Re: [GKD] Update on Cisco LDC Initiative in Uganda
Tariq Mohammed wrote: A little over a year ago, I arrived in Uganda as United Nations Volunteer (UNV). The purpose of this message is to update ICT4D practitioners about the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Initiative, a private-public partnership between Cisco Systems, UNDP, UNV, ITU and USAID. snip Here are the highlights from 2003-2004: * The CNAP in Uganda has grown from 3 Academies in 2003 to 17 in 2004. * Uganda became the first Least Developed Country to offer the Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) curriculum. * Launched 3 Sponsored Curriculum courses - IT Essentials, Fundamentals of Voice and Data Cabling and Fundamentals of UNIX - by Hewlett Packard, Panduit and Sun Microsystems. * Established a Workforce Development Program by building 10 private-public partnerships. * Received 5 awards during the 2003 Africa Academy Forum held in Dakar, Senegal. * Success stories of 2 female students. Dear Tariq, Thanks for sharing your success with us. I was in neighbouring Kenya working in a rural women's college which was under the Jomo Kenyatta University-based Cisco Regional Academy. The college where I volunteered (through VSO) was offering CCNA courses and was planning to expand into other Sponsored curriculum such as the ones that you mention. I must confess that I was very ambivalent about the actual value of a CCNA/CCNE/CCNP in an LDC. 1. In my estimation, there is only a little demand for network and system administrators in a country like Kenya (and I presume Uganda as well). Should we be churning out hundreds of CCNAs every year when there are not nearly enough jobs to take them in? 2. Is the CCNx program a revenue stream for Cisco? I had to battle this question constantly during my work. 3. Do we need to be teaching impoverished people about network administration when we could teach them much more useful things like how to use a computer to help them manage their resources well. In other words, teach them computer usage as a tool rather than computer usage as an end in itself. In my opinion, Cisco is much better off investing all the money that it is currently spending subsidizing the CCNx programs on primary and secondary computer education. Thanks. S. ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
[GKD] Software Licence Fees vs. GDP Per Capita
I came across this interesting piece by a friend of mine: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/ghosh/index.html Abstract: There is a strong case for free software (also known as open source or libre software) being deployed widely in developing countries. As argued in this note, the open source development community provides an environment of intensive interactive skills development at little explicit cost, which is particularly useful for local development of skills, especially in economically disadvantaged regions. Further, this note argues that the controversy over total costs of ownership (TCO) of free vs. proprietary software is not applicable to developing countries and other regions with low labour costs, where the TCO advantage lies with open source, and the share of licence fees in TCO is much higher than in high labour cost countries. The note concludes with a table comparing license fees for proprietary software against GDP per capita for 176 countries. Thaths -- Slacker At Largehttp://openscroll.org/ Key fingerprint = 8A 84 2E 67 10 9A 64 03 24 38 B6 AB 1B 6E 8C E4 ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Bringing Connectivity to Under-Served Communities
On 11/10/03 18:43, Guido Sohne wrote: This is very interesting to me but raises some questions related to practical use and implementation. It basically seems that 'offline' content is being maintained in a somewhat current state by periodically syncing with upstream information. You mention satellite broadcasts, which imply that the information stream is one way. This makes sense to me, because if it was two way, why does one need to mirror content locally, except to save bandwidth (still worth doing!) This brings to mind something that the satellite radio outfit WorldSpace is doing. The idea is brilliant, in my opinion. You basically buy this satellite radio (approx. $70-100 depending on model). You also buy a computer card to interface with the radio. For a fee (that includes the card free) of approx. $40, you get unmetered limited internet access. The access is limited in the sense that you are restricted to a few WorldSpace approved websites. This would work great if WorldSpace expanded the list of approved sites to include those like Yahoo mail and Hotmail. Unfortunately, they don't. For most people, getting cheap access to a web-based email system like Yahoo mail is a good start. Thaths -- Slacker At Largehttp://openscroll.org/ Key fingerprint = 8A 84 2E 67 10 9A 64 03 24 38 B6 AB 1B 6E 8C E4 This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Bringing Connectivity to Under-Served Communities
Hello Robert and others, On 11/05/03 09:14, Robert Miller wrote: With regard to Ahmed's note and the great work he is doing by bringing Internet literacy to the students in his university in Nigeria, what if you could connect one Campus Content server to that Internet connection and locally store many times the content in the US Library of Congress? What if this provided simultaneous access for several hundred users on campus? That is a great idea. When I connected a small college in Kenya to the internet via a 64K VSAT connection, I installed a cacheing transparent proxy server. The first time someone downloaded something, the content would be fetched from the server and stored in the proxy server. For all subsequent downloads, the content would be sent to the local requestor's browser from the cache and not from the server. This vastly improved performance and download speeds. Another advantage of using proxy servers is that the administrator can set up access lists and access times. So, for example, an administrator can configure the proxy such that when a class is in progress, the students would only be able to access the prescribed materials and nothing else. A week after I connected my college, I discovered that the network usage was inordinately high. Looking at the logs I saw too many connections going to Brazil! It was a worm that had infected the lab computers. The network usage was taking up precious bandwidth from legitimate packets. I wrote a two line rule in the proxy server to drop all requests going to the Brazilian site and the network utilization dropped dramatically. Thaths -- Slacker At Largehttp://openscroll.org/ Key fingerprint = 8A 84 2E 67 10 9A 64 03 24 38 B6 AB 1B 6E 8C E4 This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Bringing Connectivity to Under-Served Communities
