Thursday, September 17, 2009

African Elections Project- Botswana, Namibia and Mozambique

African Elections Project

Elections are crucial bedrock for democracies and enabling a free and open society.  The role of the media in ensuring successful election is very crucial.  All over the world the media is playing this important role of ensuring free and fair elections by working with all stakeholders across board.The media can strengthen the electoral process by providing independent information through impartial coverage. Three important elements come into play: access to information on the political process, ability to undertake investigate journalism and document lessons and experiences from the electioneering process.

 

There are a lot of challenges and problems facing the media in the area of election coverage. Key among them is lack of access to real-time information, lack of capacity to undertake investigative journalism surrounding elections, use of ICTs in coverage,  inability to produce balanced reports and to incorporate user content are some of the  challenges and problems facing the media during elections coverage.  In order to address some of these problems, African Elections Project was launched in September 2000 with the following key activity areas :

v     Training for senior editors, journalists and reporters

v      SMS application in coverage and monitoring

v      Election Guide for the Media

v      Information and Knowledge Online Portal

v      Knowledge products for the media

v      Media Content Monitoring

 
 

With funding from OSISA - The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa www.osisa.org working with key partners, African Elections Project is providing coverage for the following countries in the Southern Africa region : 

 
 

 

 

If you are in the region or any of the above countries and want to get involve with this exciting project send a mail to
 
Hope to hear from you soon
 
 
 
 
Countries Covered so far :
  1. Ghana www.africanelections.org/ghana
  2. Mauritania www.africanelections.org/mauritania
  3. Malawi www.africanelections.org/malawi 

Pending Elections :

Cote d'Ivoire www.africanelections.org/cotedivoire,

Niger www.africanelections.org/niger

and Guinea www.africanelctions.org/guinea

 

 

Declaration on ICT for Development,World Congress on ICT for Development, 11 September 2009, Beijing

Declaration on ICT for Development

World Congress on ICT for Development, 11 September 2009, Beijing

 

 

The 2009 World Congress on ICT for Development, WCID'09, held Sept. 10-12, 2009 in Beijing, was sponsored by the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) and China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), co-sponsored by International Telecommunication Union (ITU), United Nations' Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nation's Global Alliance on ICT and Development (UN-GAID), and the International Center for Science-Technology-Innovation for South-South Cooperation (ISTIC), and organized by the WFEO Committee on Information and Communication (CIC). The theme of WCID09 was "ICT for Development". A number of issues of significance related to the theme were addressed in the Congress and the participants have reached the following understandings and agreements.

 

1, Millennium Development Goal, for Remedying the Unbalancing Boat

 

People, from every corner of the globe have same rights for seeking the happier life. We are in fact in a big village and sailing on the same boat.

 

Due to historical reasons, however, people have been in different positions, richer or poorer, stronger or weaker, well-educated or less-enlightened. Over-unbalance may lead to danger to the mankind.

 

To remedy the situation, the United Nations have set a Millennium Development Goal to at least halve the poor population before 2015. This is a loyal responsibility for all of us.

 

2, Information Age, New Stage of Human Society

 

Science and Technology as a whole is the major driving force for the development of human society.

 

Material Science and Technology has made it possible for human society to advance from nomadic age to agricultural age, Energy Science and Technology has driven the society from agricultural age to industrial age, and now Information Science and Technology is leading the society from industrial age to information age.

 

3, ICT, Effective Tool for Development in the New Age

 

Advancement of the human society depends on the new tools innovated by science and technology.

 

The typical new tool in information age is the information and communication technology, ICT, which has two stages to develop: the Primary stage and the Advanced stage.

 

The Primary ICT Tool supports the convenience of information sharing among people that will make better matches among sectors of the society and thus improves the social productivities.

 

The Advanced ICT Tool will support highest efficiency and creativity in social productivities and provide equal opportunity for people to use, leading the various kinds of gaps existed in society gradually diminished.

 

4, Education, Key to the Use of ICT Tool

 

To effectively use ICT Tool for making progress in economic and social development, people need to acquire necessary kinds of knowledge and skills. Education will thus play the most fundamental and indispensable role.

 

People in information age have the advantage of using ICT for receiving education. This has been proved by many appreciable cases presented during WCID'09.

 

5, Responsibility for Governments and Citizens

 

Government in any country should take on the responsibility to promote the national education for all people and place education as the top priority on the national development agenda.

