- KICTANet - KICTANet

The 411...
by Michael Kipsang Bullut 06 Sep '07

06 Sep '07

Guys, Information is vital and sometimes can be unavailable, therefore, I want to welcome/introduce you all to my first blog <http://kipsang.wordpress.com/>dedicated entirely to matters concerning Information Technology. As an Information Technologist in the making, sharing information is vital to surviving in this competitive industry and with the advent of blogs, distributing this information will be quick and easy. By all means, feel free to comment on the articles I post and if you have anything you want posted, drop me a line. Enjoy! Kind regards, Michael. -- "To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wildflower...hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour..." ~ William Blakeg. --

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Africa: The race to liberalise broadcast markets is just beginning
by alice 05 Sep '07

05 Sep '07

(From Balancing Act) Africa: The race to liberalise broadcast markets is just beginning The 1990s saw the phenomenal growth of the mobile sector in Africa turning millions of people into the proud owners of a phone. This growth was made possible by opening Africa's telecoms market to new investment and competition, lowering prices and increasing choice. Broadcasting is about to go through the same cycle only twenty years later, writes Russell Southwood, and Africa's broadcast industry may see the same kind of growth. This issue of African Broadcast, Film and Convergence sees new pay-TV entrant GTV going into more countries and a third entrant announcing its presence in the Ugandan market. Cameroon has announced four new broadcast licences for private operators. Togo has announced the arrival of a sports channel. Two new broadcast stations appear to be on the cards, one in the capital Abuja and the other in Kogi State. As elsewhere in Africa, these last two stations have been prompted by local politicians, anxious to have access to the means of communication to promote themselves. It will take a breed of tough, brave regulators to police issues around fairness and access. The state broadcasting sector is largely under-funded and will find it difficult to keep up with the pace of this race. Africa has not often seen public broadcasting in the purer sense (of the kind best represented by the BBC) as too many broadcasters have become the captive of Government, for whom they rely on their funding. At its worst, African state broadcasting is sadly amongst the dullest viewing on the planet. More private broadcasters create new talent and new voices and spread the power to communicate into more hands. Africa's state broadcasters will need to create a clear role for themselves if they are to survive this onslaught. Simply repeating what the Government wants will not play well if there are alternatives. Why watch the President opening yet another something when you can watch a local football match or the Barclays Premier League? A staggering fifty organisations were shortlisted to operate private radio or TV licences in Cameroon. Only four received licences - Spectrum TV, Canal 2 International, Sweet FM and TV+ - but according to Cameroon's Minister of Communications Professor Ebénézer Njoh Mouelle:" Amongst the 50 audio-visual stations only 4 of them have today received licences to operate. It means that 46 others should also be ready to come forth for their licences. The delay depends on them. They need to follow the example of those who have received an authorization to operate a private audio-visual media in Cameroon". In other words, show you can do it and we will give you a licence. The process has been presented as a regularisation of the existing market as many stations already operate without a licence. According to the Minister:" The licence enables those who are already operating in the field to be formal rather than informal. Those who received the licence to operate have become more opened, recognised and can freely negotiate financial deals with foreign operators". The main obstacle for more clearing the requirements for a licence are money. The sum paid depends on whether the station is a local or a national one. All applicants have cleared the technical requirements hurdles but the remaining 46 have found difficulty thus far in finding the money required to pay their licence fees. A lively and healthy media market in broadcasting will doubtless help with the process of raising the money. The first four entrants have a more or less clear run at it and should produce clear evidence of both listener/viewer interest and advertising revenues. Meanwhile in Togo, a new TV channel - Télé Sport has launched that will concentrate on meeting the thirst for sport among its Togolese viewers. It will devote 90% of its content tosport, 5% to culture and 5% to science. It wants to provide coverage of local Togolese sporting events as well as global events. Télé Sport broadcasts on Channel 29 that will start by covering the whole of the north of Lome but will eventually cover the whole region around the capital. It will employ a dozen people band its launch brings to six, the number of TV channels available to Togolese viewers. There are sixty radio stations, one of which is Sport FM.

