news

21.07.2004 SchoolNet Africa, one of the partners in education of the International Institute for Communication and Development, has published a report on school networking activities across Africa. The collection provides an overview of the initiatives as on January 2004 with a synopsis of ICT and education programmes of donor and development agencies working in Africa.

20.07.2004 Alcatel's Digital Bridge Initiative, already underway in Tunisia and Senegal, is expected to be launched in rural South Africa. The initiative is part of Alcatel's sustainable development programme, which operates in line with decisions taken at the World Summit on Information Society held in Geneva in December 2003

20.07.2004 A contest to find the best educational web portal in Latin America and the Caribbean has recently been launched by INFOLAC, a programme to enhance co-operation among information systems and networks in the region. The winner of the US$-4,000 award will be announced in January 2005. The last date for online submission of projects is 15 October 2004

17.07.2004 A Canadian company has been contracted to extend Sonatel, Senegal’s national telecommunications provision, into rural areas. Senegal ranks second in sub-Saharan Africa for internet connectivity, surpassed only by South Africa.

16.07.2004 A national policymakers’ workshop on July 9 - 10 organised by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation and OneWorld South Asia in New Delhi, India, agreed on an action framework to take the benefits of ICTs to every village in India by 2007. The workshop was supported by the Nasscom Foundation, International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

16.07.2004 The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has announced a meeting to discuss the structure and operations of the Secretariat of the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) set up recently. The meeting will be held on September 20-21,
2004.

15.07.2004 Web publishers are apprehensive that Oracle's patenting of the content management system (CMS) will delimit use of this popular web publishing tool. The United States recently granted a patent of the CMS, termed as "self service system for website publishing" to the company, even though it has been available to people for years.