerian Law Report Series features the electronic format of WRN containing all editions from 2000 to date including consolidated indexes). The partnership also includes Florence & Lambard Limited, publishers of index to Law Reports in Nigeria and the Monthly Judgements of the Supreme Court, electronic version of which is part of the Nigerian Law Report Series.These two Nigerian Companies;will be codistributing the Nigerian Law Reports Series on CD-Rom. The product will be available by annual subscription at circa N75,000.00. This entitles subscribers to the main work and quarterly updates for the year. HARARE FASHION SHOW PROMISES FASHION THAT TALKS "People want to wear fashion that talks, as much as they want music that can be seen." On May 23, the trio known as Black Scissors (Novell Zwangendaba, Peter Rabvukwa and Irvine Chitambo) will present -Spirit of Africa- . This fashion show is hosted by the Alliance Francaise in Harare during the Francophone week (May 20 - 25, 2002). http://www.africancolours.com/?content/bcdesign.html IN BRIEF - Namespace ZA has submitted comments on the ECT Bill, focussing in particular on the issues relating to domain names. The document is published on the web at www.namespace.org.za. - Women’s World has announced the launch of its website: http://www.wworld.org. On it African Women’s Voices: a selection of creative and analytical work that is hard to find anywhere else, including selections from recent literary anthologies by Black women writers in South Africa and Uganda, and political essays by Amina Mama, Gertrude Fester, and Patricia McFadden. - An e-book, the debut work of a retired civil and structural engineer, charting the life of an eighteenth-century African slave, last night scooped a prestigious literary prize at an awards ceremony in Edinburgh. Manu Herbstein, 66, took 10 years to complete the novel, the first internet-only work to be recognized by a major book award. Companion web-site to the book: www.ama.africatoday.com - African Anti-Fraud Agency, a dedicated reporting and public enlightenment center on 419 received over 5,000 visitors last week - http://www.africaservice.com/fraud/ - SA’s Chapter has improved its Parliament e-mail and web-site. For free subscription e-mail: collette@idasact.org.za
OPEN SOURCE ROUTE A WAY AHEAD FOR THE CASH-STRAPPED? Two linked events this week: a call by a Latin American politician for the public sector to be mandated to use only Open Source software and the available of test software on a CD-ROM. There’s a letter circulating, purportedly from Peruvian Congressman David Villanueva Nuñez to Microsoft Peru, which cuts the heart out of Redmond’s chief ‘panic points’ to chill those considering open-source migration.Apparently, the Peruvian government is considering a bill mandating open-source software for the public sector From the congressman’s letter, it appears that Microsoft is fighting back by suggesting the imminent collapse of domestic software markers. The Congressman’s letter takes on those arguments. The newly announced OpenCD Project’s (http://www.theopencd.org)concept is very simple. The first premise of the OpenCD project is to deliver a number of mature, useful, open-source desktop solutions on a single CD. Now that is hardly unique, but the second premise may be: The goal is to run on Windows and perhaps Mac OS. Key to this project is the fact that many pieces of open-source software already run on other platforms. Central applications are expected to include OpenOffice, Mozilla, the GIMP, and AbiWord. Part of this effort is spurred by the recent milestones of many of these applications. OpenOffice, an extensive open-source office suite, just announced the release of Version 1.0. Mozilla, the open-source browser born from Netscape in 1999, recently announced the first release candidate for its impending Version 1.0. AbiWord, a word processor, is rapidly approaching Version 1.0, and the GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Project), a Photoshop-like application, is currently at stable Release 1.2.3. The project intends to identify other candidates for inclusion on the CD. Ensuing efforts will ensure that each piece of software can be installed and deinstalled quickly and easily by a typical PC user. Why is this project so important? The concern that keeps most offices from migrating to open-source desktops centers on the applications. Businesses often rely on proprietary solutions such as Microsoft Office, which are not available on Linux (unless you are using a product such as CrossOver Office to run native Windows applications on Linux). The thought of changing over both operating system and applications can be intimidating. But what would happen if businesses could try open-source desktop applications easily, without changing operating systems? If they could easily install and deinstall these applications on their current desktop machines, they could test the applications at will. They may even find that they can run their businesses using some of these applications instead of the proprietary applications currently gracing their desktops. A CD that lets businesses, schools, and consumers use open-source applications on their existing systems without fear, fuss, or cost? Now that’s an idea worth supporting. If you want to help out, visit the OpenCD Web site and get on their mailing list. All the applicationsmentioned are already available for download from a number of Web sites, as well as the InfoWorld Open Source forum (http://www.infoworld.com/os). COMING SOON: JOHN WEST ON OPEN SOURCE IN THE AFRICAN CONTEXT
