… is the title of my masters thesis, which I will hand in for external examination at the end of the week.
Thanks to my family for putting up with my midnight writing sessions.
And thanks to my friends, Erika, Ford, Henry and Tanya for proof-reading the sucker.
And thanks to my readership for putting up with the silence… (I’ll publish a copy here as soon as it’s final.)
Things have been going along at the speed of light at eKhaya ICT in the meanwhile. In December, Thozamile Ngeju our community coordinator has been doing wonders with the two schools that were operational in that time: Benjamin Mahlasela and Nathaniel Nyaluza (both Secondary Schools). This is our first small forray into the Grahamstown township (impoverished peri-urban area), and we look forward to it moving along fantastically during 2010. All signals are on green for this year.
On the ESTIMA Software Factory front, we are hard at work. A large part of the technical input at the start comes from my thesis — the primary software objective will be to create a distributed middleware for rural digital access centres. Doesn’t that sound familiar. We have hired two programmers and I am late in writing an offer to the third. Oops. So I had better go and do that now.
But first a word about innovation possibilities: we had a fab meeting with the East London IDZ last week. Dr. Nkem-abonta has really internalised all the recommendations that issue from the COFISA foresight workshops (http://www.cofisa.org.za, look under documents), and so the Eastern Cape is looking to attract Knowledge Industries, Green Transport, etc. It sounds, that the IDZ is a little behind schedule. As are many things on the African Continent. Like BROADBAND. Still, if they manage to get a green car manufacturer there, at least we’ll have a place to peddle our mobile software. I have been talking to the CEO of neofonie Mobile, and he’s keen to expand down this way…