Hi Everyone!

My name is Ohnenana Bosnu Kyeretwie. I'm from The Firstbyte Project, currenntly a Ghana-based NGO registered with the Registered General’s Department and incorporated as an independent non-profit making think-tank under the Ghana Companies Code of 1963, Act 1799.

I'll be using this blog to update you on developments within and around FIRSTBYTE  as well as to share my thoughts with you on some vital issues relating to social networking in the digital age.

Member Spotlight: Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET)

This month, Sokari Ekine interviews Dorothy Okello, the founder and director of WOUGNET. WOUGNET (Kabissa profile, website hosted on Kabissa) has been a Kabissa member since 2001.

Africa is blessed with hundreds of languages (Nigeria alone has about 300 - not dialects but languages).  With the ever expanding use of the internet and other media and use of Western languages, many of our indigenous languages are in danger of being lost forever.  

TalkaSoft - Soro is a Nigerian initiative consisting of software which simultaneously translates from English into Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa.

StartUps Nigeria by Loy, is probably the most interesting and long awaited blog on technology in Africa. The idea behind the blog is to write about and promote Nigeria Web 2.0 applications and new developments in mobile technology.

 

The Toro region based ICT for Development Research and Resource Centre project initiated by Toro Development Network (ToroDev - Kabissa Profile, Website hosted on Kabissa), a community based ICT4D driven NGO since 2005, has shown such fine model and progressive results that the Stockholm Challenge jury selected it as one of the finalists in the Economic Development category of the 2008 award.

With gratitude to bytesforall, I learned today about this very meaningful appeal to keep the One Laptop Per Child project on course as a force for freedom in the world, by Richard Stallman, described on Wikipedia as "an American software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer." I've been following this issue personally, and while I'm not quite as activist a promoter of open source software as RMS, I was crushed when I learned a few weeks ago about Negroponte's plans for Windows on the device.

MobileActive.org shared news of the release of a new report on Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use.

File:

MobilizingSocialChange_full.pdf

Link:

http://mobileactive.org/wireless-technology-social-change-trends-ngo-mobile-use

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Via incom-l mailing list, I received the following message about the shutdownday.org campaign which is encouraging people to shut down their computers on Saturday 3 May. This is an interesting initative, and from our perspective of working with computing in African civil society it raises the starkness of the digital divide between North America and Africa.

HINT IT project Rural Electrification And Communication Technology (REACT) has been selected as one of 145 finalists in the prestigious Stockholm challenge Award 2008 out of a total of over 2000 applicants from all over the world.

Here is the information letter as received this week:

Dear Tinshu Genesis Gemuh,

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The site has an excellent blog and user support forums

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