February 2002 - Volume 1, Issue 1

News

• Character Set National Standard is out for Public Comment

• Uganda Claims First VSAT Connected Education Project

• UNESCO Involves NGOs in Preparing its Contribution to the World Summit on the Information Society

Character Set National Standard is out for Public Comment

According to Dr. Dawit Bekele, Public Relations Officer of the Ethiopian Computers Standards Association (EcoSA) and Chairperson of the Ad'hoc Technical Committee of the Quality and Standards Authority of Ethiopia (QSAE) for the "Ethiopic Character Set" , the final draft of the "Ethiopic Character Set" National Standard is out for public comment.

This standard defines what Amharic alphabets (fidels) the Ethiopic script should include. This is a major event in Ethiopic computing. The reasons are two-fold. One reason is that it is the first national standard not only on Ethiopic but also on information technology, secondly, it will serve not only as a foundation for many other standards such as Ethiopic Keyboard, Ethiopic Encoding System, Ethiopic/Latin transliteration but also Ethiopic XML, etc. There has been no standard that defines what Ethiopic means till now. Every software developer chooses the fidels that he/she wants to adopt. This has been creating some problems for rarely used fidels and for less influential dialects in Ethiopia. In addition to that, it was very difficult or impossible to have standards such as Ethiopic Keyboard Layout and Ethiopic/Latin transliteration without having such a standard. Distinguished linguists from the Institute of Language Studies (ILS) and the Institute of Ethiopian Studies (IES) have developed the draft standard at the Addis Ababa University. The Ethiopian Computers Standards Association (ECoSA) chaired the technical committee established by the Quality and Standards Authority of Ethiopia (QSAE). As indicated on the web site of the QSAE, the public is invited to give comments and suggestions within a month compliance with the national standards approval procedure.
(http://www.qsae.org/web_en/Standards_info/Drafts.htm)

UNESCO Involves NGOs in Preparing its Contribution to the World Summit on the Information Society

As UNESCO is preparing its contribution to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) which will be held in 2003 in Geneva and in 2005 in Tunis, a first round of consultations with representatives of NGOs working in the fields of UNESCO's competence is being organized at the Organization's Paris Headquarters in February 2002. The NGOs are invited to provide their specific input to the WSIS preparation process focusing on the challenges of providing for all an affordable and equitable access to information.

This first consultation round consists of four meetings that will gather about forty participants. Each of the meetings will be devoted to one cluster of issues reflecting the preliminary WSIS themes:
· Infrastructure in developing countries
· Cultural diversity and public domain of information
· Freedom of expression in the Information Society
· Education in and for the Information Society.

The participants of each of the four consultative meetings will be requested to formulate on behalf of the professional communities which they represent a set of recommendations for equitable access for all to information, for the protection of cultural and linguistic diversity, for the promotion of the various forms of cultural expression, for ensuring the respect for freedom of expression in cyberspace and for the judicious use of ICTs as innovative and experimental tools to renew education and to educate to become a full member of the Information society. The proposals are intended to help prepare the Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action that are foreseen to be adopted by the WSIS in December 2003, in Geneva.

Uganda Claims First VSAT Connected Education Project

The Ugandan Minister of Education and Sports has launched the first ever school VSAT satellite project in Africa in Ndejje Secondary School in Luwero district. The project aims at providing Internet connectivity for rural schools for educational purposes. It connects 15 schools in 11 districts in Uganda for the start. It has a professional development component, business development and management and a technical support to ensure that participating schools use the facility meaningfully and sustainably .The 2-year VSAT pilot project is being promoted by World Links and implemented by SchoolNet Uganda.