ChangeWaves

Here is a summary of some of the hottest ICT news stories from East Africa and beyond.

Kenya: Rural Folk to Miss Out On Cheap High Speed Internet
Majority of Kenya’s Internet service providers have no capacity to supply downstream consumers with fibre optic bandwidth, leaving room for a few players, who may use the advantage to keep prices high.It has emerged that only six ISPs – mainly the big telecoms firms – have the right of use with the TEAMs cable or have bought capacity at Seacom.
They are Telkom Kenya, Kenya Data Networks, Safaricom, Jamii Telecoms, AccessKenya, Essar Telecoms and Wananchi Group.Connecting consumers to the fibre optic platform requires an elaborate terrestrial network that only a few companies have the ability to build and run profitably.

Uganda: ICT Ministers Quizzed Over $10 Million Project
MPS on the information and communication technology committee yesterday grilled ministers and officials from the information and communication technology (ICT) ministry over the botched $10m national IT project.
The project, aimed at establishing IT centres in selected districts and eventually wiring the entire country, has been rendered ineffective by incompetence, the MPs noted.
This was after a researcher who was sent by the committee to verify the existence of the centres showed the committee a footage showing unconnected computers lying on floors, other gadgets still packed in boxes and lamenting managers.

Uganda: Is the ICT Backbone in Trouble?
THE new chairperson of the ICT parliamentary committee, Igeme Nabeta, seems to be raffling feathers as he implements some of the recommendations handed to him by his predecessor, Edward Baliddawa, last month.
Among the issues Baliddawa made public was questions about the cost of the national ICT backbone infrastructure project contained in a brief that queried the total cost of the project.

Rwanda: ICT Busses to Bridge Digital Divide
Two ICT buses have arrived in the country last week through the e-Rwanda Project, with the aim of providing Internet access and business training to farmers, students, entrepreneurs and other people in rural areas.
Wilson Muyenzi, the coordinator of the eRwanda Project for the Rwanda Development Board, said the goal of the mobile telecenters is to reach people who have been under-served in terms of lack of electricity and other infrastructure.

Uganda: Goverment Clears Sudan to Use Country’s Code
The government has cleared South Sudan to continue using Uganda’s country code (+256) amid protests from a some MPs, pushing for an end to what they described as impunity.
Gemtel is a private Southern Sudan mobile phone company that was given leeway by Uganda Telecom Ltd (UTL) to use the national code without parliamentary approval.

Uganda: Communications Commission Set to Connect Rural Population
Uganda Communications Commission has rolled out a five-year grand plan, which will ensure that every Ugandan has access to cheap and modern communication services for faster social and economic development.
The plan dubbed; ‘Rural Communications Development Fund (RCDF II)’ scheduled to end in 2014, aims to achieve a target of one pay phone per village of about 500 people. This means there will be installation of at least 2,500 public pay phones annually in rural areas.

Uganda: The Good and Bad of ICT’s in Education
As Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) begin to take root in Uganda, preliminary findings from a five year project say there has been increased access to qualitative educational materials from the Internet.
Launched in 2007, the Pan African Research Agenda on the Pedagogical Integration of ICTs (PanAf), a joint initiative of the Educational Research Network for West and Central Africa (ERNWACA) and the University of Montreal (Canada), is a project in 11 countries including Uganda seeking to better understand how the academic integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) can enhance the quality of teaching and learning in Africa.