 

Government should also take effective measures to encourage all stakeholders for building up and maintaining the national infrastructure as well as creating the variety of information resources so that people, including disabled people, can afford to use ICT Tool for learning, working and living.

 

Citizens should well be aware of the importance of learning and people are never too old to learn ICT.

 

6, Responsibility for International Organizations

 

To reduce the unbalance of development among nations, international cooperation between developed and developing countries should be strengthened. Developed countries have responsibility to provide assistance to the developing countries in this regards.

 

The international organizations have obligations to work together for promoting various kinds of cooperation among nations. Conference, e.g., WCID'09, is one of the approaches for this purpose.

 

7, Public Call

 

The participants of WCID'09 strongly appeal to all citizens, professions, governments and international bodies to take effective actions in promoting ICT for sustainable human, economic and social development.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

 

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Vodafone reduces broadband installation charges

Accra, Sept. 15, GNA - Vodafone Ghana, has announced a reduction in the installation charge of its fixed broadband service from GHc90 to GHc55, a statement copied to the GNA said.

The reduction, which started from September 11, 2009, would last for a period of three months.

The statement said the reduction meant that, the initial upfront cost for new broadband customers has reduced significantly.

"We have reduced our installation charges so that everyone can connect to our broadband facilities," it said.

Recently Vodafone introduced a wireless dongle that offered on-the-go internet service on Vodafone Mobile broadband. Dubbed, the Vodafone Mobile Connect, the dongle gave customers always-on, fast Internet access on one's PC or laptop "whether you're stationary, on the move, indoor or outdoor," a statement said. The service, which came with a Vodafone USB Modem with a new Tariff Offer for Post-paid and Prepaid subscribers, would soon be available in the market.

The statement said Prepaid Customers would enjoy an additional GHC20 to start directly with the service.

It said Vodafone's broadband had a suite of business broadband packages tailored to the needs of Solar and Heliospheric Observatory service (SOHOs), Small and Medium scale Enterprises (SME's) and large enterprises.

In a related development, the Vodafone Group had launched a Wi-Fi hotspot application that would enable users to connect up to five devices to the same mobile broadband connection, a statement copied to the GNA said.

The "Vodafone Mobile Broadband Hotspot" would initially be available in Germany, Romania and Spain and soon in Ghana and other Vodafone operations in Ghana, would support High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) connectivity up to 7.2 Mbps.

The credit-card-sized independent operating system enables customers to connect quickly and easily to any device that supports the Wi-Fi standard, and then connect to the internet using Vodafone's mobile broadband connectivity.

With one touch to power on, users will be able to detect the mobile Wi-Fi cloud using any device configured for Wi-Fi and connect up to five devices within a 10-metre radius.

The device has an internal battery that provides up to four hours of active use on a single charge.

"The Vodafone Mobile Broadband Hotspot offers mobile professionals, students and families a one-touch connectivity solution that turns Wi-Fi enabled devices such as MP3 players and laptops into connected mobile internet devices," the statement said.

It said the product brought even more flexibility to customers, and ensures that Vodafone's market leading mobile broadband could be rolled out to even more devices to give customers greater convenience. Vodafone has a monopoly over SAT-3, the only submarine fibre optics cable with a landing station in Ghana, giving the company monopoly over broadband.

But two more submarine fibre optic cables, Glo One and Main One, are due to land in Ghana soon, which would broadband ownership available to other telecom operators and ISPs; and analysts say that would break Vodafone's monopoly on broadband and automatically force prices down.

GNA



ps: SOHO stands for Small Office Home Office not
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory stated above

Fibre Optics: Africa on Information Superhighway

A GNA Feature by Samuel Dowuona

So much has been said about fibre optics over the last two years, particularly submarine fibre optics communications technology coming to Ghana.

The hype of the fibre optics talk was particularly fuelled by the sale of 70 per cent of the Enlarged Ghana Telecom to Vodafone at a "paltry" $900 million.

The Enlarged GT included the fixed line operations, the mobile phone operations (Onetouch), the call centre (Exzeed), the National Fibre Optics Backbone and the SAT-3 Submarine Fibre Optics landing station.

In simple terms, fibre optics refers to the technology that enables the transmission of information (as light impulses) along a glass-like or plastic-like wire other than the conventional copper wire. Fibre optic wire carries much more information at a faster speed than conventional copper wire and is far less subject to breaks in communications. It is widely used by telephone companies, around the world, for long-distance lines.

