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Microsoft Approves Innovations Center At Ugandan Makerere University

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Microsoft has approved an Innovations Center at Makerere University. This will be the  2nd Innovations Center in the East African Region and 4th in Africa. The Innovations Center will be used by Makerere University and Uganda as whole to develop appropriate innovations relevant to the needs of their society.

 

 

Microsoft will provide technical expertise and related administrative support to the center for 3 years. A number of training programs will be offered by the center, which will act as a model innovation center on the African Continent. The confirmation came after 4 years of continuous engagements and negotiations between Microsoft, Ministry of ICT, Uganda, and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) .

 

 

Through UNIDO, the College of Computing and Information Sciences has also recently been approached by the UN Global Pulse Labs (the innovations arm of the UN) expressing interest in partnering to set up a UN Global Pulse Lab at the College. This recent development is hinged on Microsoft approval of the establishment of an Innovations Center at Makerere.

 

Develop Best Climate Change App, Get $10,000 from RIM and Telefónica – Due June 17

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The International Telecommunication Union-ITU launched a Green ICT Application Challenge to find the best and most innovative idea for a climate change focused application. The winning concept will be awarded USD10,000, thanks to challenge sponsors Research in Motion (RIM) and Telefónica.

 

As well as the cash prize, the winner will be invited to present their concept to a prestigious audience at ITU’s Green Standards Week in Italy in September. In addition, the winning app may be developed and showcased during a side event to be held at the COP-17 climate change talks in South Africa in December.

 

The Green ICT Application Challenge ITU’s way of spurring a next wave of innovation tackling real world problems.

 

The objective of the competition is to push contestants to think outside the box and develop concept papers for an ICT application that will be a truly valuable contribution to the green ICT industry.

 

Challenge sponsors RIM and Telefónica both recognize that ‘green’ applications for web and mobile devices have great potential to contribute to climate change abatement worldwide. While there are many apps on the market that target carbon footprinting, this Challenge aims to move to the next stage, with apps that focus on, for example:

 

  • Mitigation of climate change through energy efficiency in sectors such as smart buildings, intelligent transportation systems, smart homes, etc.
  • Community engagement
  • Eco-design
  • Monitoring of climate change
  • Measurement of GHG emissions
  • Adaptation to climate change (e.g. use of applications for emergency telecommunications and alerting systems for disaster relief)

Contestants are asked to submit a detailed concept paper with an explanation of how their idea helps combat climate change and provides an ICT solution to environmental or sustainability issues. Entries may be any kind of software tool or game, be it for the web, a personal computer or a mobile device. The closing date for entries is 17:00 CET, 17 June, 2011.

 

More information, including rules and entry requirements, is available at: www.itu.int/ITU-T/climatechange/greenict/index.html Sponsorship opportunities are available for the Green ICT Applications Challenge. For information, please contact:  greenstandard@itu.int.

 

Mobile Crop Disease Surveillance – Using Camera Images To Diagnose Crop Diseases

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Mobile Crop Disease Surveillance by Makerere University Students in Uganda is a highly automated smartphone-based survey system for crop disease, which uses camera images to diagnose viral damage and puts survey information online in real time. The system will be launched into the market, late this year, by the students. It is right now in beta but is expected to offer a new paradigm that combines embedded systems that captures image processing and apps.

 

Established in 1922 as a humble technical school, Makerere University is one of the oldest and most prestigious Universities in Africa. In January of that year, the school, which was later renamed Uganda Technical College, opened its doors to 14 day students who began studying Carpentry, Building and Mechanics.

Some Ideas from Just Concluded Kenyan Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK3)

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These are some ideas from the just concluded RHoK3 Kenya.

 

OneCrisis will be a non-profit, non-governmental portal for those who want to assist in humanitarian emergencies. The RHOK OneCrisis task is to develop a website for those who want to help and those who need help.  Lay responders will enter in basic information about their location, skills, and general availability. They will also say whether they can be a local coordinator for OneCrisis.  They will be able to integrate this with existing social media platforms (e.g. facebook).  Management functions will also be needed, including the ability to get aggregated statistics on volunteers by location, skill category, availability, event and other variables.  Those who are affected can post specific problems by event which responders can then sign up for.  Overall, think of an ongoing RHOK type system.

 

Populations Center Query tool: Population query is a query that extracts a list of locations (town, county, district) from data set and shows their population counts and GPS coordinates and other key information that helps us assess the situation.

 

Drought Monitoring: Drought originates from a deficiency of precipitation over an extended period of time, resulting in a water shortage for some activity, group, or environmental sector. Whatever the definition, it is clear that drought cannot be viewed solely as a physical phenomenon. 

 

Mapping needs and responses to a crisis: Current technologies allow damage or incident reports to be mapped, providing a clearer picture of the overall situation.Since crisis response usually involves a multitude of stakeholders, COORDINATION of the response is very important to avoid duplication of efforts and ensuring that (ideally) all needs are met. Current technologies don’t seem to go beyond the mapping of reports however.I believe that it would be of great use to the stakeholders involved in the response to be able to also map the NEEDED responses (e.g. in terms of number of items and their specifications required, possibly linked to a group of received reports), as well as the ACTUAL responses (by donors making funds available or local businessmen contributing some of the needed materials or even diaspora clicking on a “donate” button to contribute to the response in their community). This combined information would allow us to clearly show the gaps.A public and open source platform seems the perfect solution for this but to date I have not been able to find a solution that brings these elements together.

 

Microsoft Partners With Paradigm Initiative Nigeria On NGO Academy – June 15 & 16, Abuja

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The global software giant, Microsoft,  and Paradigm Initiative Nigeria will host a networking and information-sharing event for non-profit organizations in Abuja on June 15 and 16, 2011. The event website is here where participants can register.

 

The Academy will offer an interactive capacity-building program to further enhance skills in ICT, allow NGO staffs learn more about Microsoft’s opportunities for non-profits, provide technical demonstrations of Microsoft products and give NGOs the opportunity to network with relevant institutions. Participants of an earlier edition that held in Lagos opined that the NGO Connection Day event gave them the opportunity to discuss technology use in their work, learn more about technology tools and establish faster online presence that helped make their information available to a much wider audience.

 

The event will also present a Tech4Dev Award which will be announced in the program.