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WEEKLY PUBLICATION DEADLINE: 12 pm GMT Sunday. 
ISSUE NO 85 WIDERNET: CONNECTING AND UPSKILLING AFRICAN UNIVERSITIESEducation creates the skills through which Africa will take advantage of "getting connected". Yet many African universities lack the means or the expertise to offer their students these benefits. Even in a campus as "wired" as the University of Jos, those involved are effectively "first-time" buyers in this field. Working out of the US’s University of Iowa, WiderNet has been finding ways of overcoming these barriers for Nigeria’s University of Jos and building links between Iowan and Nigerian scholars. Bonnie Pedersen from WiderNet explains. The WiderNet Project was founded by Cliff Missen, a systems analyst in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, who co-directs the project with Michael McNulty, a professor of geography, at the University of Iowa (UI). The University of Iowa has a history of almost three decades of correspondence and building academic relationships with universities in Nigeria. Both Cliff and Michael have traveled to Nigeria extensively. Cliff Missen won the Senior Fullbright Scholarship for his work in Nigeria in 1999. The WiderNet Project was awarded with a US$250,000 grant from the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development. The UI International Programs is providing matching funds and administrative support for this project. The project operates out of offices at the International Center of the UI. It has also recently won a US$470,000 grant from MacArthur Foundation for its work. In September 2001, Microsoft made two major donations to The WiderNet Project. The first donation was of $48,000 in order to provide NT Server software for each University in Nigeria. The second donation was $23,000 worth of server and web productivity software, including server software, SQL, Exchange, for the WiderNet Project¹s office and training center. The WiderNet Project will host Web sites of participating Nigerian universities and assist in delivering email to the institutions. We also have received a number of donated computers from the UI College of Nursing, The Stanley Foundation, the UI Library, the UI Department of Computer Science, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Quality Care, Network Startup Resource Center, and a number of private donors. Much of the WiderNet Project’s efforts will be spent on coaching decision-makers at Nigerian universities to make informed choices about technology, and to train Nigerian university computer technicians to keep the new systems fully functional. Missen, McNulty, and other trainers will travel to Nigeria once a year to conduct workshops and to consult Nigerian technicians. Upcoming travel will occur this summer, in June. Before then, however, course curricula, libraries of texts, articles, lectures and other academic materials will be copied onto CD-ROM and sent to universities in Nigeria, preparing the trainees in advance. Cliff Missen has found that in his travels to Nigerian universities he heard a common complaint from vice-chancellors and department heads: "We have no idea what we ought to do next. The array of options are dizzying and the only people willing to talk to us have something to sell and are not reliable." Cliff believes that "In the parlance of the computer trade, most African universities are ‘first time buyers. First time buyers are notorious for making unwise choices - either buying or attempting too much or too little - whereas those who have struggled with their first wave of computer systems make wiser choices the second time around." Missen and McNulty hope to help share the lessons learned at American universities with Nigerian decision-makers so they can be "second time buyers" the first time around. When speaking of his experiences in Nigeria, Cliff has also found that "My American students have all the riches of the Internet at their fingertips while their Nigerian counterparts only have an email system that sends messages a few days a week. It was a real eye-opener for some of the U.S. students when the Nigerians stopped communicating for five weeks after their telephone connections died. I think it is hard for many of us to imagine not being able to communicate with distant family, friends, and colleagues for that length of a time." The University of Jos Project The University of Jos has seen the most progress from the WiderNet Project than most other universities in Nigeria. Since this fall, there have been two correspondents from Nigerian universities brought to the UI, one of them from Jos. Dr. Mamman Aminu Ibrahim, from Ibadan, Nigeria, stayed with us for approximately two weeks. Dr. Ibrahim is the Deputy Director (Research and Development) and the Chairman of Nigerian Universities Network (NUNet). He is head of the division responsible for external funding, linkages, and collaborations for all Nigerian universities, and is head of the committee responsible for the establishment of private universities in Nigeria. After his arrival in late March, Dr. Lennox (Len) Liverpool, from the University of Jos, Nigeria, has joined the WiderNet offices and stayed for approximately two months. Dr. Liverpool