Pub Date : 2014-05-07DOI: 10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880620
Atiga Yousif Elmubark
As the use and demand for computers are growing so fast, it is very important that every student today acquire computer basic training. Computer literacy will give them all the benefits and advantages to progress their education and future career too. Sudanese students start learning computers at high secondary school. The computer science curriculum at the Sudanese high secondary schools aims at qualifying the students to be computer literate, preparing them for entering college or the workplace. Nevertheless, this curriculum only introduces the students to computer hardware, peripheral devices and operating systems, it neglects to teach them the usage skills, basic computer applications, how to work with the Internet or emails. Also, it does not teach graphics and multimedia or gives the students the knowledge on how to install a computer program, keep their computers running in the most basic sense or how to handle the basic, day to day computer problems. Instead, it overwhelmed those beginners with programming, data processing, data analysis and system design. Accordingly, it has become clear that computer science curriculum at the Sudanese high secondary schools is not adequate to qualify the students to be computer literate or preparing them for entering college or the workplace, and that it needs massive revision and modification.
{"title":"Study examining whether the computer science curriculum at the sudanese high secondary schools is adequate to qualify the students to be computer literate","authors":"Atiga Yousif Elmubark","doi":"10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880620","url":null,"abstract":"As the use and demand for computers are growing so fast, it is very important that every student today acquire computer basic training. Computer literacy will give them all the benefits and advantages to progress their education and future career too. Sudanese students start learning computers at high secondary school. The computer science curriculum at the Sudanese high secondary schools aims at qualifying the students to be computer literate, preparing them for entering college or the workplace. Nevertheless, this curriculum only introduces the students to computer hardware, peripheral devices and operating systems, it neglects to teach them the usage skills, basic computer applications, how to work with the Internet or emails. Also, it does not teach graphics and multimedia or gives the students the knowledge on how to install a computer program, keep their computers running in the most basic sense or how to handle the basic, day to day computer problems. Instead, it overwhelmed those beginners with programming, data processing, data analysis and system design. Accordingly, it has become clear that computer science curriculum at the Sudanese high secondary schools is not adequate to qualify the students to be computer literate or preparing them for entering college or the workplace, and that it needs massive revision and modification.","PeriodicalId":248893,"journal":{"name":"2014 IST-Africa Conference Proceedings","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132649959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-05-07DOI: 10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880610
F. Hattingh, Albertus A. K. Buitendag, W. Thompson
Based on a dual approach, which incorporated both a literature survey as well as a direct experiment without the preamble to support any hypothesis, the objectives of the research was to determine the likeliness of a SNS users from two different parts of South Africa to accept a friend request from a totally unknown and fictitious user. The results seem to point to a general willingness to accept a friend requests from a total stranger.
{"title":"User willingness to accept friend requests on SNS: A facebook experiment","authors":"F. Hattingh, Albertus A. K. Buitendag, W. Thompson","doi":"10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880610","url":null,"abstract":"Based on a dual approach, which incorporated both a literature survey as well as a direct experiment without the preamble to support any hypothesis, the objectives of the research was to determine the likeliness of a SNS users from two different parts of South Africa to accept a friend request from a totally unknown and fictitious user. The results seem to point to a general willingness to accept a friend requests from a total stranger.","PeriodicalId":248893,"journal":{"name":"2014 IST-Africa Conference Proceedings","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114633835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-05-07DOI: 10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880628
Gilbert Maiga, Flavia Namagembe
m-Health technology is an important form of Information Technology enabled delivery for health care. However, its adoption and use by healthcare providers faces challenges that include the lack of understanding of what motivates user acceptance and adoption of its applications. In this study, the Unified theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology is used to model the prediction and explain user acceptance of m-health tools in resource constrained environments. The model was validated using a descriptive field study The results confirm that performance expectancy, effort expectancy and disturbance concerns as presented in the unified theory for the acceptance and use of technology are important considerations for healthcare professionals to adopt m-health tools in Uganda. The results also help to validate the Unified theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology as an underlying predictive model for m-health technology adoption in similar environments.