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Internet Server Set Up at IGAD Secretariat. Expressions of interest
by alice 05 Sep '07

05 Sep '07

We are looking for Experts to undertake the task below in this month of September. If interested please email proposal/quote/ enquirie on bessie.nyirenda(a)igad.org. Thanks Bessie Nyirenda ICT Coordinator - IGAD ____________________________________________________________________________ INTERGOVERNMENTAL AUTHORITY FOR DEVELOPMENT (IGAD) REGIONAL INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES SUPPORT PROGRAMME (RICTSP) TERMS OF REFERENCE SETTING UP SERVERS AT IGAD SECRETARIAT AUGUST 2007 Terms for Server Set Up at IT Section for IGAD Secretariat 1. Background Information The regional integration organization of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is implementing a Regional ICT Support Programme. The overall objective of the RICTSP is to contribute to the ESA region's integration agenda through an effective and efficient Information and Communications Technologies (lCT) environment, which will reduce the costs of trade and investment and thereby stimulate economic growth and reduce poverty. The purpose of the RICTSP is to achieve a reduction in the digital divide by removing some of the constraints to the efficient use of ICT. Currently, more efficient use of ICT by entrepreneurs and policy makers is inhibited by a combination of a restrictive regulatory environment; poor connectivity; poor access to commercially valuable information; and a lack of ICT skills. The Programme contains various sets of activities aimed at achieving the following results: 1) The development, and monitoring of implementation, of ICT policy guidelines and strategies and monitoring of e-readiness status; 2) The provision of high speed internet connectivity to regional key stakeholders to reduce costs of doing business in the region and promote migration to Asycuda++ in selected countries; 3) Improved and more efficient access to economic, commercial and policy information of practical use and the establishment of incubator projects to demonstrate the viability of the internet, including e-commerce. Improved capacity for entrepreneurs to exploit ICT opportunities and e-commerce techniques. As part of improved and more efficient access to information, servers have been purchased to host the regional web portal and email services. The first step to ensuring improved access to information is to properly set up the servers to provide an environment for storing information. The set up of the servers of the IT section at IGAD Secretariat will be undertaken with funding under the Regional Information and Communications Technologies Support Programme (RICTSP), funded under the 9th EDF. 2. Objectives of the Assignment The objectives of the assignment are to elaborate: i) Set up secure local hosting services for Email and Web Services for IGAD Region at its Secretariat Offices. Currently these services are being outsourced to an outside hosting Company in the USA. ii) To build capacity of IGAD staff members to take charge of their information and information provision services. 3. Regional Integration Organisation The assignment under these terms of reference will cover the IGAD Secretariat in Djibouti which serves countries of: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Sudan. 4. Scope of Services In order to meet the objectives of the assignment, the consultant will be required to carry out the following activities: i) Carry out a situational analysis of the IT section to assess available hardware and available internet connections ii) Design the network, security system and internet services. iii) Set up the network, security system and Internet services : ? Router configuration for the DMZ, firewall, and NAT ? DNS, outbound Web proxy, and outbound e-mail ? Primary and Secondary Servers ? Name servers ? Security ? set up DMZ ? All software in use on this work must be 100% open source. ? The internal file and email server ? A secure auditing workstation will sit between the DMZ switch and the DMZ Ethernet port on the router. ? Set up Web services with Content Management System (Joomla) ix) Train Systems Administrator and Webmaster is setting up the Servers. 4. Expected Results The results to be delivered under this assignment are - A well functioning Email Service with webmail access to all staff. - A Web Server with content management system - An easy to update antivirus and antispam filtering system for email server; - A Secure network with well functioning DMZ with intrusion detection and network management facility; 5. Duration and Reporting The consultant will be expected to commence the assignment immediately upon signing the contract, and complete the assignment not later than 9 days after commencement date. The short-term expert will work under the supervision of the RICTSP Coordinator and the Supervisor (the IGAD Director of Economic Cooperation and Social Development Division (ECSD)). The consultant will produce a draft assessment report and a final report providing documentation of all work done. Soft and hard copies of the final report and final should be presented in MS Word and MS Excel (Office 2003 compatible) and will be written in English. 5. Profile of Short-term Expert/s The consultant will meet the following requirements: Qualifications and Experience: ? A University degree in Computer Science, Engineering or Equivalent qualification; ? At least 5 years experience of progressively setting up Internet Servers; ? Experience in designing and producing documentation; Record of working collaboratively and successfully with country officials, private sector and the public in the ESA region will be an added advantage. Language: The short-term expert will have an excellent command of English with good report writing skills. Knowledge of French will be an added advantage. _______________________________________________ AAW-Network mailing list AAW-Network(a)lists.apcwomen.org http://lists.apcwomen.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aaw-network

