Community Facilitator

The World Bank says it will spend $215 million to help central African countries provide better quality and more affordable high-speed Internet service.

The bank noted that the funds will be used to build a broadband Internet infrastructure in 11 African countries.

It is argued that this is to further boost connectivity in central African countries as they currently offer the worst quality and most expensive internet services in the continent.

The initial phase of the 10-year program, called… Continue

Earlier this summer, MTN ( biggest telecom in Ug) alongside google launched Google SMS, a suite of SMS services in Uganda. One of these services, Google Trader, provides people with greater access to new markets and trade opportunities. The SMS version of Google Trader brings together buyers and sellers of products or services in a "marketplace" using their mobile phones. Whether buying or selling agricultural products, cars, jobs, services, electronics or real estate, anyone can post or… Continue

More than half of the 800 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in South Africa say that information technology has had a major effect on their ability to advance human rights and they are starting to realise the potential of mobile technology and social networking , a study has found.

The results highlighted the increasing value of the cellphone. A quarter of NGOs used custom applications on cellphones, such as medication maintenance systems for patients with HIV/AIDS or TB, which remind patie… Continue

Though various African countries monitor and restrict Internet access in some way, Ethiopia is the only country with a technical filtering regime in the sub-Saharan region, according to a report by OpenNet Initiative, a collaborative partnership between Harvard, Toronto, Cambridge and Oxford universities.

The study, conducted in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe between 2008 and 2009, found that though sub-Saharan Africa has a history of controlling freedom of expression, Ethiopia was the… Continue

An Internet service linking African parliaments will be created to enable MPs around the continent to share oversight experiences and views on matters of governance, noted Dr. Ahmed Fathi Sorour, speaker of the Egyptian Parliament.

Sorour was attending the first African Parliamentary Speakers' Conference, organised by the Pan- African Parliament (PAP) in Midrand, Johannesburg, last week.

The service will facilitate synergies of policies between parliaments, which are essential to build confide… Continue