{"title":"Predicting adoption of mHealth technology in resource constrained environments","authors":"Gilbert Maiga, Flavia Namagembe","doi":"10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880628","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880628","url":null,"abstract":"m-Health technology is an important form of Information Technology enabled delivery for health care. However, its adoption and use by healthcare providers faces challenges that include the lack of understanding of what motivates user acceptance and adoption of its applications. In this study, the Unified theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology is used to model the prediction and explain user acceptance of m-health tools in resource constrained environments. The model was validated using a descriptive field study The results confirm that performance expectancy, effort expectancy and disturbance concerns as presented in the unified theory for the acceptance and use of technology are important considerations for healthcare professionals to adopt m-health tools in Uganda. The results also help to validate the Unified theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology as an underlying predictive model for m-health technology adoption in similar environments.","PeriodicalId":248893,"journal":{"name":"2014 IST-Africa Conference Proceedings","volume":"18 9","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120887995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-05-07DOI: 10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880644
Ibrahim Otieno, E. Omwenga
eGovernment has emerged as one of the innovative ways of providing information and delivering services to citizens. It is providing governments with new opportunities of bringing services closer to the citizen in cost-effective, efficient and transparent ways. In spite of the implementation of e-government, there is little research that has been conducted in the context of developing countries to benchmark and appraise the impact of e-government on the target groups. Assessment of impact is important to justify public fund expenditure and inform future projects. Most studies on assessment of e-government have been done in developed countries where the context is different from that of developing countries. Therefore, there is need to develop frameworks that are suitable in the context of developing countries. Studies on assessing impact have been done at macro, meso and micro levels. These studies are largely based on supply-side and a few on demand-side with little focus on outcomes and impact. In this paper, we perform an analysis of various proposed e-government assessment frameworks with the aim of identifying and recommending the adoption of a framework that is suitable in the context of a developing country. We propose the adoption of a hybrid framework that amalgamates the frameworks developed by Bhatnagar and Singh and Verdegem et al due to their contextual suitability and citizen-centric approach. This is an exploratory study that lays foundation for further research in the development of an appropriate framework using the proposed approach.
{"title":"Towards the development of a citizen-centric framework for evaluating the impact of eGovernment: A case study of developing countries","authors":"Ibrahim Otieno, E. Omwenga","doi":"10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880644","url":null,"abstract":"eGovernment has emerged as one of the innovative ways of providing information and delivering services to citizens. It is providing governments with new opportunities of bringing services closer to the citizen in cost-effective, efficient and transparent ways. In spite of the implementation of e-government, there is little research that has been conducted in the context of developing countries to benchmark and appraise the impact of e-government on the target groups. Assessment of impact is important to justify public fund expenditure and inform future projects. Most studies on assessment of e-government have been done in developed countries where the context is different from that of developing countries. Therefore, there is need to develop frameworks that are suitable in the context of developing countries. Studies on assessing impact have been done at macro, meso and micro levels. These studies are largely based on supply-side and a few on demand-side with little focus on outcomes and impact. In this paper, we perform an analysis of various proposed e-government assessment frameworks with the aim of identifying and recommending the adoption of a framework that is suitable in the context of a developing country. We propose the adoption of a hybrid framework that amalgamates the frameworks developed by Bhatnagar and Singh and Verdegem et al due to their contextual suitability and citizen-centric approach. This is an exploratory study that lays foundation for further research in the development of an appropriate framework using the proposed approach.","PeriodicalId":248893,"journal":{"name":"2014 IST-Africa Conference Proceedings","volume":"167 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121432372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-05-07DOI: 10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880600
Collins Mwesigwa
The use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to improve how goods are produced and services are delivered and consumed is a feature of everyday life in the developed countries. ICT, if deployed appropriately, has the potential to vastly boost productivity. Cloud computing is being viewed as a potential area by businesses and government agencies in Africa to improve efficiency and effectiveness of business operations in government and business enterprises. Uganda is predominantly an Agricultural society that needs infrastructure to boost productivity, access to markets and management of the business processes. The potential and impact of cloud computing therefore is undoubtedly quantifiable especially for Ugandan small and medium scale enterprises that run on relatively low budget. Through literature review and interaction with business entities in both public and private sector, this paper therefore supports, encourages and recommends the application of cloud computing to facilitate especially in government and SMSEs like agricultural cooperatives increased productivity and effective service delivery.
