BLADE

Groundviews: a citizen journalism initiative from Sri Lanka

In a country that is increasingly under fire for clamping down on media freedom, citizen journalism initiatives, like Groundviews, are important sources of information on issues related to war, peace, democracy and human rights in Sri Lanka. 

This site represents a pioneering effort in Sri Lanka to create a channel through which citizens in civil society can be heard.  

Content includes thoughts on life in conflict zones, impending humanitarian emergencies, and information on security and ground conditions.  

Blogging on Africa from Africa

Amila de Saram Larssen

The Norwegian Council for Africa recently launched The Africa Blog Forum featuring 10 selected  bloggers from around the continent . 

One of the bloggers lives outside the continent, the rest are African bloggers writing from Africa.

Characterised as a “gateway to the African blogosphere,” the Forum seeks to present a positive and nuanced picture of Africa in Norway and around the world.

Recent blog posts range in topic from micro finance to Kenyan politics to the oil business in Nigeria.

Click here to participate in The Africa Blog Forum and to get a snapshot of the blogging landscape in Africa.

ICTs and women: a story from Uganda

The cell phone business is booming in Uganda.  But can the communications technology sector help the poor, and especially women?  

Panos London journalist, Machrine Birungi, talks to Sophie Nansubuga, a woman who traded in her vegetable business for a cell phone kiosk in Kampala.  

This piece was originally published by Panos London and can be accessed here.

One Laptop per Child initiative to receive a boost from media

(Photo credit: OLPC website)

Amila de Saram Larssen

Media companies, including the News Corporation, CBS and Time Warner are donating advertising space and time in the US in an attempt to boost the initiative’s efforts to place low-cost laptops in the hands of children in developing nations. 

In a recent article on the subject, Steve Lohr of The New York Times writes that the advertising is expected to start conversations and increase donations to the project. 

Adolescent Girls Initiative launched by World Bank

(Photo: Flickr © Gennadiy Ratushenko / World Bank) 

Amila de Saram Larssen

The World Bank and the Nike Foundation plan to execute the first pilot project to help smooth the transition of adolescent girls from school to quality work in Liberia in January 2009.  

Interventions planned include helping girls complete education, build skills that match market demand, find mentors and job placements, offer incentives to potential employers to retain, and train young women to overcome some of the cultural barriers to young women's employment.

Urbanization not on agenda of international development agencies

Amila de Saram Larssen

Joel Bolnick, a founder and current coordinator of Slum Dwellers International (SDI), an international NGO that manages networks of slum dwellers mainly in the South, presented the work of his organization at an event held at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo yesterday to commemorate Habitat Day.  The seminar was entitled, "The Cities of Tomorrow."

For the first time in history, more people live in cities than in rural areas. One in every three city

dwellers, more than a billion people, is a slum dweller.

Seminar on "New thoughts on Aid" presented at Freedom of Expression Foundation, Oslo

(The graphic used for the seminar, "New thinking on Aid", designed by Kristine Vintervold)

Amila de Saram Larssen

The seminar, “New thinking on Aid” that took place October 3 in Oslo, addressed important issues associated with the aid industry, mainly why aid is not more effective, how aid is viewed by recipient countries, and what the future of aid might look like. 

The seminar was organized by Asle Toje.

New blog on global health launched

The Health MDGs Blog was launched today by Norad's Global Health and AIDS department.  The blog focuses on Norwegian priorities in development and global health issues, with a particular emphasis on the health-related MDGs.

The “Browning” of African Technology

By G. Pascal Zachary

Forget MIT. Hello, Tsing Hua University. For Clothilde Tingiri, a hot young programmer at Rwanda’s top software company, dreams of Beijing, not Cambridge, animate her ambitions. Desperate for more education, this fall she plans to attend graduate school for computer science – in China, not America.

The Chinese are no strangers to Rwanda. Near Tingiri’s office, Rwanda’s largest telecom company, Rwandatel, is installing new wireless telephony equipment made by Huawei of Shenzen. Africa boasts the world’s fastest-growing market for wireless telephony, and Huawei – with offices in 14 African countries – is running away with the business, sending scores of engineers into the bush to bring a new generation of low-cost technology to some of the planet’s poorest people.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), Youth and the Politics of Participation in Rural Uganda

By Carol Azungi Dralega

This article summarizes findings from a research project conducted in Uganda as part of my PhD programme and explores how Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are being accessed and used by rural youths for participatory democracy and development in Uganda.

The article focuses on rural youth not only because they form the majority of the youth population in Uganda, but also because they belong to communities that are in the main both geographically and socially peripheral, conservative in their attitude towards the introduction and usage of new technologies and impoverished. Consequently, their access to information and communication technological resources is limited.