is originally from Sierra Leone, West Africa, but has been at the University of Jos, since 1980. He holds a PhD in Mathematics, and since 1989 he has played a central role in the University of Jos’ efforts to install and effectively use information and communication technologies. The University of Jos stands out amongst universities in sub-Saharan Africa as the most wired campus. They have over 250 computers hooked up to their network, with thousands of their students, staff, and faculty receiving email and hundreds trained in computer use. (To contrast: the University of Jos has more networked computers than the other 27 universities in Nigeria combined.) In June of 2001, the WiderNet Project mounted its first workshop for decision makers in Abuja, Nigeria¹s capital city. The decision maker program involves technical, financial, and organizational coaching for decision makers at Nigerian Universities who are installing their institution’s first information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure. The Nigerian universities involved with our program were: the University of Jos, Jos; the University of Ibadan Skannet, Ibadan; Bayero University, Kano; Amadu Bello University, Zaria; Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife; UNDP Cisco Academy, Lagos; the University of Port Harcourt, Port Harcourt; and the National Universities Commission, Abuja. Cliff Missen led the decision makers workshops at each of these universities. More information about this program, reports, and feedback from each university involved can be found at: http://www.widernet.org/decisionmakers/june01/ July 29-August 12 2001, UI Professor of Geography, Michael McNulty visited the University of Ibadan, the University of Jos, and the Nigerian National Universities Commission. The purpose of the trip was threefold: (1) to meet and consult with university decision-makers, including senior administrative officers and participants in the first WiderNet Workshop for Decision Makers held June 12-13, 2001 at the NUC headquarters in Abuja, (2) to facilitate links between Nigerian decision makers and counterparts in the U.S., and (3) to follow-up on initial contacts and promote intra-university cooperation and the establishment of support groups and academic interchanges over the IT bridge being established. The WiderNet Project trains Nigerian university computer technicians to build and maintain computer networks. We will work with the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC) and participating universities to identify pressing and common IT needs of the universities, help them to work together to develop similar systems for cross-compatibility, and then develop training programs which emphasize computer-based training (CBT), workshops, and vendor and NUC standardized certifications. Utilizing a wide array or computer-based training materials, including CD-ROMs filled with articles, lectures, tutorials, and other materials found on the World Wide Web, trainees receive a great deal of preparation in advance. Then Missen and other trainers travel to Nigeria at least once a year to conduct workshops and to consult Nigerian technicians. Missen plans to have a training workshop for October 2001, and subsequently in February 2002. We also plan to work with U.S. private sector partners who can provide training materials, software donations or low-cost licensing, and technical support to Nigerian universities. One of such partnerships we have established is with the Microsoft Corporation. The WiderNet base offices expect to have at least five correspondents from Nigerian universities to make visits to the WiderNet Project in Iowa City each year. One of the projects at the University of Jos is the Internetworks in International Development course, also offered at the UI. This course demonstrates the benefits of teaching via the internet. Another project at the University of Jos is the digitization of library materials. CD-ROMs composed of small libraries of information provide access to material available on the Internet, but for those who lack Internet access, the digital library will provide the same information. Cliff met with Vice Chancellors in New York in April and gave them the first copies of the CD-ROMs to review. Final copies are expected to be sent to the University of Jos by the end of the month of May. These copies will contain information for both the decision makers courses and the technical training courses. As of right now, over 250 articles and documents have been compiled on the CD-ROMs as well as mirrored web sites with material relevant to technology and digital information in developing countries and Africa especially. The WiderNet Project also plans to facilitate the shipment of computers and networking equipment to the University of Jos, Nigeria. The computers will be collected at the University of Iowa, shipped to Lagos, Nigeria, and transported from there to the Universities of Jos and Ibadan. Subsequent shipments will occur as often as possible, depending on the quantity of equipment donations. The WiderNet Project’s goals are to eliminate the digital divide between developed and developing countries. Those that have access to technology and those that don’t. As long as Africa has inadequate access to technology, communication, and information systems, they will remain separated from the rest of the world with this access.For more information about the WiderNet Project, please see our website, www.widernet.org For more information about the University of Jos, please see their website: http://www.uiowa.edu/intlinet/unijos
