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Africa @ICANN: Cartagena Statement of the African ICANN community about the support for African participation
by Alice Munyua 14 Dec '10

14 Dec '10

Dear Listers, Here's a statement from the Africa ICANN community during the just ended ICANN meeting in Cartegena: ----------------------------------------------------- The African community through AFRALO and AFRICANN is concerned about its lack of effective participation in the main activities of ICANN as internet users. The commitment and the participation of the different parts of the community require knowledge of the issues being discussed. In order to improve the quality of the participation, it is important to explain the meaning and the limits of ICANN’s mandate, the stakes and the impact sought for. A major awareness campaign at local and regional levels would be a first step towards a due capacity building program for a meaningful participation Participation can be done by many and different means. They include email discussion lists, teleconferences, fora, videoconferences, electronic votes, wikis, blogs as well as face‐to‐face meetings in respective languages For online participation, it is important to have a calendar that establishes the timing for community input. This calendar would allow more effective planning and optimal engagement of the community. Even as we celebrate the diverse methods and tools available, we recognize that many challenges remain to be overcome for effective participation of users at the edge. Some are entirely technical and will improve with time. Others, however, will require means and commitment to improvement in interactions from all stakeholders, users included. Volunteered work is not very sustainable in Africa due to the necessity to make a living and institutions are unwilling to continue to cover the cost of their staff on volunteer assignments. The challenge is to have many motivated African experts to participate in a regular and effective way. Therefore, we, AFRALO and AFRICANN members, recommend to call for support from development agencies, private sector and other potential actors to facilitate African participation to ICANN policy development processes. We acknowledge that the ICANN fellowship program is supporting the participation from developing economies. Henceforth we urge the ICANN Board consider the following: • The number of fellowships from African Regions should be increased   Recognizing that the present form of capacity building has not produced the desired outcome, a more proactive approach needs to be adopted:   • Policy advocates and students’ needs to be identified and recruited in a manner that is sustainable. • Advocates should be situated and employed on a part-time basis in existing policy institutions or think tanks that are already engaged in local and global internet policy. • In their capacity as staff, they will be responsible for policy making locally, nationally and regionally and will engage internationally in policy making fora such as the IGF, ICANN, ISOC and other global policy arena. • This function requires support from development agencies who are concerned about the dearth of African policy makers locally and in the international arena. Support for this sort of initiative must be protracted and sustained over a period of time rather than the current approach of facilitating developing country participation at conferences and international policy for a travel support. • Policy advocates must act as bridges between their countries/regions and the international policy forum. Their host institutions must act as bridging institutions in the same capacity as the advocates. • This dual policy vehicle of person and institution will ensure sustained policy development if it is developed and deployed in the different regions in the continent. For institutions such as ICANN, they provide value and leverage where engagement, direct and immediate responses are required for certain policy situations. • If this model gathers the support of ICANN, it can seek the partnership and support from other institutions such as APC, KICTANet, IISD or AfriNIC to host policy advocates for a period using an internship framework. Policy advocates can also spend certain periods at places like ICANN or the IGF secretariat. --

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Honouring the man who linked Kenya to world (was Update on Arrangements for Kisumu Reunion – December 21-23rd, 2010)
by Shem Ochuodho 14 Dec '10

