Dear TAD friends,

Here is the latest information update, containing various postings of

interest. Please remember that the next TAD Consortium meeting will take

place on 4 June, 1998, at Technikon SA in Roodepoort.

Regards

Neil Butcher

TO CONTENTS

*********************************

CITTE 98 Conference

The Higher Education IT Directors Group are hosting a Conference on

Information Technology in Tertiary Education (CITTE98) from 20-22 May

1998 at Unisa.

The focus areas of the conference are:

* Using IT to improve the teaching and learning process

* Developments and challenges such as virtual and electronic libraries

for information delivery

* experiences with software packages for management and

administrative applications

The Year 2000 problem will also receive attention and two international

experts will share their knowledge and experience.

The conference includes an exhibition where a number of leading IT

vendors that are active in the higher education market will showcase

and demonstrate their products and services.

The conference fee of R600 include refreshments, daily lunches, and

two social events.

or by phone from the conference organisers at:(011) 788-3299

TO CONTENTS

*************************

Africa communication: Discovering the magic of the worldwide web

By ABDOULAYE GANDEMA

Ougadougou - Christiane Diallo, a journalist with the daily "L'essor"

newspaper in Mali could hardly contain her joy as she surfed the internet

for the first time.

"What I have learned in six days in Ouagadougou is fabulous," said Diallo,

one of about 30 journalists who participated in a seminar on "Media,

scientific information and new communication technology", held here from

April 6-11.

What impressed her, she explained, was the unbelievable amount of

information and possibilities that this new tool offers.

"I work regularly on scientific information, mainly in the area of health,

and I can tell you that finding data takes an enormous amount of time

because specialised documents and persons are not always available," she

added.

The worldwide web would make a difference for her in another way, too. An

internet connection would reduce her dependence on Western sources of

information - she uses mainly news from Agence France Presse (AFP) and

Medias France intercontinents (MFI) - a

llowing her to access high-quality and varied information.

The other journalists who participated in the seminar had varying levels of

experience with electronic communication, but most were novices. One

participant from Niger, for example, had never touched a mouse.

On the other hand, Seydou Sissouma from Senegal's "Le Soleil" (daily

circulation 25 000) is an old hand at navigating the web.

"I think the important thing now is how we can use the internet among

African information professionals," said Sissouma, who manages Le Soleil's

internet site.

Helping people in Francophone Africa to join the information super highway

without losing their specificity is the stated aim of African

Information-Sharing Network (Arpinet) which the Francophone Agency, an

organisation linking French-speaking nations,

has decided to set up.

"A first server will be commissioned in the coming months in Burkina Faso

and it will link up the various media in this country in an internal

network," explained MFI editor-in-chief Hugo Sada.

"Then, another server to be installed in Antananarivo will link Madagascar

to Burkina.

"The third phase will see the connection of a third country, yet to be

identified, and finally more than 500 Francophone African media houses will

be connected on this Francophone internet."

The general feeling at the seminar was that the network would give

Francophone African media a chance to catch up with their counterparts in

English-speaking Africa.

Nations with English as their official language have a far greater presence

on the web: for example, at least 15 South African papers, 12 Kenyan ones

and seven from Ghana have websites.

Among the countries with French as their official language, only Cote

d'Ivoire, Senegal and Cameroon have a significant number of papers connected

to the Internet.

Senegal has, in fact, been going through an information technology (IT)

revolution, according to Sissouma.

"Today, we are close to 3 500 connections and there are no fewer than 50

sites on the web with local content," he said.

"Three months ago there were 2 000 connections, which means around 1 000 new

connections per quarter."

This is illustrated, he argued, by the fact that four Dakar dailies are on

the web and three of them have their own sites. "This is symptomatic of the

way Senegalese have adapted rapidly to this new variable," he added.

But the development of telecommunications is also linked to the state of

basic infrastructure, which varies from country to country.

For example, Senegal had six telephone lines per 1 000 inhabitants in 1990

and Cote d'Ivoire five, as against one for countries like Niger and Burkina

Faso.

Things have improved since then, but the sub-Saharan African average, now

five per 1 000 inhabitants, is still far below the global average and the

telephone remains a luxury.

Extending and modernising telecommunications is a sine qua non condition for

the development of information superhighways in Africa, says Sada.

"It's imperative for the institutional and tariff frameworks for

telecommunications, which depend in almost all the countries on a state

monopoly, to be made flexible and adapted to the needs of the market."

Despite the many possibilities the internet offers, it's not a panacea for

Africa's journalists, participants in the seminar pointed out.