{"title":"Cloud computing can reshape Uganda's development","authors":"Collins Mwesigwa","doi":"10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880600","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880600","url":null,"abstract":"The use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to improve how goods are produced and services are delivered and consumed is a feature of everyday life in the developed countries. ICT, if deployed appropriately, has the potential to vastly boost productivity. Cloud computing is being viewed as a potential area by businesses and government agencies in Africa to improve efficiency and effectiveness of business operations in government and business enterprises. Uganda is predominantly an Agricultural society that needs infrastructure to boost productivity, access to markets and management of the business processes. The potential and impact of cloud computing therefore is undoubtedly quantifiable especially for Ugandan small and medium scale enterprises that run on relatively low budget. Through literature review and interaction with business entities in both public and private sector, this paper therefore supports, encourages and recommends the application of cloud computing to facilitate especially in government and SMSEs like agricultural cooperatives increased productivity and effective service delivery.","PeriodicalId":248893,"journal":{"name":"2014 IST-Africa Conference Proceedings","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130535229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-05-07DOI: 10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880643
D. L. Nkweteyim
The process of efficiently indexing large document collections for information retrieval places large demands on a computer's memory and processor, and requires judicious use of these resources. In this paper, we describe our approach to constructing such an index based on the vector-space model (VSM). We review the stages involved in generating an index, for weighting the index terms, and for representing documents in the VSM. We explain our choice of data structures from the parsing of the document collection through the generation of index terms, to generation of document representations. We explain tradeoffs in our choice of data structures. We then demonstrate the approach using the OHSUMED data set. Our results show that even with only a modest amount of main memory (4 GB), large data sets such as the OHSUMED data set can be quickly indexed.
{"title":"Data structures for information retrieval","authors":"D. L. Nkweteyim","doi":"10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880643","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880643","url":null,"abstract":"The process of efficiently indexing large document collections for information retrieval places large demands on a computer's memory and processor, and requires judicious use of these resources. In this paper, we describe our approach to constructing such an index based on the vector-space model (VSM). We review the stages involved in generating an index, for weighting the index terms, and for representing documents in the VSM. We explain our choice of data structures from the parsing of the document collection through the generation of index terms, to generation of document representations. We explain tradeoffs in our choice of data structures. We then demonstrate the approach using the OHSUMED data set. Our results show that even with only a modest amount of main memory (4 GB), large data sets such as the OHSUMED data set can be quickly indexed.","PeriodicalId":248893,"journal":{"name":"2014 IST-Africa Conference Proceedings","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130755396","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-05-07DOI: 10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880654
M. Procházka, S. Licehammer, L. Matyska
In this paper we are introducing the identity and access management system called Perun. The system provides functionality which covers management of the whole user life cycle in nowadays e-Infrastructures, from user enrolment into the e-Infrastructure to user expiration. The Perun system supports management of virtual organizations, rights delegation, group management and enrolment management for making flexible user management easy to use. In comparison to ordinary identity management systems Perun also provides service and access management. Perun is a complex tool which eases management of research communities or users and services within the organizations. Perun system is used in production on national and international level; selected real deployments are described in this paper too.
