Weekly News Roundup - Africa March 20, 2008

Country: Uganda
Created By: Esther on 19-Mar-2008 11:50 PM

Treatment By Internet
Hospitals in rural Tanzania have designed ways to communicate with doctors in referral hospitals using the Internet. he Bugando Referral Hospital in Mwanza has a telemedicine unit that connects Rubya and Kibondo hospitals. The remote hospitals are supplied with a computer, a scanner and a digital camera.
This may not be the full telemedicine suite, where there is real time media streaming, high speed Internet, high resolution cameras and other sophisticated devices at work. But the teams at the hospitals have still made giant strides towards making healthcare more accessible.
 

Working without wires
There have been wide-ranging efforts on a global basis to expand broadband wireless to developing countries as a low-cost method of distributing broadband.
Wi-Fi only operates over relatively short distances (less than 100 metres). How can such a system still be useful in rural areas?
Wi-Fi is quicker and cheaper to install than most other methods, especially as there is no need for underground cables. The signal still has to be brought to the Wi-Fi hotspot, often by satellite, DSL or fibre optic cable, and Wi-Fi then distributes the system throughout the local network. It’s kind of like the water main coming into a street: the main source is brought along the street, but individual houses and offices are served by a smaller, narrower connection, in this case by Wi-Fi.
 

Crime rate up with cheap telephony
IN Kampala it is easier to buy a mobile phone sim card than to buy chocolate. Sim cards are sold everywhere, even on streets and in taxi parks, and they cost as little as sh1,500, the price of a pineapple.
On Thursday, a Saturday Vision reporter was able to buy sim cards from street vendors, alongside other vendors of items such socks, hankies, underwear and roasted coffee beans.
The Police say this has led to an increase in phone-mediated crimes such as conning, threatening lives and insulting, which are committed using phones. "A person can buy a sim card just to abuse someone and after that they throw it away," says Simeo Nsubuga, Police spokesman for Kampala. In Kampala alone, Police records about 10 such cases
every week, a sharp increase from 2-3 cases a week two years ago. But the majority are not reported.

Wireless Networking in the Developing World" (2nd ed.)
In the developing world, one book can often be equivalent to a library. Access to books is difficult where there are few libraries or book stores, and there is often little money to pay for them. By releasing this book for free under a Creative Commons license, anyone is free to
download, print, update, or redistribute it. We hope to reach the widest possible audience, spreading the knowledge of low-cost wireless networking to those who need it most.


A Mac in Africa
Apple has published its latest profile report, this time detailing he use of Macs to capture a moving film about orphans left alone when HIV kills their parents.
Made on a shoestring budget, We Are Together is a film about a small South African orphanage called Agape. Children there have formed a choir, singing to help them come to terms with the death of their parents. The film captures three years of the children's life, and a Mac was
instrumental to making the film. Without it, it's likely the film -which is currently on release at various cinemas across the UK -would never have been made.

Kenya's ICT Policies Faulted
Kenya remains an attractive centre for the distribution of computing products but the general business regulatory environment poses key barriers for prospective large-scale manufacturing concerns.
Computer products manufacturer Hewlett-Packard (HP), one of the foreign multinationals using Kenya as a regional hub, says plans to set up a local computer assembly plant on the Kenyan soil look oblique owing to the poor investment environment, coupled with the policy environment.

East Africa: Construction Starts On Eassy Cable Network
Construction of the East Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSY) project got under way on Friday, after being delayed for almost two years by squabbling among project members and a lack of financial resources, RNA reports.
The South African government initially denied the EASSY project a landing point, claiming South African companies including Mobile Telecommunication should have additional shares in the project. The South African government has since allowed the project a landing point.

Imposters Threaten Cyber-Cafe Owners With Prosecution
Imposters have forced a number of cyber-cafes in the Embu, Mwea and Meru areas to shut down due to fear of prosecution by software company Microsoft.
Groups of unidentified people visited the operators and threatened them with closure unless they paid a Sh50,000 fee to stay in business.
Business Daily has since established that the groups are not part of an official crackdown on pirated software being run by Microsoft in conjunction with the Kenya Copyright Board (KCB).

585 people have read this article