"It has to be just a key for quick access to material that we will use

depending on our respective readerships, on our need to adapt to a national

context," said Sissouma.

"Because the big problem with the internet is the large mass of information

available, which makes it difficult to use."

Only 47 of the 54 African nations are connected to the internet. The

Comoros, Eritrea, Libya and Somalia are among those that are yet to be

hooked up.

The continent has only one Internet node per 5 000 persons as against a

global average of 1 per 40.

According to Sada, another stumbling block to increased access to the

internet is the prohibitive cost of communications and IT equipment.

Meanwhile, Christiane Diallo says she intends to convince the management of

her paper to speed up the planned connection of L'Essor to the Internet.

"Now I am convinced that we will gain not only time, but also money by doing

so," she said.

from MISAnet/Inter Press Service

TO CONTENTS

 ****************

School Web sites hold promise for teachers, parents, kids

Copyright c 1998 Nando.net

Copyright c 1998 Scripps Howard

from the comfort of their homes, many parents can check their children's

school lunch menus, look up the high school sports scores and get

announcements about school plays on the

World Wide Web. Some Web sites also allow people to stay updated on PTA

activities and school board meeting results.

Of course, as with most things in the rapidly-changing world of on-line

communications, the quality of what is available varies from school district

to school district -- if the site is available at all.

But as the medium improves, more districts will offer sites with substantial

information, said Margaret Honey, deputy director of the Center for Children

and Technology based in New York.

"School Web pages are growing by leaps and bounds," Honey said. "In the

future, rather than just putting up pictures of the building, or pictures of

the marching band, we are going to see a deepening use of the medium so

parents can communicate with teac

hers about issues and expand on what is done in the classroom."

Some sites offer a way to e-mail teachers and have other useful features,

but others only have the school's picture and not much else. Honey said the

medium is in its beginning phases, but it has much potential.

A site run by the Family Education Network has recently been expanded to

allow access to Web pages for 3,000 school systems nationwide. Many of the

pages vary in quality, and many communities are not represented, but the

site also offers articles about p

arenting, child learning and college financing.

Jonathan Carson, founder and chief executive officer of the Family Education

Company, which runs the site, said there is information there about kids

from the time they are born until they go to college. He also said there is

a feature that allows people

to e-mail parenting experts and the experts e-mail them back.

Carson claims that without help from the network many schools would never

have had the resources to maintain their own sites. To get backing for the

network, the company has sponsorships from Second Fleet Bank, Century 21

Real Estate, AT&T and other corp

orations. They also are endorsed by the National PTA, the National School

Boards Association and the American Association of School Administrators, he

said.

Pam Superfisky, a mother from Novi, Mich., who is involved with her school

district's Family Education Network Web page, said she foresees the Web

sites evolving as more people turn to the computer for information. Although

updating Web sites takes lots

of time, staff and volunteers that not all schools have, she said sites will

get better as people get more accustomed to the technology.

Another way Web sites are helping in education is having students get

involved in creating the school's site. Honey said the best Web sites would

allow the students to use Web as a creative tool. She said in Union City,

N.J., students work in teams to bu

ild Web sites for city offices such as the public housing authority and the

mayor's office. The students benefit by learning technical skills, as well

as fairly complex research and design skills.

June Million, director of public information of the National Association of

Elementary School Principals, said with the newness of the medium not enough

schools have set up guidelines for their sites, including when to update

them. Other important issues

include protections for students involved in activities or events posted on

a Web page.

But she said with training about the Web the positives outweigh the

negatives. Useful information that a site could post include dates of school

events, the background of the staff and messages about the school's mission.

People moving to a new area can

also use the Web to scope out a new school.

But she noted that while it's good to look at a site, it's better to visit

the school. "You shouldn't just judge the school by the Web site alone," she

said.

TO CONTENTS

*****************

EDUDEV-SA

Edudev SA is an new Internet mailing list serving the formal and non formal

training community of South Africa. Edudev SA has been started to help build

an electronic community of individuals and organisations involved in

community based training across

South Africa. As its name implies, Edudev SA is a tool to support community

development programmes, and is particularly focused on grassroots training

organisations.

Edudev SA is intended to be an informal, open forum for discussions on

programme planning and delivery, education needs, research, expertise and

other resources which may be shared among training programmes. International

organisations which support or a

re involved in community based training programmes in South Africa are also

invited to participate.

Edudev SA was established with support from the Canadian Bureau for

International Education (CBIE), and is administered by the Community Based

Development Programme (CBDP).