{"title":"Perun — Modern approach for user and service management","authors":"M. Procházka, S. Licehammer, L. Matyska","doi":"10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880654","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880654","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we are introducing the identity and access management system called Perun. The system provides functionality which covers management of the whole user life cycle in nowadays e-Infrastructures, from user enrolment into the e-Infrastructure to user expiration. The Perun system supports management of virtual organizations, rights delegation, group management and enrolment management for making flexible user management easy to use. In comparison to ordinary identity management systems Perun also provides service and access management. Perun is a complex tool which eases management of research communities or users and services within the organizations. Perun system is used in production on national and international level; selected real deployments are described in this paper too.","PeriodicalId":248893,"journal":{"name":"2014 IST-Africa Conference Proceedings","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121381386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-05-07DOI: 10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880613
K. Khedo, Mohammad Riyad Hosseny, Mohammad Ziyad Toonah
Recently, numerous innovative applications of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have emerged in various domains ranging from military surveillance to environment monitoring. The food crisis that has recently affected the whole planet is characterized by the growing demand of food resources, rise of energy prices, and climate changes. In order to face this challenge, a modern approach consists of exploiting technologies and techniques for achieving more production and economies of scale. This has given rise to a new application domain that has been termed as `precision agriculture'. The development of WSN applications in the agricultural sector is attracting considerable research efforts, because these technologies are very suitable for distributed data collection and monitoring in tough environments such as greenhouses and cropland. In this paper, the implementation of a precision agriculture application, PotatoSense, for monitoring a potato plantation field in Mauritius is described. Energy-efficiency being one of the most important challenges in battery operated WSNs systems, different energy efficient algorithms are used in the proposed system to ensure that the system lifespan is prolonged. Additionally, a monitoring application has been developed to process the data obtained from the simulated WSN. The monitoring application is able to indicate regions of the potato field that need irrigation, pesticides or fertilizers. Furthermore, the administrator may also view historical data of specific region in the potato field.
{"title":"PotatoSense: A wireless sensor network system for precision agriculture","authors":"K. Khedo, Mohammad Riyad Hosseny, Mohammad Ziyad Toonah","doi":"10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880613","url":null,"abstract":"Recently, numerous innovative applications of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have emerged in various domains ranging from military surveillance to environment monitoring. The food crisis that has recently affected the whole planet is characterized by the growing demand of food resources, rise of energy prices, and climate changes. In order to face this challenge, a modern approach consists of exploiting technologies and techniques for achieving more production and economies of scale. This has given rise to a new application domain that has been termed as `precision agriculture'. The development of WSN applications in the agricultural sector is attracting considerable research efforts, because these technologies are very suitable for distributed data collection and monitoring in tough environments such as greenhouses and cropland. In this paper, the implementation of a precision agriculture application, PotatoSense, for monitoring a potato plantation field in Mauritius is described. Energy-efficiency being one of the most important challenges in battery operated WSNs systems, different energy efficient algorithms are used in the proposed system to ensure that the system lifespan is prolonged. Additionally, a monitoring application has been developed to process the data obtained from the simulated WSN. The monitoring application is able to indicate regions of the potato field that need irrigation, pesticides or fertilizers. Furthermore, the administrator may also view historical data of specific region in the potato field.","PeriodicalId":248893,"journal":{"name":"2014 IST-Africa Conference Proceedings","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124341647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-05-01DOI: 10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880668
A. Ronchi
The present paper accordingly with some studies carried out within the UNESCO IFAP programme introduces a synthetic overview on the impact due to recent ICT trends on society and due to the participation in a worldwide observatory on eContent & Services presents a selection of African success stories in the field of digital creativity. A number of African countries are competing every year to be awarded as producer of the best eContent & Services. International cooperation program are relevant as well in order to support emerging countries in economic and social development. Moreover a specific case study about running cooperation with a Sudanese university in ICT PhD programmes build up thanks to the international cooperation providing PhD supervisors and mentors. A detailed description of a cooperation project provides insight into potential cooperation models. The lesson learned from the active participation in IFAP, the worldwide observatory and the Sudanese ICT PhD programme.
{"title":"Made in Africa: African digital creativity","authors":"A. Ronchi","doi":"10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880668","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880668","url":null,"abstract":"The present paper accordingly with some studies carried out within the UNESCO IFAP programme introduces a synthetic overview on the impact due to recent ICT trends on society and due to the participation in a worldwide observatory on eContent & Services presents a selection of African success stories in the field of digital creativity. A number of African countries are competing every year to be awarded as producer of the best eContent & Services. International cooperation program are relevant as well in order to support emerging countries in economic and social development. Moreover a specific case study about running cooperation with a Sudanese university in ICT PhD programmes build up thanks to the international cooperation providing PhD supervisors and mentors. A detailed description of a cooperation project provides insight into potential cooperation models. The lesson learned from the active participation in IFAP, the worldwide observatory and the Sudanese ICT PhD programme.","PeriodicalId":248893,"journal":{"name":"2014 IST-Africa Conference Proceedings","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125755266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：