14 Dec '10

Madada Philo na Betty, Ahsanteni for the pongezi's. It was re-freshening to know the CTO (Commonwealth Telecom Organization www.cto.int) domiciled in London, with current CEO being Ghana's former Minister for Communication (Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah) could remember some of Africa's Unsung Heroes. I am working on a book with that name to catalogue the evolution of Internet in Africa - perhaps we should look for royalties from FaceBook, Google, mPesa, YouTube, SEACOM, etc! But the efforts could not have borne fruit without the inputs of several other people, including the techies who alongside Randy Bush burnt mid-night oil (Dr Martin Koyabe - now with British Telecoms, Paul Olendo now @UN, Alfred Orimbo, etc) - for several nights - to get it all work on Kenya's/indeed Africa's then real terrible phone lines. In the same vein, without Steve Goldstein of the US National Science Foundation (who provided the boxes and technology) and Peter Sutherland of UK's Overseas Development Agency (ODA now DfID) who took up the initial leased line phone bills - used to cost US$ 16,000 (yes, 16k) per month for just a mere 64KBps pipe - it wouldn't have happened. When in 2000 CSK (Computer Society of Kenya) felt I deserved 'Father of Internet in Kenya' title, I dedicated the award to three people: Amb. Dr Benjamin Kipkorir (then Kenya's Ambassador in Washington), Micah Cheserem (then Governor, Central Bank), Brig. (Rtd) Wilson Boinnett (then DG, NSIS aka Special Branch). Without these guys' intervention, the KANU regime of the time wouldn't have allowed Internet to happen. Not that they didn't try to block it - the then Head of Public Service wrote a letter (I have a souvenir copy) to all PS's, Heads of Military, Special Branch, etc warning them not to connect to ARCC/Internet/UNEP without direct approval from his office. That partly explains why these three Kenyan Wazalendo's perhaps deserve these awards more than I. Last but not least, Jeddy and the kids who allowed me to use one of the family bedrooms for initial tests when sections of the University felt by staying late in the labs night, we had 'lots of idle time and needed to be given more teaching load' had denied us space to do the experiments. But all the Glory must always go to God the Almighty, Allah - the One and Only! For those who missed the story (courtesy Visioner Augustine Oduor), you can access it on: http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/news/InsidePage.php?id=2000024440&cid=159&st…. Best rgrds, Shem 2010 CTO/GoSS African Internaut (Internet Pioneer) Award Recipient ________________________________ From: Philo Ikonya <philonikonya(a)yahoo.com> To: NVK-Mageuzi(a)yahoogroups.com Sent: Sat, 11 December, 2010 18:51:39 Subject: Re: [NVK-Mageuzi] Update on Arrangements for Kisumu Reunion – December 21-23rd, 2010 Adhiambo, thanks very much for letting me know.. I did not know.. Congrats Shem. You did not say it even as I was telling you of my little works?\ Philo Aung San Suu Kyi cannot be silenced because she speaks the truth and because her words reflect basic Burmese and universal concepts - Vaclav Havel --- On Fri, 12/10/10, Betty Otieno <betty.otieno(a)gmail.com> wrote: >From: Betty Otieno <betty.otieno(a)gmail.com> >Subject: Re: [NVK-Mageuzi] Update on Arrangements for Kisumu Reunion – December >21-23rd, 2010 >To: NVK-Mageuzi(a)yahoogroups.com >Date: Friday, December 10, 2010, 11:01 PM > > > >Congratulations Shem on the honor you received the other day, pioneer internet >related Kenya. > >Adhiambo > >

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Tanadaa Tech Talk with I/O venture
by Twahir Mohamed 14 Dec '10

14 Dec '10

Dear Listers, Below is alive stream on the above eventes I/O ventures are techprenures based at the silcon valley,giving enteprenures and techie's advice .The event is at the ihub . http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tandaa-tech-talk -- Twahir

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Google CR-48 trials
by robert yawe 14 Dec '10

14 Dec '10

Hi, I am sure we have staff from Google in this list, how can I participate in the Google notebook trials? Regards Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696

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Liberia creates Special Purpose Vehicle for landing station and national fibre backbone
by Eric M.K Osiakwan 11 Dec '10

11 Dec '10

Liberia probably has one of the smallest bandwidth markets in Africa but it has recently created a Special Purpose Vehicle consortium that has signed up as a member of the France Telecom-driven ACE cable. Russell Southwood spoke to Angelique Weeks, the Chairperson of the Board of Commissioners of the regulator, the Liberian Telecommunications Authority about how it was possible to do this. The Special Purpose Vehicle consortium currently has four shareholders: the Government of Liberia (60%); Libtelco, formerly LTC, the Government incumbent (20%); Lonestar, the MTN subsidiary (10%); and Cellcom, the Israeli-owned mobile operator (10%). The Government and Libtelco shareholdings have been paid for by the World Bank. Currently, this leaves the other two mobile operators (Comium and Libercell, now owned by HITS) out in the cold but according to Chairperson Angelique Weeks, the Government will sell part of its shareholding to them:”Comium and Libercell were not in a position financially to come in (when we started the SPV). But both have expressed interest and we plan to bring them in very soon, some time in 2011. We have consultants to help us sort through the various models and they don’t start until January so some after their work is complete.” In terms of governance, any shareholder needs at least 10% to have a seat on the Board. According to Weeks:”We’re trying to decide whether to have a co-operative, a private entity or a hybrid of the two.” By co-operative she means that the SPV will have no staff but devolve operational tasks to its shareholder parties. By private entity, she means that the SPV would contract a management partner or employ its own staff. The aim is to recycle the money put in by the World Bank into the task of building a national fibre backbone in the country. So the shareholdings sold to the new parties (Comium and Libercell) will generate money that will go into this task. The aim is to take this money with further contributions from the World Bank and to start a fibre roll-out. This is ambitious in a country that has only a modest electricity grid but offers a number of economic benefits for the country. What has not been settled is whether this task will be managed by a separate Private-Public Partnership (PPP) or simply run through the cable landing station SPV. So what will be the extent of the network?:”Ideally it will provide a loop that covers the limits of the country and connects up its major community centres. Then we can use microwave to extend beyond the fibre backbone.” Will it create cross-border links?:”We talked to Guinea and Sierra Leone at the ACE signing and suggested a loop to them connecting the three of us. Arguably, Cote d’Ivoire could be part of the same network. It would provide some redundancy as we might be vulnerable with a single landing station. It’s a good idea but it will come further down the road.” But how will a country with as small an economy as Liberia absorb all this new bandwidth?:” I think there are two areas that we have to focus on to create growth. The operators need to create content that will encourage users to use more bandwidth. For example, in Ghana they were able to watch the World Cup on their mobile handsets. We need to implement e-Government, e-health and e-schools and all of these things will be facilitated by better bandwidth”. “Potentially shareholders can sell capacity across borders. This is allowed within the scope of the ACE agreement but it places some restrictions on doing this. I think currently we could only sell to other ACE consortium members but this may change in the long run. We hope the future’s bright and we understand the economic growth and development that will be spin-offs from the cable. We can’t afford not to have the cable. Open access is the way we should go. We need to protect consumers and investors. Credit: Balancing Act NB: Sorry for crossposting. Eric M.K Osiakwan Director Internet Research www.internetresearch.com.gh emko(a)internetresearch.com.gh 42 Ring Road Central, Accra-North Tel: +233.30.2258800 ext 7031 Fax: +233.30.2258811 Cell: +233.24.4386792

