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We continued working towards democratisation of the telecommunication infrastructure by defining and organising the key players and stakeholders in the Village Telco initiative together. We will have a workshop next month and have commitment from all to participate fully. This will be the first time they have all been together and we are very much looking forward to shaping the project further.
Connected Cities
Steve Song met with Leon Van Wyk, head of Telecommunications Department for the City of Cape Town and was hugely impressed with the progress, stating:
Cape Town is poised to become the leading city on the continent in terms of high speed information infrastructure. Let’s hope many others follow their model.
This was also his first (of many) post featured on Techleader.co.za.
During the last quarterly review with the Trustees, Mark expressed his wish to help find some real, concrete and effective changes that he could propose in the Presidential International Advisory Council (PIAC). Consulted widely, Steve has met with Tracey Cohen (ICASA Councillor) and Paris Mashile (Chair of ICASA) amongst others to validate ideas for policy change . We have some exciting ideas and the draft is being internally reviewed by the trustees before being proposed in the official forum. Once the proposal parameters have been defined we will open it up for review.
Steve and Jason gave a talk about the Village Telco and Freedom Toaster at the Bandwidth Barn , organised by CITI, attended by entrepreneurs, government representatives (local and national), and VeloCITI participants .
New blog postings
At the Foundation, we aim to drive innovation, we pilot projects, we comment and cajole in policy discussions and we slowly move forward to a better, more connected, more educated and prosperous South Africa (and Africa and the world). There is rarely a silver bullet, more often than not elements of any initiative work and elements don’t.
A project that we piloted a few years ago, has just grown some wonderful wings and we are cracking open the virtual champagne and celebrating. The Freedom Toaster project, started by Jason Hudson and now under the management of Brett Simpson at Breadbin has become a successful independent venture. UNISA have made 36 orders for them to deliver content, software and information to their students and there are many more orders in the pipeline. Freedom Toasters are popping up all over Africa (and Canada and South America and too many other places to mention).
So thrilled – congratulations to all who have cared for, talked about, used and nurtured this project. Truly delighted.
Below – Brett and Jason assembling a Freedom Toaster – it really is as easy as all that!