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Invitation to Opening Ceremony of the development aid project „Sega Silicon Valley”
by Jose' 05 Sep '07

05 Sep '07

We would like to invite you to opening ceremony of our project, that will be held on 15th of September 2007 in Sega Township Primary School organized by Simba Friends Foundation Poland. The project is a part of “Sega Sillicon Valley” program financed by Simba Friends Foundation and polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Our activities focus on installation of computers in certain schools in Sega Township, creation of an IT Centre available for the local community, organization of trainings on ICT and environmental protection. The actions of Simba Friends Foundation are aim at empowering the inhabitants of Sega by enabling them access to IT education and as a result widening their chances for employment. Attached is our program of events that would take place from 10.am to 4.pm. You are most welcomed, we hope you will be able to make it. Best Regards, Jose' Njuki-Imwe Ngunjiri || +254 722 336754 || ____________________________________________________________________________________ Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel. http://travel.yahoo.com/

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ISO said 'OOXML ?, No thanks'
by Dorcas Muthoni 05 Sep '07

05 Sep '07

http://www.iso.org/iso/newsandmedia/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1070

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[Fwd: [AfrICANN-discuss] Kenya bids to host top IT conference]
by alice 01 Sep '07

01 Sep '07

* <http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=1143973832> * The East African Standard | Online Edition <http://www.eastandard.net/> * Saturday September 1, 2007 * * Kenya bids to host top IT conference * ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *By Alari Alare* Kenya has submitted a bid to host the African round of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) meeting set for November next year. The bid was submitted by the board of the Kenya Information Centre (Kenic) on behalf of the private sector and the Government. Speaking during Kenic's annual general meeting on Friday, chairman Anthony Mugambi, disclosed that a team comprising Government, private sector and the Kenya Tourism Board (KTB) will be constituted to lobby for the bid. As a trustee for the dot. ke country-code-top-level-domain, Kenic oversees the Kenyan Domain Name space by managing and administering the dot .ke in conformity with global Internet policies. Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers on the other hand is responsible for managing and coordinating the global Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure each address is unique and that users of the Internet could find valid addresses. It does this by overseeing the distribution of unique IP (Internet Protocol) addresses and domain names. "In an effort to expose Kenya's vibrant ICT community to the rest of the world, the Kenic Board has submitted a bid to host the African round of the Icann meeting in November next year in Nairobi, Kenya", said Mugambi. "We are confident of winning the bid to host the event and we shall be seeking your support in hosting the event," said Mugambi. During the meeting, a new board led by Mugambi was named to steer the Centre's activities. << Back <http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=1143973832> _______________________________________________ AfrICANN mailing list AfrICANN(a)afrinic.net https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo.cgi/africann

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29-30 October 2007, Kigali, Rwanda:, Connect Africa Summit
by alice 31 Aug '07

31 Aug '07

Connect Africa - The Summit As host of the Summit, the Government of Rwanda will welcome some 500 participants, including Heads of State/Government and Ministers from Africa and other regions, CEOs and senior executives of global and African ICT companies, heads of international and regional organizations and financial institutions, international and local media as well as other stakeholders. The Summit will have a practical, results-oriented format, including interactive, multi-stakeholder panel discussions, partnership announcements, as well as opportunities for participants to showcase their ICT development projects to potential partners and donors. The Summit will also provide an excellent networking platform for leaders from the public, private and financial sectors to meet and forge new partnerships for the future. Participants in the Connect Africa Summit will examine key success factors for ICT investment and development and identify areas for collaboration to: * expand broadband backbone infrastructure and access networks, using innovative business and financing models, such as infrastructure-sharing and demand aggregation among local and regional institutions. This new infrastructure investment includes national and regional interconnectivity initiatives, such as Internet exchange points and rural connectivity projects; * enhance workforce training to support employment and growth in the ICT sector and the overall economy; * stimulate the development of locally-relevant ICT content, applications and services, and * broaden efforts to develop an enabling policy and regulatory environment for investment, including harmonization across regions and sub-regions. The Connect Africa Summit will be preceded by several months of preparations between the partners, including an analysis of the current situation and requirements, an assessment of constraints and an elaboration of policy options to promote private sector investment, strengthening statistical capacities to improve tracking of progress, as well as the development of specific project proposals for funding that will be presented to potential partners and donors. *29-30 October 2007*, Kigali, Rwanda: *Connect Africa Summit* <http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/connect/africa/2007/summit/index.html> http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/connect/africa/2007/summit/index.html

