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Flies, Fish and a South African Success Story, by Ed Stoddard
Mpho Mashila has never caught a fish in her life but she ties a mean fly. The decoy insects (called flies) tied by her and other women in the South African squatters camp where she lives are so popular with fly fishing aficionados in the United States that Mashila and others are being reeled out of poverty. I was trained for four months and then I became a trainer. I now train the other women how to tie flies, she said from behind a table cluttered with the tools of her tr...
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- Reuters
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UN commission calls on Africa to commit to information and knowledge economy
With information and communication technologies (ICT) spinning off new industries in Africa, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) today called on the continent’s governments to commit themselves to policies that create information and knowledge economies. Already Africa’s ICT environment was leading to the creation of technology parks, globally-operating call centres, cyber-cities and a growing software development sector that was seeking a share of the global $2...
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- UN News Centre
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Aspen to Produce New U.S. Aids Drugs, Sell Them in Africa, by Tamar Kahn
Aspen’s head of strategic trade, Stavros Nicolau, said Gilead would provide Aspen with the ingredients and technology to make the drugs, and Aspen would seek licensing approval in African countries where they were not registered. Aspen had lodged an application to register Viread with the Medicines Control Council and planned to follow suit with Truvada shortly. Nicolau declined to comment on projected sales volumes, but said the African market had strong potential as only about 7%-8% ...
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- Business Day (Johannesburg)
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In Ethiopian Hills, Five Years to Create Something Out of Nothing, by Helene Cooper
A year ago, Koraro villagers scraped together the money to pay for a seventh-grade teacher, then put the class under the tree since there was no room in the school. Paying for an eighth grade is beyond the village’s means at this point. If the rich world is actually going to deliver on its promise to halve global poverty by 2015, then it has to start somewhere. It may as well be here in this village, deep in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray Province, where food is scarce and water even s...
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- The New York Times
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Indian language fonts soon on PCs
In a bid to enhance penetration of computers and Internet in the country, the Government is planning to make it mandatory for original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to load fonts in 23 Indian languages onto the computers sold in the country. It (lack of local language computing) is a hindrance in proliferation of computer and Internet. We have to keep in mind that in India less than 5 per cent of the people speak English and therefore we need to make these fonts freely available in ...
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- The Hindu Business Line
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Is the IT industry losing its edge?
Sridhar Mitta, Managing Director and CTO, e4e India The old way was about cost reduction, but the new way is to create new markets. I see brand new companies, young start-ups, new business models, new technologies all coming up and a market that is broad based compared with what we see as IT now. In next few years, anything that is of economic value and amenable to conversion into digits is open to offshoring. Geography is not the limitation anymore, nor is the space: fro...
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- Business Standard
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Maran’s dream: PC at Rs9999
Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran today said the government-industry Committee on Improving PC Penetration would work on bringing out a Rs 9,999 [$229] desktop to achieve the target of 65 PCs per 1,000 people by 2008. PC penetration will drive broadband. However, PC prices are not competitive enough. The committee will meet periodically and besides other issues, also work on low-cost PCs to fuel penetration in the country, he said after accepting the recommendations of t...
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- Sify
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Down to the bottom dollar, by Wendy Frew
Neelamma, from the town of Kuppam in south-east India, is one of the US computer giant Hewlett-Packard’s least lucrative customers. But she has become one of its most valuable customers in terms of public relations. The 27-year-old rents a digital camera and printer from the company at market rates, and makes a living charging about 90 cents to take pictures of fellow villagers. Although Neelamma is from one of the poorest regions in the world, she is presented as the future of Hewlett...
- Source
- The Sydney Morning Herald
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