The CTO is offering The Commonwealth Government and Business Guide to Information and Communication Technology 2001/2002 as free CD-ROM to our readers. It is a unique annual resource of information about ICT in the Commonwealth designed specifically for use by government ministers, regulators, utility heads and leaders of the communications industry throughout the world. To obtain your free CD-ROM, send your name and address to Isabel Stewart, CTO (i.stewart@cto.int)
SA’S ESKOM TO ROLL-OUT FIBRE-OPTIC SECOND NETWORK Eskom Enterprises, the non-regulated division of power utility Eskom, would roll out a R400 million fibreoptic network in preparation for the launch of South Africa’s second network licence next year. The fibreoptic network, which would enable Eskom to carry telephone calls, was part of an agreement between Eskom Enterprises and Siemens Information and Communications Group. Eskom Enterprises’ network will be deployed over Eskom power lines, speeding up the installation process. With the utility’s power links to other countries, the telecommunications network could have a wide reach as soon as it is launched. Fibreoptic networks provide multiple types of transmission service, such as video, data and voice, over one line. Eskom’s new network could also boost internet bandwidth. The telecommunications solution, which Siemens will provide, is based on the Next Generation Network technology. Universal transport will be ensured via a synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) and dense wave division-multiplexing (DWDM) network supporting a core of data routers. Vusi Ngubeni, the executive director responsible for telecoms at Eskom Enterprises, said the company believed it was feasible for the second network operator to enter the market as early as next May. This was despite doubts in the industry about the tight schedule for preparing the introduction of competition to Telkom. The schedule includes passing the Telecommunications Amendment Bill, issuing the invitation to apply for the second licence, and giving investors sufficient time - about three months - to evaluate the opportunity. The government still had to decide on the size of the shareholding for parastatals participating in the second licence. Ngubeni said the invitation to apply was key to determining the extent of the involvement in the second licence by state-owned enterprises. It would have a black empowerment equity component not exceeding 30 percent and involve an international operator as a strategic equity partner. "Invariably, the strategic equity partner will want to take control of the company," Ngubeni said. Eskom Enterprises was aware of interest in the licence from about five international operators from Europe and Asia. Ngubeni said these companies were waiting for the invitation to apply, which would also outline service roll-out obligations. The international operator would bring the expertise and capital necessary to establish a company capable of competing with the well-established Telkom. Parliament’s decision to introduce carrier preselection in 2003, allowing telecoms users access to the services of the long-distance or international operator of their choice, was also considered a key enabler of competition for the second operator. KENYAN GOVERNMENT FAILS TO LICENCE VSATs FOR ISPs The controversy over the legality of operating Very Small Aperture Terminals (Vsats) has taken a new turn, after a top Ministry of Transport and Communications official said the government had only allowed inter-corporate transmission of data traffic on a point-to-point basis.Dr James Kulubi, the secretary of the National Communications Secretariat at the ministry, was responding to the issing of Vsat licences to Barclays Bank of Kenya, Standard Chartered Bank and the European Union by the Communications Commission of Kenya. He said licences of Internet Service Providers permitted only data and not telecommunication services. The sector policy statement, which came into force in 1999, gives Telkom Kenya a monopoly in the provision of Vsat services. Dr Kulubi’s revelation appeared to have dashed the hopes of ISPs, which had assumed that the move by the CCK would mean that their long-standing applications would be approved. Mr Brian Longwe of Telecommunication Service Providers of Kenya (Tespok) said of the decision: "Our largest clients have access to what we don’t have and that affects our bottom line". He said corporate entities were the largest clients of most Internet companies in the country. The use of Vsat enables quick transfer of large volumes of data between two points and results in major cost savings. The cost reductions are unlikely to be passed on to end-users, who however can be assured of more efficient service delivery. Reasons likely to be advanced for not reducing the cost of service delivery by banks issued with Vsat licenses include expenses in