News: ICT for development, Global

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) has been elected to the Global Knowledge Partnership ‘s executive committee on April 9 2008. In what has been the election with the highest turnout in GKP history (77% of eligible voter organisations participated), the APC network, along with four other groups, has been elected to join the executive committee for a duration of two years.

Access remains one of the greatest challenges facing the internet community in the developing world. The Nominet judges believe that the work of Computer Aid epitomizes what their access category represents. Computer Aid has enabled thousands of people in developing countries, who wouldn’t normally have the opportunity, to access to the internet. Computer Aid’s partners are also able to provide training, capacity building and routine maintenance, to ensure that the use of equipment is maximized.

Anriette Esterhuysen, executive director of APC, delivered a keynote address at the opening of the conference on Web2fordev at the Food Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome, Italy in late September. Her ideas around participatory web for development were reported on in the Web2fordev blog.

Tactical Tech and APC-member Women’sNet are pleased to announce the web launch of the latest edition of NGO-in-a-box, the BaseBox. The BaseBox is a collection of tools for the day-to-day running of small to medium sized NGOs. It aims to make it easier to set up base, find the right software and learn how to use it. Targeted primarily at activist and advocacy organisations in developing countries, the BaseBox contains a set of peer-reviewed free and open source software tools, with associated guides and tutorials. The edition can be accessed online but it’s primary form is as a physical box set of CDs.

Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) launches Women’s ICT-based Enterprises Handbook and a CD entitled "A Guide to Promote, Initiate and Improve Women’s ICT Based Enterprises in Uganda". The APC-member WOUGNET published the multilingual document in English and two local languages.

A study commissioned by UK’s international development agency lists the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) in the top ten organisations survey respondents identified as networks they find are valuable resources of information relevant to their internetional development work.

With the WebFM module, APC-member in Toronto has made a major contribution at the end of 2006 to the open source content management system Drupal. With simple-to-use drag and drop and folder creation and deletion functions, WebFM is increasingly becoming popular as Web Network’s executive director, Oliver Zielke, himself states in the following interview excerpts.

Web Networks’ report on the usability of the content management system Drupal is now available on drupal.org. APC Canadian member Web Network has developed this detailed and professional report with the support of APC’s ActionKit project. Says, the report summary: "the overall conclusion of this report is that the tools Drupal provides to accomplish the most common administrative tasks associated with managing a website are all usable."

APC’s member in Nigeria, Fantsuam Foundation, has launched a vulnerable children’s service as part of its rural HIV/AIDS programme. This innovative project is meant to tackle prevention gaps head-on, with the help of multimedia.

With the objective of producing and disseminating relevant content on the Latin American reality from civil society’s perspective, Rits, in partnership with another eight South American organisations, launched the Social Mosaic information portal on July 5.