ICTworks by Inveneo

Educational Technology: So much talk these days about educational technology in the developing world and whether it’s really an efficient tool for improving education or just another techie fad. Don’t miss TechChange’s next online course, "New Technologies for Educational Practice," offered February 20 – March 16. Early bird deadline is February 1, regular deadline is February 20.

The Heavy Hitters Weigh In: The Brookings Institution and UNESCO have taken an active role in the ongoing debate about ICTs and education. A New Face of Education: Bringing Technology into the Classroom in the Developing World is an in-depth study that looks at all levels of education in the poorest countries of the world, from Sub-Saharan Africa to South and West Asia to the Caribbean, and comes up with some encouraging conclusions . Transforming Education: The Power of ICT Policies looks at a number of countries and their competencies, motivation, and teachers’ working environment, and offers insights and guidance to help policy-makers integrate ICTs in education more effectively.

Become an ICT4D Champion: The University of Manchester’s Centre for Development Informatics is offering several world-class graduate programs in ICT4D at the Master’s and Doctoral level. The Centre has a particular interest in candidates working in areas such as mobile finance, micro-enterprise, gender issues, and e-government and civil society, among others. Learn more here about this fantastic opportunity.

Business Fighting Poverty: *iHub, the tech leader in open space innovation and development in Kenya, is hosting IEEE Webinar: Leveraging ICT Business Models to Help Reduce Poverty, which promises to provide insights on how ICTs can provide access to education, healthcare, agro-services, and financial services to the BoP. January 26, 10-11 EST

Are You an African Developer? The funding is out there for your startup, you just need the right ideas and the know-how to sell them. Affrinovator tells you how

African Internet Progress: If you’re interested in ICT4D in Africa, it’s important to keep up with the development of the Internet across the continent. Some thoughts from oAfrica.com

Using Mobiles for Effective ICT in Kyrgyzstan: FrontlineSMS and IREX work together to improve communication with teachers far and wide. In this case texting proves better than email.

To get these links faster, follow me on Twitter: @SabinaBehague

On Wednesday 11th May at the iHub in Nairobi, there is a free workshop to introduce Salesforce Cloud CRM for nonprofits and non-governmental organizations. Salesforce donates its cutting-edge technology to nonprofits and over 10,000 NGOs in 75 countries are using Salesforce (including Inveneo!) to manage their fundraising, donors, volunteers, project management and more.

Salesforce can give you the most usable CRM and cloud development platform available, so that you can focus on your mission, not on your technology. See how "Send a Cow" are using Salesforce in Africa:

Better yet, go to their meeting to see what Cloud Computing can do for you:

Salesforce for Nonprofits workshop
Wednesday 11th May
9.30am - 3:30pm
iHub Nairobi
Upper Hill Estate,
4th Floor, Bishop Magua Centre
George Padmore Lane
Nairobi, Kenya
RSVP today to reserve your place.

Sam DuPont of Global Mobile has 4 ideas to reshape Google.org that I think are worthy of a good read. Here are his main points, all of which have an undercurrent of investment in ICT - Google's strong suit:

An Idea to Reshape Google.org

For any developing country to overcome poverty and emerge as a successful middle-income state, a strong civil society and a robust economy are two essential ingredients. By serving as places for tech-savvy citizens to come together and vectors for investment to reach entrepreneurs and the iHub and its followers are incubators for both of these things. If Google.org wants to create a meaningful impact on global development while leveraging their position as one of the world's premier tech companies, these technology hubs are one very unconventional way to go about it. Here's how:

- Building Hubs: Right now, the iHub is supported financially by Ushahidi. Not every developing country has such a successful project so well positioned to be the convener and financier of a technology hub. DotOrg could help finance existing hubs, while creating and building new hubs throughout the developing world, bringing together local developers, business interests and social actors to innovate and collaborate.