To subscribe to Edudev SA, send an e-mail message to, listproc@sn.apc.org,

with a single line in the body of the message, subscribe edudev sa (name of

subscriber) (replacing name of subscriber with your name or the name of your

organisation).

ENQUIRIES: Edudev SA, Community Based Development Programme (CBDP)

Tel: (+27) (11) 624 2553 Fax: (+27) (11) 624 3042

E-mail: cbdp@cbdp.org.za

TO CONTENTS

************

Painting a profile of Internet users in SA

Business Day, 30 April, 1998

HE IS about 35, urban, educated and well-off. He uses Windows 95 and

accesses the Internet every day. If he has not spent money on the Internet

before, he is planning to do so soon.

That is the typical Internet user in SA, according to research by SA Online

and published by Media Africa.

More than 1 400 people took part in the research to assess the profiles,

preferences and usage habits of the country's web users.

The survey confirms many assumptions about the typical user, and shows that

the Internet is becoming an increasingly important market place.

The average age of users is 35, with the majority between 20 and 30. The key

shift in age levels was a drop in 20-somethings and a rise in 40-somethings,

emphasising the growing importance of the Internet to mature users.

The percentage of female users has increased from 16% last year to 19% this

year.

The findings dispel the myth that Internet users are mainly lonely singles

using it as a substitute for a social life: 56% of respondents were married

or cohabiting.

What the survey confirms is that the average income is extremely high, at

more than R11 000 a month, and the average user is well educated.

SA follows world trends in terms of the most common occupation of web users,

namely in computers, but an equal number are employed in management, up

steeply from last year. That reflects the extent to which the web has been

embraced by a mainstream audience.

Numbers which could shock the business world relate to online spending, as a

hefty 43% of users have made an online purchase in the past.

While this may seem to lack critical mass, 89% say they intend using the web

for purchases in the future.

TO CONTENTS

*****************

Kenya Goes For Unrivalled Telecoms Privatization by Jeremy Scott-Joynt

Kenya's government is to privatize part of the country's monopoly telecoms

operator, but is not intending to allow any competition. Legislation to

split up the Kenya Posts and Telecoms Corporation has just been introduced

by the Attorney General's office

. The corporation will be divided three ways: one unit to handle post,

another telecoms and a third to regulate and oversee both. Once the process

is complete, according to KPTC and Treasury officials, the government plans

to sell off a proportion of the

new telecoms company to a strategic investor, to be followed by a public

offering next year. Unlike Uganda, though, which is planning to privatize

51% of Uganda Telecoms later this year, no competing company is planned as

yet. And the officials refused to be specific about just how much of KPTC's telecoms arm would be sold off.

Whether or not the government continued to hang on to a controlling interest

were less important than bringing of professional management thinking, the

officials said.

TO CONTENTS

******************
Food for thought,

I am surprised to see that nobody seems to realize that Internet is becoming

a form of "electronic apartheid", bigger than any other as it covers the

whole world. If you don't speak and write English you are out, segregated,

banned. The "official" language has become the new "supremacy" skin color. Cultural domination at its

best. What are we doing about? Why nobody even discusses the issue? For any

of you it seems so "natural" that anybody else should communicate in

English, that you don't even think about it.

Why is it that everybody in the Third World has to learn English in order to

be part of "electronic democracy"?

Talk about "rural telecommunications" ... For whom? To start with, most of

African countries do not speak English. Moreover, even in those "English

speaking countries", the rural population is the last to speak and even less

to write English. So, who is

going to have the guts to say "I represent millions of people without a

voice"? Again, I can see a very vertical approach although apparently

showing a lot of feelings for "the rural people".

What about Latin America? A whole continent has no part in "electronic

democracy" because Spanish is the "lingua franca"?

There is too much idealization of Internet which, up to now, only serves

those that speak English. I am not even putting in first place my concerns

about access to the computers, to telephone lines, to electricity in Third

World countries... This will come, sooner or later, but if we don't do something to address the issue of

"electronic apartheid", access to Internet in rural areas will only be a

mirage, and the conference will only be successful in selling technology, as

usual, to the Third World.

Alfonso Gumucio Dagron

The Center for Development Communication

agumucio@guate.net

TO CONTENTS

*******************

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With Best Wishes

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TO CONTENTS

***********************************************************

Telematics for African Development Consortium

P.O. Box 31822

Braamfontein

2017

Johannesburg

South Africa

Tel: +27 +11 403-2813

Fax: +27 +11 403-2814

neilshel@icon.co.za