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How to Test COTS Applications
by Roland Omoresemi 11 Dec '10

11 Dec '10

Just a quick invitation to those of you that are interested in learning how to Test Commercial Off-The-Shelf COTS applications; if you know anyone that can benefit from these courses, please send them our way: Attached please find our 2011 Course Catalog plus the brochures for our upcoming courses in January: January 17 - 19 | 830 AM - 500 PM: Software Quality Assurance & Testing Boot camp (ISTQB Certification class) January 20 - 21 | 830 AM - 500 PM: How to Test Commercial Off-The-Shelf Applications We also have Testers who can assist you during your next project implementation - we offer Staff Augmentation services (either for UAT, System or Integration Testing or Test Automation and do System Integration work as well. Thank you, ----------------------------------------------- Roland Omoresemi | CEO tezza business solutions Ltd KENYA OFFICE PLOT 87 RHAPTA ROAD P.O. BOX 14068 - 00800 WESTLANDS, NAIROBI M: +254 719.616.900 | 0: +254 20 816 4341 | 0: +254 20 816 4340 ------------------------- UGANDA Plot 9 Martyrs Road P.O. Box 5871 Ntinda P: +256 312 108 322 | M: +256 772 583 788 ------------------------ TANZANIA Learnit Institute of Business and Technology 1st Floor, Lumumba Complex, P.O.Box 20032, Dar es Salaam ------------- USA OFFICE 9530 Oswald Lane Charlotte NC 28277 M: 704.604.4668 p: 913.961.2234 e: roland(a)tezzasolutions.com w: http://www.softwaretestingafrica.com w: http://www.tezzasolutions.com/technology.php ------------------------------------------------- UPCOMING TRAINING: January 10-14: In-House Training - KENYA AIRWAYS - Kenya January 17-19: Software QA & Testing Boot Camp - Kenya January 20-21: Testing Commercial Off-The-Shelf Applications - Kenya

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Insurance Software Expert - 10 years experience - Kenya
by Matunda Nyanchama 11 Dec '10

11 Dec '10

A friend is looking for a Kenyan resource as per spec below. If you know anyone, please let me know. ------------------------------- Please get me a senior IT expert (Kenyan) with the following skills: * A postgraduate degree in an area relevant to the assignment such as Information Technology, Business Processes Re engineering or relevant ICT Certification; * Hands on experience in design and implementation of software for insurance firm/s especially trade and political risk insurance; * At least 10 years experience in the relevant areas suitable for the assignment as outlined above * Knowledge of accounting will be an added advantage * Project management knowledge * Fluency in English ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matunda Nyanchama, mnyanchama(a)aganoconsulting.com Agano Consulting Inc.; www.aganoconsulting.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”- George Bernard Shaw ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This e-mail, including attachments, may be privileged and may contain confidential or proprietary information intended only for the addressee(s). Any other distribution, copying, use, or disclosure is unauthorized and strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail and permanently delete the message, including any attachments, without making a copy. Thank you.