- App Contests & More: An app contest is a cheap and easy project to run, but can serve as a valuable incentive for inexperienced developers to try their hand at entrepreneurship, while also making for great publicity-both for the sponsor and the winning developers. Small scale projects like app contests can help put technology hubs on the map, identify the most promising engineers, and launch a few useful new technologies, to boot.

- Talent Sharing: From the inception of DotOrg, Google has sought to leverage the power of their staff: a collection of some of the best software developers in the world. But sitting in Mountain View, the developers themselves have had little connection to the challenges of people in the developing world. Why not create fellowships for their talented engineers to spend time in a foreign technology hub, teaching young developers and helping build and improve nascent projects.

- Venture Capital: Rather than seeking to build their own world-saving tools or pouring money into "conventional" philanthropic projects, DotOrg should invest in the best of the innumerable homegrown ideas for technology development. Active tech hubs are gold mines of entrepreneurs and ideas, and as a foundation, DotOrg can make more investments and accept a higher degree of risk than a strictly for-profit VC investor. If the successful projects are explicitly focused on improving social conditions, so much the better, but either way, investment capital is a key to economic development anywhere.

If you are a developer (mobile & web) or part of the health industry or generally just interested in knowing more about Electronic Medical Records, join OpenMRS on Monday 24th of January from 11am-12pm and learn about the exciting opportunities in the areas of electronic medical records systems development, implementation, training and project management.

OpenMRS Meet up in Nairobi

Speakers lineup:

1. Paul Biondich- OpenMRS & Regenstrief Institute
2. James Kariuki- AMPATH
3. Fred Fries- Regenstrief Institute

What is OpenMRS?

OpenMRS is a software platform and a reference application which enables design of a customized medical records system with no programming knowledge (although medical and systems analysis knowledge is required). It is a common platform upon which medical informatics efforts in developing countries can be built. The system is based on a conceptual database structure which is not dependent on the actual types of medical information required to be collected or on particular data collection forms and so can be customized for different uses.

In the oddly titled article "Kenya pumps Sh230m in building a software hub", which doesn't talk about that investment at all, the iHub had a prominent mention:

Mr Eric Hersman, one of the founders of Ushahidi and iHub says: “We’ve learned that technology does overcome inefficiencies, but that it still takes people to make it happen. We’ve learned that Africans can build world-class software. Ushahidi is now very successful and the adoption is high.”

Ushahidi funds the iHub. “Nairobi is quickly becoming a tech hub in Africa and we wanted to get a place where those who aspire to develop their skills can meet,” he said.

Wananchi, through Zuku, has wired the iHub with fibre optic to provide internet, Google organises brings experts to train innovators and provides Android phones to assist in developing mobile applications. Microsoft donated a server while Nokia sponsors the developers’ day.

At the iHub recently, located on Ngong Road, Smart Company met with a number of software developers/innovators.

Mr Will Mworia runs africanpixel.com, which is a software application for high-end mobile phones, such as the iPhones, Androids, high-end Nokia and Samsung.

He also manages Afrinnovator, a content website, which he says celebrates start-ups in Africa.

On iHub, he notes: “Here internet is free, working area is free. This is a good place for developers and this solves the disconnect that existed before.”

Mr Oscar Njuguna, a co-founder of Zege Technologies, is also a beneficiary of iHub. Zege is developing software that integrates bank accounts with M-Pesa, Safaricom’s mobile money transfer service. Mr Njuguna says the biggest challenge for Kenyan innovators is gaining recognition.

Charles Kithika and Joshua Musau are part of the group of innovators aiming to build the tech movers of tomorrow. Mr Kithika has developed a software for human resources to manage employees, payroll and time, currently on trial in a number of firms.

Mr Musau is working on a solution that will enable media houses link directly with advertisers and another software for hospitals to manage data storage.

The iHub manager, Ms Jessica Colaco, is a huge proponent of the mobile web. She says users and developers need to get together to scale ideas into projects that can be fine-tuned to meet the growing demand for information in Kenya.