[kictanet] Expensive software systems?

Fri Jun 27 11:13:49 EAT 2008

Tyrus,

The focus on agricultural research isn't wholly bad. As a matter of fact, I happened to be in a team that undertook a Joint ILO/ITU/UNECA study looking at the 'Impact of ICTs in Employment Creation and Poverty Reduction in Africa' with 8 pilot countries - Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda. The conclusion was that ICTs have great potentials for both - if targeted in the right places. In Egypt, already people 'directly' employed in ICT is 200,000 (and about another 10x 'indirectly' employed). In Kenya, though accurate figures were hard to find, the estimate was 50,000, and in Ethiopia, the estimate was 49,000, etc.

Two major viable application areas emerged: those with high-employment potential (notably agriculture and SMEs), and those with high-value addition potential (e.g. e-commerce - including e-banking, e-tourism, e-health, e-education). Of course this is not to say that more emphasis should not be put into ICT-research per se – just that twinned with demand drivenness, there is double benefit.

As a matter of fact, we/ARCC are looking for good e-agriculture initiatives to partner with. JKUAT having initially been an agriculture & technology institute if some of your staff and/or research students are working in this area, let's talk off line.

For those who might be interested in the Impact Study, I believe ITU and/or ECA will soon be publishing and availing publicly the report. For now, we’ll informally be sharing a preview of it at next month’s (Tuesday) KeKobi Monthly Seminars.

Best rgrds,
Shem

Shem J. Ochuodho, MSc (EE), PhD (SoftEng), LLD (Hon)
Chairman, African Regional Centre for Computing (ARCC-Kenya, Nairobi)
and
IGAD/EU Advisor on ICT Private Sector Development (Govt of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa)
--- On Thu, 6/26/08, tyrus at icsit.jkuat.ac.ke <tyrus at icsit.jkuat.ac.ke> wrote:

From: tyrus at icsit.jkuat.ac.ke <tyrus at icsit.jkuat.ac.ke>
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Expensive software systems?
To: "Shem Ochuodho" <shemochuodho at yahoo.com>
Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Date: Thursday, June 26, 2008, 2:33 AM

I think pkariuki has a point. The fact that even here in a University of
Technology, students are encouraged to come up with creative solutions to
problems affecting our current markets. However, the discouraging bit is
that we tend to see recurring projects and very marginalized creativity.
Certain societies and technology clubs do try to get innovative by going
out there and identifying where they can offer solutions.

Another weakness I find in our institutes of higher learning is the fact
that research in IT is seriously lacking. If you are keen to observe,
research is usually based on agriculture thus shutting out IT which we all
know will propel this nation to achieving the vision 2030. My humble
opinion is to venture into research and to ask stake-holders to come and
tap into the brains here in campus. Having research carried out in
campuses in as far as technology is concerned will even ensure the use of
under-utilized resources and am referring to computers during after hours,
idle bandwidth which will ultimately be paid for as if it were used, etc
etc.

Some bit of encouragement from the private sector that is coming up is the
holding of competitions and exhibitions like the IEEE competitions which
actually bring out the hidden potential in the students. This however, is
also abit tricky because we have had cases of such stakeholders taking
advantage of this thus benefiting themselves and short changing the
students.

I firmly believe in as far as developing add-on software to work with
enterprise softwares like SAP or Oracle, this can be done locally and if
the fear expressed here is the confidence in not having these developers
going under with out a trace, then why not do it in university level where
you have the full backing of its administration.

Tyrus Muya Kamau.
Systems Administrator, eLearning
Jomo Kenyatta University of Agri & Techology
Kenya,
Cell Phone: +254-721292936.
Mail:tyrus at icsit.jkuat.ac.ke

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