* Despite the giant strides made in the last eight months in the telecommunications sector especially with the commencement of GSM service in the country, the Minister of Communications, Dr. Bello Mohammed has said that Nigeria is not doing well in telecommunication. Mohammed who was making comments as the chairman of the plenary session at the just-concluded Nigerian Telecom Summit held in Abuja said that all the facts and figures being bandied about on the tremendous strides telecommunications have made in the recent years were for other countries and people.According to him, "we are not doing well in telecom even though Ndukwe (Exective Vice Chairman of the NCC ) said there has been rapid development in telecom the world over." Mohammed continued by saying that "those changes mentioned mostly happened in China." * Kenya’s Transport and Communications Permanent Secretary, Mr Sammy Kyungu, attributed the congestion on the Safaricom network to over-subscription. The PS made the remarks during the commis sioning of the new Telkom Kenya’s Parklands Digital Exchange. The government has majority shareholding in Safaricom. * Competition is squeezing operators in Uganda, According to Aloysius Ssemanda, one of the directors of Celtel. "The competition is very tight and it is not sustainable.If the regulators do not address some of the issues quickly, it will not be good for the industry. However, officials of MTN said they were not trying to undercut anyone but only responding to stiff competition in the industry. MTN had earlier reduced its monthly service fee from Ush18,000 ($10.3) to only Ush10,000 ($6). Without pointing fingers to any of the three mobile phone operators in the country, MTN, UTL Mango and Celtel, observers who spoke to The EastAfrican said that watching the way things were going, the industry could only accommodate two operators. * Embarassing revelations for the head of Libya’s state telco, the son of the Libyan leader, Gadaffi in London’s Private Eye. According to a local Australian paper, the Courier-Mail, on a visit to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, four local prostitutes were recruited by him and others for a three-hour party aboard a chartered boat from escort agency Crystal Waters. When a women objected to some of the Libyan’s sexual demands, one of Gadaffi’s party pulled out a gun. * One of the four winners of the 2002 ICT Stories Competition have been selected, and Kabissa was among them. The ICT Stories Competition is run by infoDev and the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD). A Jury member said: "What I liked in Kabissa is the extraordinary collaboration the project got all over Africa. It should be a real lesson for most organizations working in this continent, most of them working in a fragmented way, spoiling resources instead of joining efforts to get better results!" * The immediate past president/chairman of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), Prince Kola Odubanjo has stressed the need for banks to pool their information technology facilities together for service delivery. Odubanjo who made this call in his farewell presidential address titled "Information Technology, Competition and Profitability in the Nigerian Banking Industry", wondered why banks do not allow the inter-operability of their electronic payment facilities (Automated Teller Machines and Smart Cards).
* The World Bank’s Global Information & Communication Technologies (GICT) department is interested in receiving applications from qualified Junior Professional Associates (JPA) candidates. Please submit your resumes or CVs through http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/hrs/hrs_www.nsf/submitcv?openform. Feel free to submit a cover letter in addition to a CV in the box entitled "Copy or paste your CV/resume here." Please also include a reference to GICT so that we know you are responding to this call for resumes. The deadline for receiving GICT-specific JPA application is May 31, 2002. * The Reuters Foundation -
Digital Vision Fellowship program at Stanford University is offering
fellowship for its 2003 program. Details of this program and
the application form could obtained from the web site indicated
below. Please forward your application before May 17,2002 which
is the deadline date if you are interested. More details: * South Africa’s Community Education Computer Society (CECS) is now in the phase of gathering information and contact details on Information Technology projects and organisations in the different OSISA countries with a view of meeting the different projects and organisations in due course to setup a Regional IT programme. If you are an IT project please forward your details to us. Contact Arnold Pietersen: cecsgp@wn.apc.org
* SONATEL OFFERS INTERNET TRAINING EVENTS Senegal’s Sonatel is offering a series of training events. Two upcoming are TCP-IP on 22-23 May 2002 and Cisco routers on 10-14 June 2002. Full details on their web-site: http://www.sonatel.sn * KENYAN MICROSOFT.NET EXHIBITION, SARIT CENTRE (22-24 MAY) Microsoft East Africa will this month host a conference and exhibition to enlighten its customers on the operations of their recently launched Microsoft (dot) .Net initiative.The three-day event dubbed "Demystifying .Net" will be held at the Sarit Centre’s Expo Centre and Cineplex between May 22 and 24.It will bring together more than 20 Microsoft partners in Kenya, who will display a variety of the company’s software, services and solutions.
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