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Who's afraid of Google?]
by alice 31 Aug '07

31 Aug '07

Who's afraid of Google? Aug 30th 2007 >From The Economist print edition The world's internet superpower faces testing times RARELY if ever has a company risen so fast in so many ways as Google, the world's most popular search engine. This is true by just about any measure: the growth in its market value and revenues; the number of people clicking in search of news, the nearest pizza parlour or a satellite image of their neighbour's garden; the volume of its advertisers; or the number of its lawyers and lobbyists. Such an ascent is enough to evoke concernsboth paranoid and justified. The list of constituencies that hate or fear Google grows by the week. Television networks, book publishers and newspaper owners feel that Google has grown by using their content without paying for it. Telecoms firms such as America's AT&T and Verizon are miffed that Google prospers, in their eyes, by free-riding on the bandwidth that they provide; and it is about to bid against them in a forthcoming auction for radio spectrum. Many small firms hate Google because they relied on exploiting its search formulas to win prime positions in its rankings, but dropped to the internet's equivalent of Hades after Google tweaked these algorithms. And now come the politicians. Libertarians dislike Google's deal with China's censors. Conservatives moan about its uncensored videos. But the big new fear is to do with the privacy of its users. Google's business model (see article) assumes that people will entrust it with ever more information about their lives, to be stored in the company's "cloud" of remote computers. These data begin with the logs of a user's searches (in effect, a record of his interests) and his responses to advertisements. Often they extend to the user's e-mail, calendar, contacts, documents, spreadsheets, photos and videos. They could soon include even the user's medical records and precise location (determined from his mobile phone). More JP Morgan than Bill Gates Google is often compared to Microsoft (another enemy, incidentally); but its evolution is actually closer to that of the banking industry. Just as financial institutions grew to become repositories of people's money, and thus guardians of private information about their finances, Google is now turning into a custodian of a far wider and more intimate range of information about individuals. Yes, this applies also to rivals such as Yahoo! and Microsoft. But Google, through the sheer speed with which it accumulates the treasure of information, will be the one to test the limits of what society can tolerate. It does not help that Google is often seen as arrogant. Granted, this complaint often comes from sour-grapes rivals. But many others are put off by Google's cocksure assertion of its own holiness, as if it merited unquestioning trust. This after all is the firm that chose "Don't be evil" as its corporate motto and that explicitly intones that its goal is "not to make money", as its boss, Eric Schmidt, puts it, but "to change the world". Its ownership structure is set up to protect that vision. Ironically, there is something rather cloudlike about the multiple complaints surrounding Google. The issues are best parted into two cumuli: a set of "public" arguments about how to regulate Google; and a set of "private" ones for Google's managers, to do with the strategy the firm needs to get through the coming storm. On both counts, Googlecontrary to its own propagandais much better judged as being just like any other "evil" money-grabbing company. Grab the money That is because, from the public point of view, the main contribution of all companies to society comes from making profits, not giving things away. Google is a good example of this. Its "goodness" stems less from all that guff about corporate altruism than from Adam Smith's invisible hand. It provides a service that others find very usefulnamely helping people to find information (at no charge) and letting advertisers promote their wares to those people in a finely targeted way. Given this, the onus of proof is with Google's would-be prosecutors to prove it is doing something wrong. On antitrust, the price that Google charges its advertisers is set by auction, so its monopolistic clout is limited; and it has yet to use its dominance in one market to muscle into others in the way Microsoft did. The same presumption of innocence goes for copyright and privacy. Google's book-search product, for instance, arguably helps rather than hurts publishers and authors by rescuing books from obscurity and encouraging readers to buy copyrighted works. And, despite Big Brotherish talk about knowing what choices people will be making tomorrow, Google has not betrayed the trust of its users over their privacy. If anything, it has been better than its rivals in standing up to prying governments in both America and China. That said, conflicts of interest will become inevitableespecially with privacy. Google in effect controls a dial that, as it sells ever more services to you, could move in two directions. Set to one side, Google could voluntarily destroy very quickly any user data that it collects. That would assure privacy, but it would limit Google's profits from selling to advertisers information about what you are doing, and make those services less useful. If the dial is set to the other side and Google hangs on to the information, the services will be more useful, but some dreadful intrusions into privacy could occur. The answer, as with banks in the past, must lie somewhere in the middle; and the right point for the dial is likely to change, as circumstances change. That will be the main public interest in Google. But, as the bankers (and Bill Gates) can attest, public scrutiny also creates a private challenge for Google's managers: how should they present their case? One obvious strategy is to allay concerns over Google's trustworthiness by becoming more transparent and opening up more of its processes and plans to scrutiny. But it also needs a deeper change of heart. Pretending that, just because your founders are nice young men and you give away lots of services, society has no right to question your motives no longer seems sensible. Google is a capitalist tooland a useful one. Better, surely, to face the coming storm on that foundation, than on a trite slogan that could be your undoing. __._,_.___