type approval. Type approval is done by the CCK and involves certifying that any piece of equipment brought into the country would not cause interference to those already installed by other users and that it conforms to set quality standards. SA’S MULTICHOICE PLANS INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES Multichoice Africa has unveiled its plans for the introduction of interactive TV in SA. Dubbed iTV for interactive television, the first services, including TV-based e-mail (TVMail), television shopping (T-commerce) and a new-look DSTV program guide (Enhanced Electronic Program Guide) will be delivered to DSTV subscribers in early 2002. In terms of the new iTV, services will utilise a feedback path from the set-top decoder which connects to Multichoices back-end services using the telephone system. (source: http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/internet/2001/0111071257.asp ) SMART CARDS ARE GOING TO CHANGE THE RETAIL INDUSTRY IN THE FUTURE "The retail industry is highly competitive and retailers need to use any means possible to get closer to their customers in order to maintain loyalty. If they do not, they face the prospect of losing market share to more proactive competitors and, in some cases, going broke," said Stirling McBride, executive of new and emerging markets at Integrated Card Technology (ICT), the smart card manufacturer in the NamITech group of companies. McBride said using the smart card in every aspect of the retail chain can assure the manufacturer, retailer and wholesaler of proof of delivery of goods, effective payment systems and expert tracking of consumer purchase habits. For details: NamITech Phone: +27 11 485-0000 SCHOOLNETAFRICA LAUNCHED TO PROMOTE ICT EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS "Schoolnets" promoting education in African schools through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) have mushroomed in over 20 African countries to date. Now for the first time a continent-wide organisation has been set up to help facilitate the growth and development of national schoolnets across the continent. It is headquartered in South Africa and governed by a 12 member Steering Committee representing 10 countries from all five sub-regions across the continent, including a representative from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. In partnership with national schoolnets SchoolNetAfrica kicks off with a number of flagship projects. Over the next three years, under the banner of an aptly phrased: OPERATION DOT LEARN program, SchoolNetAfrica plans to
Already its national schoolnets have established partnerships with government ministries of education and telecommunications, the private sector and NGOs at national level. Its Steering Committee has already forged partnerships with major donor and development agencies such as the Open Society Institute for Southern Africa, the International Development Research Centre, the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the UNESCO. On 12 November 2001 SchoolNetAfrica will be hosting an official launch in Johannesburg South Africa which will be addressed by African Ministers of Education and Telecommunication and African students. The launch calls for partnerships with the private sector and will appeal for pledges of support. Website: www.schoolnetafrica.org NEWS IN BRIEF - Tanzania’s Simunet has rolled out POPs in Tabora and Kibaha. The other 2Mbps Pops are in Dar, Zanzibar, Morogoro, Dodoma, Iringa, Mbeya, Arusha, Moshi, Tanga, Mwanza and Musoma. Next to be connected are Shinyanga and Singida. - South Africa’s BoE Bank will fold its e-commerce and e-business divisions into its Merchant Service infrastructure, saying the divisions now form part of daily business and will operate more profitably in that way. - Every day, South Africans
take out over 9 000 new cellphone subscriptions,boosting a market
that is currently worth R14-billion, but which is expected to
grow to R28-billion by 2005. _ Open IT Solutions, the local distributor for US-based Raining Data Corporation - the suppliers of the D3 database - has announced it is to investigate the possibility of setting up a reseller base in Tanzania following an invitation from two senior government ministers to visit the country.
SENEGALESE ISPs GET CREDIT YANKED BY SONATEL During October ISP and cybercafe
operator Metissacana had its connection cut for payment default.
So for more than a week its subscribers and cybercafe clients
were unable to get access to the internet or send e-mails. Also
Sud Quotidien’s online service Sudonline service was also
inaccessible for several days. West African Internet Technology
(WAIT), another ISP and cybercafe operator (with several cafes
in Dakar) also had its connection suspended for several days. (source: Batik) IN BRIEF... - Stronger than expected quarterly results from US networking equipment giant Cisco Systems gave local IT groups Dimension Data and Datatec a fillip on the JSE yesterday - Vesta Technology Holdings is closing a UK subsidiary and has warned that the group will report a loss for the year to 31 August 2001. - Technology private equity
and venture capital fund Treacle Venture Partners has increased
its stake in JSE-listed Datacentrix to 15%.