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A stand for WikiLeaks is a stand for freedom of information online
by alice＠apc.org 10 Dec '10

10 Dec '10

APC says, A stand for WikiLeaks is a stand for freedom of information online JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA TUESDAY DECEMBER 7 The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is deeply concerned about recent attempts by governments to limit access to online content recently published by whistleblower website WikiLeaks. APC is also troubled by actions taken by private companies such as EveryDNS.net which disabled the domain name system services for WikiLeaks.org, Amazon which repealed web hosting services and Paypal which restricted access to WikiLeaks' account to prevent supporters from donating money. APC believes that the ability to share information and communicate freely using the internet is vital to the realisation of human rights and to efforts to use the internet to contribute more accountable and transparent governance at global and national levels. A site like WikiLeaks can also play a vital role in aiding the fight against corruption in governments and corporations. The APC Internet Rights Charter clearly states that: *The internet must be protected from all attempts to silence critical voices and to censor social and political content or debate. *Organisations, communities and individuals should be free to use the internet to organise and engage in protest. *All information, including scientific and social research, that is produced with the support of public funds should be freely available to all. As the world's longest-running online progressive network founded in 1990, APC has been troubled by trends over the last decade that show that such rights are increasingly violated and believes that the recent attempts to censor WikiLeaks provide additional reasons for concern. The US government has been unable to provide evidence that lives have been put at risk by WikiLeaks disclosures. APC appeals to all governments and the internet community to explicitly reject any form of online content control that limits freedom of expression and information, particularly information that contributes to more transparent governance, and that empowers citizens to hold their governments accountable. We urge them to assure the uninterrupted online presence of the WikiLeaks website. A stand for WikiLeaks is a stand for freedom of information on the internet. END

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BPO and ITES a wider view of the opportunity
by Paul Kukubo 10 Dec '10

10 Dec '10

Listers Just leafing through an extract of the IDC's World Wide Software Forecast 2010-14 Summary report. www.idc.com The Worldwide Packaged Software Market was USD 273 Billiion in 2009. Made up of 1. Application development and deployment 64,575 Million USD 2. Applications 129,838 Million USD 3. Systems Infrastructure software 78,068 Million USD Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Symantec, HP, CA. EMC Adobe and Fujistu are the leading vendors. Conclusion from our reading this report: - Certain global company technologies dominate and the ability to develop and deploy solutions on top of these technologies can greatly enhance a country's overall ICT competitiveness. - Most global enterprises run some of their critical operations on the back of these. Indeed the biggest ICT projects in the private sector here relate to deployment of solutions. e.g in CRM at Safaricom and Kenya Airways, in ERP at EABL, BIDCO, SHELL, and indeed in Financial Management in Government. - The consultancy, project management and deployment of these platforms is a huge business opportunity. Indeed many shared services and outsourcing functions include supporting or using these platforms as part of wider business operation or process. Many successful ICT firms in Kenya are in this space. Some of the venture capitalists / and private equity managers in Kenya have asked us to encourage more ICT entrepreneurs to operate their businesses around established platforms.They would be willing to fund more Oracle or Cisco certified firms. As an example, Infosys the large technology services and outsourcing provider has 20,000 certified oracle consultants on their payroll according to their CEO speaking at this year's Oracle World in California. Part of any effort to develop a country's ICT sector includes aligning capacity building efforts to global demand. asante and Happy Jamhuri weekend. Paul Kukubo Chief Executive Officer, Kenya ICT Board PO Box 27150 - 00100 Nairobi, Kenya 12th Floor, Teleposta Towers Koinange Street Tel +254 20 2089061, +254 20 2211960 Fax: +254 20 2211962 website: www.ict.go.ke local content project: www.tandaa.co.ke, www.facebook.com/tandaakenya twitter:@tandaaKENYA BPO Project: www. doitinkenya.co.ke Digital Villages Project: www.pasha.co.ke personal contacts _______________ Cell: + 254 717 180001 skype: kukubopaul googletalk: pkukubo personal blog: www.paulkukubo.co.ke personal twitter: @pkukubo ____________________ Vision: Kenya becomes a top ten global ICT hub Mission: To champion and actively enable Kenya to adopt and exploit ICT, through promotion of partnerships, investments and infrastructure growth for socio economic enrichment

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Fw: CRM-Software Engineer needed
by Walubengo J 10 Dec '10

10 Dec '10

been asked to float this, plse forward to whoever... walu. --- On Fri, 12/10/10, Benson Mbugua <benmbugz(a)gmail.com> wrote: From: Benson Mbugua <benmbugz(a)gmail.com> Subject: CRM-Software Engineer needed To: jwalu(a)yahoo.com Date: Friday, December 10, 2010, 2:14 PM Hey Walu, Could you urgently please post this job-ad on kictanet ? Regards, B. Mbugua

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