News

Congratulations to APC member Jinbonet of Korea, who will be celebrating its 10th anniversary on November 14th. As innovators of ICT for social justice, Jinbonet has been a leader in its commitment to social rights, gender equality, use of free and open source software (FOSS), and has been an integral part of APC’s work in Asia and at large. APC has learnt so much from this truly dedicated and steadfast organisation, and will continue to do so.

How can feminists use technology to their advantage? On November 10, the first ever Feminist Tech eXchange (FTX) in Cape Town will bring together more than 100 activists from around the globe to address this type of question. Organized by the APC Women’s programme in the run up to the massive women’s movement forum AWID, the capacity-building and information-exchange event will explore various technologies such as video, audio, social networking platforms and other emerging ICT tools. The event will act as an open space to network, share knowledge, and learn new skills and strategies for how to make technology work best for the women’s movement.

“The principles that I learned in the APC workshop helped me work in resource-constrained environments,” says Alex Gondwe, techie at the Baobab Health Partnership in Malawi. Alex is setting up wireless internet connections between health institutions to improve patient care and HIV/AIDS data collection and he shares his tips here.

On October 11 2008, internet privacy advocates will be meeting in over twenty of Europe’s major cities and capitals in the Americas to launch the Freedom Not Fear campaign, which protests mass-surveillance and mass data retention that many governments world-wide are undertaking. Together, they will promote democracy, free speech and human rights, and raise awareness on this issue through protests, art displays, flash mobs and parties. This event takes place shortly after the data retention meeting in Budapest on September 19 2008, where APC members Green Spider and BlueLink were among the policy experts, academics and activists that met to discuss the new European data retention policy that will take effect in January 2009.

APC partner Tactical Tech, an international NGO that helps activists use information and ICTs to increase their impact, are currently accepting applications for the first international camp on info-activism. The Info-Activism Camp, a seven-day event will take place from February 19 – 25 2009 in Bangalore India. As the first meet-up of this type, participants will learn and share advocacy techniques using ICTs through workshops, group discussions, interactive sessions and live demos.

APC member Computer Aid has recently caught the BBC’s attention with its adaptive technologies in Kenya. The BBC’s Click covered Computer Aid’s new focus on making computers and their programmes available to everyone, including people who cannot see. You can read a the full BBC article, which examines how Computer Aid is helping Kenyans change their lives, and the challenges involved.

Smelled like a revolutionary spirit around Popinci, central Bulgaria, when residents and activists raised barricades around their village. They believed that a planned gold mining project in the nearby hills would harm the environment and their health. They demanded it to be cancelled. The villagers’ impulsive action has put the project on hold for the last three years. But this, or any other community, might not have been as successful in attaining a concrete outcome, had it chosen to fight for access to high speed internet. And the reason is simple. Unlike the environment, internet is not widely perceived by authorities, legislators and policy makers as an essential common good.

The Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS) Small Grants Fund is delighted to announce that twenty projects have been short-listed as possible GenARDIS grantees. The short-listed proposals come from sixteen countries in Africa and the Caribbean, ranging from the Dominican Republic and St. Vincent on over the Atlantic Ocean to rock-skip throughout western Africa in Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Congo. Eastern Africa and Southern Africa also have their share of representation with projects from Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Read the entire announcement