Reaching the Agents of Change The Big Change is the e-mail newsletter of venture capital, deal-making, and business strategy in the convergent economy. Our team of experts provide regular insights into technology and business trends and strategies. For your convenience, The Big Change compiles a weekly digest of links to news, research, advice, case studies and dealflow trends from around the world. Subscribe at no cost by sending a blank e-mail to:
ZIMBABWE’S TONGA ONLINE GETS EUROPEAN AWARD Tonga Online has been given a "Special Award for Communication with Museums", worth ATS 50.000 by the Federal Austrian Ministry for Education, Sciences and Culture has, in cooperation with the Office for Cultural Exchange. The money has been awarded within the framework of the SOCRATES-Project "Museums, Keyworkers and Lifelong Learning". A jury of experts has now selected the project "Tonga.Online - A Village Goes Online" which was part of the exhibition "Tracing the Rainbow. Life in Southern Africa", at Landesmuseum in Linz (Austria) put on by Austria Zimbabwe Friendship Association AZFA. Tonga Onlineis a participatory project on media, communication and arts geared toward promoting a Tonga voice on the Internet. The project goal is to provide people in the Tonga area with the most advanced tool to communicate, represent themselves to the outside world and reflect on the social, political and economic environment of both the global and local village in which the Tonga people live. It gets its domain name "Mulonga" from Zimbabwe’s minority Tonga language. This name, which when literally translated means a river, partly encapsulates the history and needs of the Tonga people. On one level, the Zambezi river "Mulonga" is a modern symbol that tells an ironic story of massive but unshared technology brought about by the Kariba dam constructed on Tonga land. "Mulonga" constantly evokes the story of how the Tonga people have been bypassed by the huge commercial benefits from tourism and electricity that comes from the former habitat on the dam.On another level, the constant flow of the Zambezi river * Mulonga* is a symbol of continuity which today represents a need among the Tonga people. The Tonga Online Project therefore seeks to establish direct communication with and among the Tonga people by joining the global information and communication technology. Access to information has become a crucial question of political rights too. Hence comes the vitality of this project as a tool to spearhead consciousness, continuity, empowerment and development among the Tonga people. According to Dominic Muntanga member of Tonga Online project group: "The Tonga online project is one of its kind in this district where most people have been stigmatized as dangerous, lazy, and sub-human practitioners of witchcraft who hate outsiders. Its potentials are limitless in this part of the country that has no higher academic institution. In a world where access to information is soon becoming a human right, the Tonga online project’s impacts offers a very high level of human development". SONATEL RETRANSMITS YOUSSOU NDOUR’S CONCERT AT BERCY Sonatel re-transmitted via
the internet a concert given by Youssou Ndour at Bercy in France.