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[Registrar-announce] Streaming KeNIC AGM 2007 - 31st August, 2007
by Michuki Mwangi 30 Aug '07

30 Aug '07

* <apologies for cross posting> Dear Members, Streaming KeNIC AGM 2007 - 31st August, 2007* * *KeNIC will broadcast a live audio stream of its' 4th Annual General Meeting. The live stream can be accessed at http://habari.kenic.or.ke:8001/. In addition, an IM server will be available for remote users to post comments and/or queries. It is our hope that this effort will continue to provide useful, timely and accessible access to the proceedings of these meetings as they happen. *Streaming and Conference Service * Streams are delivered as 64Kb/s unicast-http-streamed mp3 audio, a popular and relatively standard way to deliver internet radio. Most platforms should have a client immediatly available (windows media player, quicktime, real, winamp, vlc, mplayer, zinf, etc) capable of playing back the stream. For the jabber service: (a) those *with *jabber clients can join the meeting room, agm2007(a)conference.psg.com <mailto:agm2007@conference.psg.com>. A list of jabber clients can be found at http://www.jabber.org/software/clients.shtml <http://www.jabber.org/software/clients.shtml> (b) those *without *can send their comments and/or queries to live-comments(a)kenic.or.ke *Testing * To test your client against a currently active stream of the same type, access the stream at the following URL, http://habari.kenic.or.ke:8001 <http://videolab.uoregon.edu/events/ietf/test.m3u>/ *Meeting * Streaming begins at *0900hrs *(GMT+3) *Friday 31st August, 2007*. All meetings will be held at the Simba Room. Kind Regards, ----------------- Vincent Ngundi Technical Manager KeNIC - The Kenya Network Information Center http://www.kenic.or.ke _______________________________________________ Registrar-announce mailing list Registrar-announce(a)ole.kenic.or.ke http://ole.kenic.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/registrar-announce

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[Fwd: Fwd: FW: first announcement/ radio script writing competition]
by alice 30 Aug '07

30 Aug '07

Dear All, > Developing Countries Farm Radio Network <http://www.farmradio.org/> > (DCFRN) and CTA <http://www.cta.int/> will soon launch a scriptwriting > competition entitled African Farmers Strategies for Coping with > Climate Change for African radio practitioners (broadcasters, > production organizations, NGOs with a radio project, farmers > associations with a radio show etc.). > > > > Climate change is having a major impact on smallholder farmers in ACP > countries and farmers urgently need information to help them > understand climate change, the ways it might affect them, and how they > can adapt their resource management strategies to reduce global > warming and mitigate its negative effects. > > Radio, as we know, is one of the most effective media for providing > rural communities in Africa with information but the capacity of the > stations in writing relevant scripts is also limited. This competition > serves both purposes of better sharing information and strengthening > the capacity of rural radio broadcasters. > > > > Competitors will be invited to submit a radio script on themes related > to local adaptation to climate change under various formats (audio > interview, spots, discussion between two hosts, drama, stories). The > scripts will be reviewed by an international panel of judges. The > winners will be announced in May 2008 and the top 15 entries will > receive audio recorders and be published by CTA and DCFRN. But one of > the most important aspect of the capacity building process is that all > entrants will receive feedback on their scripts. > > > > We plan to widely communicate amongst the radio community in Africa > and amongst those who work with/ for this community (Media network, > African radio broadcasters, Development organisations such as Deutsche > Welle, radio Nederland...). > > > > Thanks for your kind help to help us disseminating the announcement > amongst the radio community in Africa (_let us know if you need a > certain format to communicate on the initiative_). > > > > Best regards > > > > > > Sarah Bel

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