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Volume 3 - 9
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| 9. South African showcases ICT projects during WSIS By Hilda van Rooyen and Nhlanhla Nyide World attention focused on local innovation in information and communications technology (ICT) during the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which took place in Geneva, Switzerland between 9-13 December 2003. The delegation from the Department of Science and Technology was led by Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Dr Ben Ngubane. During the summit, the CSIR showcased three of its icomtek research projects, all funded by the department. These projects are developments in human language technologies (HLT), ICTs for rural development, and the Digital Doorway. The exhibition formed part of the enormous ICT for Development Platform exhibition and conference programme – the largest multi-stakeholder event during the WSIS. The WSIS focused specifically on the implications of the emergence of the new-networked economy and a knowledge-based information society enabled by technological and other advances, and the ways in which these affect how people live, learn, work and relate to one another. The Department’s aim in this area includes harnessing the benefits of ICT for sustainable development, nurturing an appropriate ICT capacity for South Africa, and using ICT tools to preserve and promote cultural diversity. The gist of the three CSIR icomtek initiatives is ICTs for rural development. The appropriate use of technology can ensure that rural communities benefit from the ICT revolution by accessing information that is of specific relevance to their daily lives, their overall development process and their small business development programmes. CSIR icomtek developed a wireless network system that provides a fast and costeffective solution for the roll-out of communications infrastructure to rural communities. This is also true of the Digital Doorway, which is the use of minimally invasive education (MIE) for large-scale computer literacy to support the advancement of the information society. The HLT, speech and language technologies have broken through several barriers in the developed world, but have been slow to impact on the developing world. CSIR icomtek is looking at developing and deploying HLT to the benefit of developing countries, especially those with a multilingual and multicultural heritage. |
Nominations of potential candidates for the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) Board of Directors
