gmeltdown

The other day Dr. Bitange Ndemo - who I really respect announced that ICDL training will be used as some kind of benchmark for determining whether one is computer literate. That seems to me a very useful move for the ICT industry. It definitely very useful for the Kenya chapter of ICDL. Skeptics will say Dr. Ndemo was 'enticed' to make the public pronouncement. Let us now watch to see how the growing computer training industry responds to the implied endorsement - no more questionable computer training certificates? Whatever the case, the trend should make life easier for those IT practitioners in the area of IT service support. It should be easier to tell a fellow employee to read their ICDL notes when they ask for support to prepare some powerpoint presentation. The next thing Dr. Ndemo should scout for is the benchmark for one to be safely called an IT expert. Some of the ladies and gentlement we call IT practitioners have the perhaps outdated IMIS diploma, ACE etc. Others...

One of the best achievements of Kenya's current (nineth) parliament was passing the Kenya Communications (Amendment) Act 2008 [ download pdf ]. Indeed to those watching the developments in the local IT landscape, the law's gazettement on 2nd January was one of the the best new year gifts for 2009. The country became the sixth African country after Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, South Africa and Mauritius to enact a law addressing business in the cyber-space. Enactments of these laws are deliberate efforts by the governments to create a conducive legal environment fostering growth of the local knowledge economy. As unfortunate as it would be, the great story of a new beginning for the ICT sector went largely unnoticed. The new law curiously carries a section or two that traditional Kenyan media did not like. Members of the fourth estate had started waging war against the new act as early as 2007 before it was tabled to parliament. So distructive was the media's campaign agai...

Many of us Kenyans are yet to come to terms with our increasing addiction to online social networking (mostly facebook for now). It is even more interesting to see how many more local web pages within such social sites are popping up. More relevant events (online or otherwise), groups, blogs and community forums are being set up by the day for the most typical Kenyan contexts. Perhaps this is a little of what the Kenya ICT Board seems to be evangelizing - local content . With phenomena like Google Maps, FaceBook and a growing catalog of Kenyan blogs, we can certainly associate with the information age more closely than five years ago. Gone are the times when local content was limited to struggling web portals run by internet service providers (ISPs) - the likes of Kenyaweb, and African online, etc. Let us leave the fate of the traditional ISPs in the advent of Mobile phone operators, Undersea cables and the National Optical Fiber Backbone Infrastructure ( NOFBI )for another day. The st...