Fans of the Senegalese musician were able to see this transmission
either directly via a portal online or in a cybercafe called
"flambant neuf". Despite some technical problems, the
concert could be seen globally and it permitted a wider public
in Senegal to see one of many applications provided by the internet. (source: Batik) HIV/AIDS NETWORK LAUNCHES SEARCH ENGINE The HIV/AIDS Network has launched its HIV/AIDS Search Engine (http://www.HIVAIDSsearch.com/index.htm). This is a tool for searching the internet for updated news on medications, treatments and vaccines. Sites are listed in categories and further broken down into subcategories. Once a search is performed, you have the choice to further your search instantly on the world’s major search engines or NEWS headlines sites. Please add your favorite HIV/AIDS websites to our database. Its online services will be particularly valuable in rural locations where no local organizations exist. People can log in privately from home and have a counselors to chat with or get answers to questions from the online forum. AFRIAFYA LAUNCHES SERVICE FOR THOSE WITHOUT POWER AND LINES AfriAfya, African Network for Health Knowledge Management and Communication, is a consortium of Kenyan-based NGOs currently carrying out a pilot project in the use of this and other information and communication technologies for improved access to health information for community health workers both in the urban setting and in rural areas with no telephone lines or electricity. AfriAfya has currently established a coordinating hub and seven field centres to ‘test’ out the different ICTs and integrate these with traditional communication methods. The overall objective is to increase the access to relevant, up-to-date health information for health workers on the ground, and to tap into the knowledge base that exists within the communities that we are working in, and the outer world including the Internet. Emphasis is being placed on two-way communication to ensure that information communicated is relevant to the communities being served. Each of the field centres thus acts as a resource centre for the health workers and the community that it serves. The WorldSpace digital receivers have provided the centres with both audio and electronic information that can then be adapted as necessary and printed out for distribution. As it is still a one-way communication system, different communication modalities have to be used to communicate information from the field centres to the hub and back. CD ROMs and diskettes, and email where available are used to augment this. Solar panels have been used to supply power where there is no electricity. (source: GKD) INFODEV SEEKS COUNTRY GATEWAY PROPOSALS infoDev announces a call for proposals from planning grants for the creation of Country Gateways in the Sub-Saharan Africa Region. The deadline for submission of all Planning Grant proposals from Sub-Saharan Africa is Friday, January 18, 2002. Visit their website at http://www.infodev.org/gateway/ for more information.
PHONE-BASED HEALTH REPORTING IN PERU One of the greatest obstacles to the roll-out of ICT in the developing world is the computer itself. The sad fact is the PC is too expensive, fragile and complicated to be useful to most of the world. John West describes how these difficulties were tackled. To overcome these limitations, there are a number of initiatives to build information systems which work over a standard phone. I recently spent two months working with a New York-based company called Voxiva to develop one such system. The first application, a real-time disease reporting network, is being rolled out in Peru for the Ministry of Health. Other applications are being developed in the microfinance and commercial distribution sectors. A typical health ministry user’s report involves one or two numbers keyed in using the keypad and one or two voice messages, which stay stored as sound files. The key is to optimise the balance between these two kinds of input: too much data entry over makes the system unworkable for the user. But too little means the system is just a Œdumb¹ collection of sound files and cannot provide enough information to be useful. Phone-based systems are not for everyone. Peru has relatively high teledensity (3 million phones for 30 million people). The government, while liberalising the telecom sector, has an aggressive roll-out plan for phones in rural areas which private companies must fulfill to win contracts. For data entry operations to work, the phone system must be digital. Also, wrongly implemented, there is a danger of losing ICT’s leapfrog potential by locking into a system which is not future-friendly. Nevertheless, there are hundreds of millions of people who can use a phone but not a computer, and huge urban and rural areas where a few phones are all that exists in the way of ICT. Even simple voicemail can be powerful if accessible over a payphone. And the spread of technologies like VoiceXML and VoIP will quickly make developing phone-based applications easier and cheaper. Ultimately, companies and organisations should seek to have information systems which integrate ŒPOTS¹ (in industry speak, the Plain Old Telephony System) alongside computers. Development of ICT has been wildly uneven around the world and there is no reason to think the future will be different. Enabling customers or employees to transact by phone could be of great benefit while we all wait for techno-nirvana to arrive. For further details contact John West: johnwest@aduni.org IN BRIEF... - Brazil plans to set up 4
000 Internet kiosks in the country’s post offices that will
offer 10 minutes of free Web access to users. - American publishing giant
Random House has closed its e-book imprint. "The e-book
market was not as buoyant as we would have hoped," Random
House spokesman Tom Perry said. - According to a just-released study by TeleGeography, Inc., the share of the world’s phone-to-phone traffic sent over IP networks will increase from 3.8% in 2000 to an estimated 6% in 2001. The TeleGeography study also affirmed that ITXC is the market leader in Voice over IP (VoIP) with an estimated market share of close to 20 percent.
