[UgaBYTES] Knowledge transfer AFRICA to EASTERN EUROPE (and vice versa)

[gkwagner at via.at]

Dear colleagues,

sorry for opening a new chapter.
I have been working for 12 years in some
transformation countries in Eastern Europe
(ex-Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Ukraine)
and their challenges towards information society,
e-learning and e-business seem to be similar to yours.

1) I am not going to post any events in Eastern
and Central Europe on that list.
So if you as individual are interested to receive
my bi-monthly NEWSLETTER, address me directly:
gkwagner at via.at (Mr Gerhard WAGNER)
(Focus: announcement of major EU- or international
conferences in Vienna, Belgrade, Sofia and other
CEE-countries + abstracts of summaries).

*****************

2) In the past three years I worked in Serbia
(ex-Yugoslavia) and finished following reports.
Maybe some of them are useful for your work.

A. the failure of tourism and e-tourism in Serbia and Sicily

B. The weaknesss of the local content- and multimedia-
sector and recommendations to the Serbian Government

C. Creative industries and Cultural heritage:
how to create a local and cross-border market

D. Mobile learning and the radical reform of
the public and nationalized educational system

E. National broadband strategy without CONTENT strategy
is a complete waste of money (see World Summit Award)

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Summary: I am not an expert on any African country.
But my friends Franz Nahrada (telehouses, GTA) and
Alex Felsenberg (projects in Kenia) told me a lot about
the challenges in your countries. - And it is my
humble opinion that YOUR challenges and those of the
30 countries in Eastern Europe might be similar to
a certain extent.

They use modern technologies to a certain extent,
but they fail to set up viable and sustainable local
markets which create enough JOBS.
Their book markets are excellent, but they failed
to set up viable DVD and content-markets.

*************

The manager of that mailing-list shall decide
whether the above topic (lessons learnt by
transformation countries in Eastern Europe and
impact on Uganda/Africa) shall be discussed in that
mailing-list or in a separate one.

I am open for any dialogue since I had the feeling
that even the UN in their glorious (but often useless)
ICT-conferences never addressed the opportunity to
transfer lessons learnt between Eastern Europe and
Africa and vice versa.

kind regards,


Gerhard (Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade)
Researcher and analyst