Because fibre optics transmits larger volumes of information (data and voice) at a higher speed, it makes internet and telecommunications more affordable than satellite does.

In fact, the coming of fibre optics has compelled satellite technology companies to slash down their prices by more than 50 per cent, said Karl Keppke, Regional Sales Director for O3b Networks, a satellite company with operations in Africa.

Mr Keppke told this writer, at the just ended Telecom World Africa Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, that he was confident that there would continue to be a fair mix of satellite and fibre optics communication technologies on the African Continent. The benefits fibre optics promises for Africa are obvious; speed and affordability of electronic communication; this means internet access and data transmission will be cheaper and voice communication could be free.

These are necessary to enable Africa to catch up with the rest of the world at a faster rate.

Another fall out advantage of fibre optics, particularly for those who are concerned about the spread of telecom masts in residential areas across Ghana, is that fibre optics does not need masts and antennae to operate. Satellite technology uses masts but fibre optics is underground technology.

Currently, Africa is virtually inundated in the sea of submarine fibre optic cables; there are at least eight undersea fibre optic cables, with an aggregate of 10.94 terabytes capacity, landing in almost all the coastal countries of Africa; some of the cables also provide connectivity to several inland countries.

The undersea cables available to Africa right now are SAT-3, 120 gigabytes; Main-one, 1.92 terabytes; Glo-one, 640 gigabytes; East African Submarine Cable System (EASSY), 1.3 terabytes; South Asia Telecom Cable (SEACOM), 1.2 terabytes; The Eastern African Marine Systems (TEAMS), 640 gigabytes; and the largest of them all, West Africa Cable System (WACS), 5.12 terabytes.

On the West Coast of Africa, SAT-3 (14,000km), WACS (14,000km) and Main one (14,000 km) connects Europe to South Africa, stretching from Portugal, with several landing stations along the western coast of Africa, including Ghana, down to the south.

Glo1 (9,500km), owned by Nigerian-based Globacom, connects United Kingdom to Nigeria, landing in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal and Ghana.

Ghana is a beneficiary of at least four submarine cables; SAT-3, which is currently 50 per cent live; Glo1, expected to go live later this year; Main-one due in May 2010 and WACS due 2011. All things being equal, in less than five years, the whole of Africa should be hooked unto fibre optics technology.

According to Mr Alhassan Umar, Executive Director of Information Technology Enable Service (ITES) Secretariat, with such a huge fibre optic capacity, Ghana stands to benefit in the area of business processes outsourcing (BPO).

He explained that the submarine fibre optics landing stations would provide a huge backup of redundant fibre optics capacity that would trigger investor confidence in the ability of the country's BPO companies to provide reliable, high speed and affordable communications service to their clients around the world.

On the eastern coast of Africa there is EASSY Way, 10,000km long, which connects South Africa to Sudan, with several landing stations along the eastern coast. Twenty other countries in south-eastern and north-eastern Africa are also connected to EASSY. SEACOM (15,000km) is also on the east, connecting France to India, with at least seven landing stations in Africa; from South Africa through the eastern coast to Egypt in the north.

TEAMS is 4,500km long and links Kenya with the United Arab Emirates, with possible landing stations in Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi.

Affordable and high speed transmission of information, reduction in spread of telecom masts and confidence booster in Africa as a BPO hub, are all very good benefits of fibre optics for Africa, but telecom industry investors, operators and regulators think there is more to this fibre optics discussion than the expected benefits.

At the just ended Telecom World Africa 2009 conference in Cape Town South Africa, industry stakeholders expressed concern over whether the expected level of demand for fibre optics technology in Africa, is worth the billions of dollars being invested to develop the technology. The supply side has been well catered for, but there is a dilemma as to whether the level of demand would sustain the supply; the danger of a huge chunk of Africa's fibre optic capacity remaining redundant is staring industry stakeholders in the face.

TEAMS, for instance, is being constructed at a cost of $82 million; EASSY Way, $235; Main One, $240 million, SEACOM, $600 million and WACS, SAT-3 and GLO1 are all multi-million-dollar projects. One of the arguments was that, not many of the 72 GSM carriers and 35 CDMA operators (like Kasapa) in Africa can afford to buy fibre optics capacity.