* Gerrie de Klerk, executive chairman of AST Group, and Zeth Malele, CEO of arivia.kom, were named joint winners of the IT Personality of the Year award at the CSSA President’s Banquet at the Sandton Convention Centre last night. * Navison is to open an office in Morocco. "This is an important step in Navision’s continued efforts to become the leading provider of integrated business solutions for small and medium-sized companies across the globe. These markets have great potential and with Keith’s expertise and knowledge of the markets, we are confident that we can exploit this potential," says Navision South Africa managing director Keith Mullan. * It has been said that leaders are born. Hastings Malenge, a Novell bursary programme graduate and acting procurement executive at SITA (State Information Technology Agency), believes that unless you grab the opportunity to rediscover yourself, you will never know whether that statement applies to you or not. Malenge has proved that it’s not necessary to have a technical background in order to begin, and succeed at a career in IT. His extensive experience in marketing, where he worked as an equipment consultant in the farming industry, led Malenge to realise that the future of all business lay in IT. "It became obvious to me that no matter which environment one worked in, a PC was essential," he relates. "I decided the time had come to enhance my own IT skills, and perhaps consider pursuing a career in the industry." It is perhaps ironic that a close friend of Malenge’s happened to be studying one of Novell’s certification courses at the time. "Up until then I had thought of a computer as merely a machine on which to play games," he says, "but when my friend began showing me what could be achieved using Novell technology, the bug bit and I was hooked. I had to learn more." Having heard about Novell’s bursary programme, Malenge wasted no time in submitting his application, believing that the CNE route was the best way to begin a career in IT. Needless to say, he was delighted when Novell contacted him to attend an aptitude test. "After completing it, I learned to my surprise that I had scored the highest of all the applicants present there that day." Malenge enrolled at the Pinpoint training institute in Johannesburg and begun studying in earnest. Within three weeks, he had written and passed his first exam, and five months later he had passed the remaining six. According to bursary programme administrator Patricia Leaman, this is no mean achievement, as most students take around one year to complete the CNE certification on a full-time study basis. "We assisted Hastings in finding employment as a systems support engineer, and he began working for Connectivity Technologies, a company that specialised in networking infrastructure support, a month before he completed his studies," she relates. Malenge stayed on at Connectivity Solutions until the company’s merger with Plessey in 1998, when he left to join a leading auditing firm as IT manager. Two years later he accepted the position of senior technical manager at SITA. "My responsibilities included the government call centre and assisting with the helpdesk operations." Six months later, Malenge was appointed acting procurement executive, responsible for government IT acquisition.
African Lakes Technologies (ALT), the IT division of African Lakes Corporation, will co-sponsor the forthcoming Finance-IT - the African Banking and Finance Technology Forum scheduled for 27-29 November this year at the Grand Regency Hotel, Nairobi. Dubbed Finance IT, and with a theme "Advancing the eReadiness of Africa’s Banking & Financial Services Sector", the event has generated substantial interest both within and outside Africa and is expected to provide the building blocks for an intra-Africa banking technology advisory panel. Announcing the sponsorship deal, Bernard Matthewman, the CEO of ALT, said the this sponsorship is part of a continuing effort by the company to educate the business community on the benefits of using the internet to do business. "The conference is in line with our company’s overall strategy to build a knowledge base and encourage the use of Internet products in businesses around Africa," said Matthewman. It is projected that by 2004, e-business transactions will reach $7.29 trillion, with North America accounting for nearly 40%. A significant proportion of business has been carried out electronically for many years. The difference the Internet has made is that it has created a standard, reliable and secure universal communication system which companies can utilise to transact business. It is in effect a kind of virtual universal market square on which any business can set up its own stall and begin trading. The conference is running in tandem with an exhibition by technology companies from Kenya, South Africa and Europe. Some of the companies that have already confirmed participation include Mysis International Banking Systems, Simba Technologies, I-Flex, Africanlakes Technologies, Data Card and Neptune Software. All the technology on display at the expo will be target to the banking and financial markets and will include high-end servers, security products, transaction processing systems, online banking systems, internet banking systems and branch networking products.
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