News & Events

More than ever before, Africans are turning to ICT-supported learning to grow their economies. In 2013, the eLearning Africa Report found that 40% of African technology-assisted learning professionals were using ICTs specifically for skills training, up from 18% the previous year.

Photographs Denize Nasilowski © ICWE GmbH

The benefit of ICT-supported learning is that it allows employers to provide vocational training to a great number of workers for little cost. This year’s eLearning Africa, 28th – 30th May in Kampala, Uganda, will explore how technology  is revolutionising  learning and training across the continent, under the theme “Opening Frontiers to the Future”.

Hosted by the Government of Mauritius through the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology and the National Computer Board, and Supported by the European Commission (EC) and African Union Commission (AUC), IST-Africa 2014 (06 - 09 May) is the ninth in an annual series of Ministerial Level Technology Research Conferences.

According to an article published on SciDev.Net, the first day of the inaugural Africa Innovation Summit featured a plenary session on Best Practices in Innovation policymaking. It was a sensible place to start. But some of us have been talking about innovation in Africa for a long time. In 1998 the Africa Union’s Togo Plan of Action from suggested 1 per cent of each member state’s GDP should be invested in research and development. That’s how long this has been in discussion. Since then only four countries have made the target — Malawi, South Africa, Tunisia and Uganda.

According to a blog post by the Guardian, US falls 13 places in development rankings once inequality in society is taken into account – while sub-Saharan Africa ranks second only to south Asia for average growth.

                                                                          Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The NORDUnet conference brings together networking and cloud computing experts and users from the Nordic and global communities, and offers participants a great opportunity to be inspired and share knowledge about network use and development.

 The CHAIN-REDS Project is organising a workshop on "e-Infrastructures for Education, Research and Development" in Tunis, Tunisia on December 11, 2013, presenting project outcomes and focusing on initiatives and developments in the Arab region. The event is organised under the aegis of the European Commission and in co-location with the e-AGE 2013 conference "Connect, Access, Innovate", that will be held in Tunis, Tunisia on December 12-13, 2013.

According to an article published on the UNESCO site, the pivotal importance of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI), knowledge-sharing and capacity-building for eradicating poverty and achieving sustainable development has recently been confirmed at the Rio+20 Conference and the 2013 ECOSOC Annual Ministerial Review. While the benefits of STI for development have received global recognition, access to these benefits remains unequally distributed within and among countries.

According to an article published on the World Bank Data Blog, the post-2015 agenda will focus on evidence.  The mantra “funding for what works” is gaining momentum, and policy makers are eager for better data to design actions and monitor performance. The high-level panel on the post-2015 development agenda puts this clearly: it wants to see a global “data revolution”. 

Foreign aid is often seen as different from other forms of investment, and some argue that rather than having a positive effect it tends to distort economies and may potentially slow growth and development.

VC4Africa believes entrepreneurship development in Africa can be accelerated when we are able to connect a global network of knowledge and capital. As part of this year’s Global Entrepreneurship Week (November 18th – 24th), the VC4Africa community initiates a global conversation on African entrepreneurship.

Accordig to an article published on Devex, Canada agreed two years to publish its aid data, but most development professionals lack the technological expertise to sift through the pile of information.

That’s why a team of computer programmers, software developers and international development experts met last weekend in Ottawa to work on applications to better analyze the data and thus improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Canadian foreign aid.

Chair: Louis Papaemmanuel, Project Director of iMENTORS, SU

• Björn Pehrson, KTH, Sweden
• Meoli Kashorda, KENET, Kenya
• Aida Opoku-Mensah, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

Copyright © 2002 - 2013 IST-Africa Initiative

The panel will consist of an open discussion on the needs and benefits of enhancing the coordination of donors and investments in e-Infrastructures in Sub Saharan Arica, and will be followed by a live demonstration of the iMENTORS platform as a tool to optimise the coordination of donors and investments in e-Infrastructures in Sub Saharan Arica.

Click here to see the Agenda

The rise of the South is radically reshaping the world of the 21st century, with developing nations driving economic growth, lifting hundreds of millions of people from poverty, and propelling billions more into a new global middle class, says the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) 2013 Human Development Report.

The latest figures and rankings released in the 2013 HDR include life expectancy, education and income. Norway once again comes out top, with Burkina Faso, Chad, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Niger propping up the bottom. But the report also includes a table on trends in the HDI over the past three decades – which makes more favourable reading for poorer African nations.

IFLA is pleased to launch a new set of resources relating to the role libraries play in supporting development. Access to information is one of the core needs of society and libraries are stepping up and fulfilling this need through capacity building, partnerships, training, and access opportunities for everyone.
 
The new webpages look at how libraries are furthering development worldwide as well as highlighting the role of public libraries as agents for development. They share links to information resources on development projects and research, highlight what IFLA is doing to further development through libraries and how you can get involved in the process.