Building ICTs to connect the unconnected people in e.g. rural Africa, is challenging due to the language and literacy gap. Voice-based ICT systems have proven useful, e.g. for meteo services or market information. However, in general they are much more complicated to build that text-based systems, for ICT and Web […]
Yearly Archives: 2017
W4RA member Amadou Tangara is now Tree Aid’s Country Manager for Mali. This is what the international NGO Tree Aid wrote about his new position: (on 8 December 2017): “Amadou has long experience of agroforestry projects and was the winner of the African Innovation for a Sustainable Development prize for […]
[This post describes research by Fahad Ali and is based on his Msc. thesis] Contextual constraints (lack of infrastructure, low-literacy etc.) play an important role in ICT for Development (ICT4D) projects. The Kasadaka project offers a technological platform for knowledge sharing applications in rural areas in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, lack of […]
The unfortunate news reached us that Dorothy Dittoh passed away on 27 October 2017. In 2015 and 2016 Dorothy participated in our W4RA workshops in Walewale, in our field research in Guabuliga community and in our ICT4D symposium “Perspectives on ICT4D”. Dorothy is a member of the Dittoh family. Her […]
The W4RA team wants to express our sympathy with the family and relatives of Mady Sidibe, who passed away on September 6, 2017. Mady participated in our W4RA workshops in Ségou and Bamako, Mali in 2014, 2015 and 2016. Mady was one of the people who really made clear to us the importance […]
From 25 August to 1 September 2017, The W4RA team visited UNIMAS in Sarawak. Aim of this visit was to continue and expand research collaboration with UNIMAS in ICT4D. The W4RA team was represented, on this trip, by Prof. Hans Akkermans, Dr. Jaap Gordijn, Anna Bon and Bruno van Moerkerken, […]
The W4RA team at VU is proud to present three new master theses: by Justyna Kleczar (July 2017), Reshmi Sarkar (June 2017) and Jamila Daoudi (May 2017). Justyna Kleczar’s work is on speech technologies for underresourced languages. It comprises a new methodology, including very comprehensive tooling, which facilitates and allows […]
[cross-posted from victordeboer.com] During the National Day for Sustainability (Nationale dag voor duurzaamheid in het hoger onderwijs 2017), the ICT4D team presented our current research and educational activities to the many participants of this event, hosted at VU. Anna Bon and myself presented our work on sustainable methodologies for ICT4D […]
Yesterday, 18 May 2017, the 4th International ICT4D symposium was held at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The event was organized by the W4RA team and supported by VU Network Institute, the Netherlands Research School for Information and Knowledge Systems SIKS, VU Computer Science Department and VU International Office. Invited speakers from Ghana, France […]