Price per megabyte per month of fibre optic capacity differs from one cable to the other; on SAT-3, for instance, a megabyte of capacity costs between $4,500 to $12,000 per month; 50 times higher than what similar fibre optics capacity in the United States of America. WIOCC, majority shareholders of EASSY Way, said their capacity would sell for about a million dollars less than what is already on the market.

Currently, there are at least 80 drivers, including major telecom operators, internet service providers (ISPs) and corporate investors onboard the fibre optics train and actually driving the development of the technology.

That excludes a huge number of smaller telecom operators and their customers from the fibre optics revolution. Industry stakeholders also argued that fibre optics consumption lies more in data communication and internet connectivity than in voice, saying that the high level of illiteracy, poverty, power supply bottlenecks and lack of access to ICT infrastructure to a larger portion of Africa's population were genuine concerns for operators and investors.

It is, for instance, projected that data costs, which now averaged between $5,000 and $7,000 per megabit of bandwidth on satellite, would be reduced drastically to $500 per megabit on fibre optics, and that would translate into even more affordable transmission of data for the average African. (Source: TEAMS Kenya)

But people are not likely to do data communications if they are not educated and or cannot afford to acquire ICT equipment and hi-tech mobile handsets needed for that kind of communication. Again there is a huge power supply problem across Africa, which even makes it difficult for people who are able and can afford ICT equipment to do data communication effectively.

The call is, therefore, for telecom operators in Africa to collaborate with their respective governments of the countries they operate in to deal with some of the bottlenecks now, when not much of the fibre optics is live on the Continent yet.

In Ghana, the Government has awarded a $150 million contract to Huawei, a Chinese telecom infrastructure installation company, to provide infrastructure that would allow nationwide broadband connectivity on the back of the... long National Fibre Optics Backbone. Some of the operators, particularly MTN, have earmarked funds to build ICT centres in all 10 regions of the country to give internet access to schools and communities in the hinterlands. The Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) is also undertaking a similar project; providing ICT centres and power sources to un-served and under-served communities across the country. GIFEC and individual operators have also collaborated to provide lots of fixed wireless pay phones in rural communities and in schools to enable people make and receive calls as well as receive money transferred to them on pay phones.

Speaking of money transfer, the telecom operators in Ghana are also coming up with lots of Value Added Service (VAS), which makes convergence technology such as voice over internet protocol (VOIP), mobile money, mobile TV and others relevant to the average Africa. Indeed, convergence technology has been identified as one way by which much more fibre optics capacity could be consumed through the use of mobile handsets. There was one more concern about submarine fibre optic cables in Africa; security. The Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Regulator, Ernest Ndukwe said African states must put measures in place to ward off saboteurs and thieves from submarine fibre optic path and from the landing stations as well. Paul Edwards, Chairman of Starcomms Communications, Nigeria, who presided at the TWA 09 conference, said submarine fibre optics is bringing the kind of information technology available to the average citizen in a developed country to the average citizen of an African country with Mr Sarat Dutt Lallah, CEO of Mauritius Telecom adding that when the time comes, Africans would be ready for it. 15 Sept. 09

GNA

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Zita Okaikoi, Ablakwa, et' al address citizens on Facebook

The Minister of Information, Mrs Zita Okaikoi and her two deputies from now on, will be on the social networking site, Facebook, to interact with citizens.

The move, the minister said, is in recognition of the fact that the internet has become an important tool in the new media.

Speaking to Joy FM's Super Morning Show host Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, Mrs Okaikoi said the government recognises that its information needs to reach the people who need it.

She said, herself and her deputies, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa and James Agyenim Boateng, would spend two hours each on selected days on Facebook to address the concerns of Ghanaians on the social networking site.

She is available every Friday, from 8am to 10am on Facebook, while Okudzeto is on every Wednesday from 3pm to 5pm, and Agyenim Boateng comes every Thursday, 4pm to 6pm.

The Information Minister says she hopes to be able to interact with as many people as possible every Friday when she takes her turn.

"We think that as government information (outfit), we should be able to interact with people one-on-one on a personal basis so that we will be able to address their issues and take their concerns," she explained.

According to her, traditional media such as radio and newspapers are not adequate in addressing the needs of the citizenry.

She said there are many people out there, "who have needs but do not have access to anyone to talk to in government so these are the people we are considering creating this channel for."

The minister said immediate action will be taken on issues raised by citizens through the platform.

Source : jfm