Jessika Tremblay is an undergraduate student at McGill Univeristy in Canada.  She is conducting research for her bachelor's thesis on the impact of the internet on development in Africa.

Part of her research consists in interviewing people over the internet with a few short questions related to their use of the internet for development purposes.

If anyone is interested in answering a few questions please can they contact  me at community at kabissa dot org and I will foward your interest to Ms Tremblay.

 

 

We are beginning to see a trickle of press releases, photos and outcomes from the IDLELO 3 conference taking place this week in Dakar (program in ODT format). I was encouraged by this big training program on open source software announced by the German InWent capacity building organization. I've been seeing alot of interesting InWent activities in Africa recently including with the One Laptop Per Child program.

Blogger Erik Hersman publishes a report back on the Africa 2.0 Panel recently held in Austin, Texas as part of the SXSW conference

African internet usage has grown by a staggering 882 % over the past 7 years, second only to the Middle East.  However the percentage of the population with an internet connection is still the lowest globally at 4.7%. [the table does not explain whether the % refers to numbers having internet at home or those having access to the internet.] 

 

The NGO Mobile competition is an annual competition open to NGOs from the Global South. The aim of the competition is to encourage NGOs to think of new ways of applying mobile technology to their work.

THE FIFTH ANNUAL Sierra Leone KD Development Mission FUNDRAISING GALA

FrontlineSMS is the first text messaging system to be conceived, designed and written firmly with the needs of the non-profit sector in mind. Until now, the majority of systems have not taken into account the nature of non-profit work, and the specific conditions (financial and physical) which many work under. The FrontlineSMS software is provided free to charities and other non-profit organisations. The software can be downloaded from the Download menu but requires activation before messages can be sent or received. Details on how to obtain activation codes are provided.

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List of videos from YouTube on Mobile Phones in Africa. The videos range from mobile phone screen savers, to videos taken using mobile phones, to documentaries on mobile phone usage.

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PAMONET (African Mobile Activists Network) has published a profile of 3 civil society organsiations and how they are using mobile phones for advocacy.