Dear GKD Members, I got back from Kenya after serving there as a VSO [1] volunteer for a year. I was teaching IT in a womens college in a rural place called Tala. I also trained the staff on the more advanced subjects of the curriculum. First, let me talk about the state of connectivity in the country. Connectivity in Kenya is pretty decent in the cities (Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and Nakuru). Literacy in the country is pretty high. Many of the younger people in the 15-35 age group are becoming increasingly netsavvy in the cities. They browse the web in one of the numerous internet browsing centres and have a hotmail or yahoo mail account. Prices are competitive and range in the cities betwen 1 Kenyan Shilling to 5 Kenyan Shillings per minute (1 US$ =~ 70 KSh). ISPs charge somewhere in the range of 8000 KSh / year for unlimited activity. On top of this, dial-up users must pay applicable per-minute telcom charges. Even though there are many ISPs in the country and competition between them is fierce, there are two problems: 1. All traffic has to flow in and out of the country through the Kenya Telecom monopoly owned JamboNet [2]. This creates a single point of failure and a bottleneck. 2. Only the bigger cities have local access / dial-up numbers. If someone is in not in one of these cities, they have to make a long distance / trunk call. The telcome per-minute charges on these vary depending on how far from a POP the user is. WAP is available on one (KenCell) of the two mobile phone providers. But, I have not seen it being used in the circles I moved in. There is a US AID funded effort to connect colleges and universities [3]. Now, let me answer the specific questions 1. What activities are endeavoring to bring connectivity to under-served communities? I am not sure what other organized activities are being carried out in the country. I am aware of two - One that I worked on and another of similar scope [4]. In my case, we got a subsidized 64k VSAT connection through UUNet. In addition to this connection being used by the students of the college, we also created a internet browsing center on campus for people from the community to use at a nominal fee. This enables the college to raise at least part of the cost of the internet connection. We also have a plan to set up a local wireless network to share the bandwidth with the surrounding community. There are many formal and vocational schools in the surrounding community that have expressed interest in this service. 2. What are the goals of these efforts? To what extent are the goals attained? The goal of this effort was to provide access to the relatively marginalized community of Tala. There is no connectivity in a 50-kilometer radius around this community. Part of the goal is income generation for the college as well as people using the wireless network. The lack of wireless networking equipment in Kenya hindered the achievement of the wireless network. At the moment I am working with another volunteer who is going to be going to Kenya in 2004. I intend to procude the equipment in the US and send it through the volunteer. 3. Who is being served by these connectivity efforts? Are the benefits widely distributed? Do some groups win and some lose in these connectivity efforts? I believe that the effort benefits the community widely. The students get connectivity, the community piggy backs on the connection at a nominal fee. It, in fact, spurs business because a privately run cybercafe business can make quite a bit of money by using the wireless network bandwidth to provide internet access at a fee. 4. How do connectivity efforts seek to ensure that all groups benefit? We involved the local town council, schools, parish and businesses early in our efforts. 5. What are the costs and constraints these connectivity efforts face? A VSAT connection is prohibively expensive. Such projects can't work till it reaches a critical mass of people willing to work together and share costs in getting connected. Thaths [1] http://www.vso.org.uk/ [2] http://www.telkom.co.ke/jambonetcontent1.htm [3] http://www.kenet.org/ [4] Chinni Tu -- http://openscroll.org/ Key fingerprint = 8A 84 2E 67 10 9A 64 03 24 38 B6 AB 1B 6E 8C E4 This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
Re: [GKD] RFI: Pico Hydro Power and ICT Deployments
On 10/13/03 03:01, Venkatesh (Venky) Hariharan wrote: Has anyone on this list come across a deployment of ICT specifically meant for powering computers in rural areas? I would be interested in hearing about this. You can check Jhai Foundation's Remote IT Village Project at: http://www.jhai.org/jhai_remoteIT.html for information regarding a solid-state, low-wattage computer that can be powered by a foot-crank, a high-bandwidth wireless network, and support for village small businesses. -- Thaths ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
[GKD] Low-Cost Computers for the Developing World?
http://h2o.law.harvard.edu/viewRotisserie.do?rotisserieId=285 Interesting question being posed by the author: Should the developing world fund research to build a low cost (read around $100) computer or invest in building IT/education upon the platform of a device such as internet-capable mobiles. Thaths -- thaths at aunet.org Slacker At Large http://www.aunet.org/thaths/ Key fingerprint = 8A 84 2E 67 10 9A 64 03 24 38 B6 AB 1B 6E 8C E4 ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
