[UgaBYTES] Local Content in East Africa

[gkwagner at via.at]

Dear Pete,

I have been doing research on various types of
content- and publishing-markets for 15 years, including
for UN, OECD and European Commission.

1) There are at least 15 categories of content. All of them are NOT
interlinked. This makes research so tricky and time-consuming.

2) Check some terminology management initiatives in these countries.
Their terminology databases enhance the translation from English
to local languages and the other way round.

3) There is NO proper definition of contents and especially the
informaticians misuse the term. Content is NOT data.

4) you have to decide first which of the 15-20 categories of
content you are going to research. Then we could investigate whether
for them an appropriate award is available (local, national, African,
Worldwide). I know the EU- and worldwide awards, but not those in Africa.

I met plenty of Korean content-missions to Vienna
but never came across any content-initiative from Africa.
Only in few Arabic countries content became a topic of initiatives.

kind regards from Vienna/Belgrade,


Gerhard



Quoting Mwathi Francis <mfrancis at ugabytes.org>:

> Hallo Pete,
>
> There is a group of University students that were involved recently in
> translating Mozilla Firefox into Luganda- the most spoken Language in
> Uganda. I understand that most of them are currently involved in a
> similar project involving Google. If possible I would recommend that
> you meet with them while in Uganda. They could be of great help.
>
> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Meddie Mayanja <mmayanja at idrc.ca> wrote:
> > Thanks, Pete
> >
> > I am sure the telecentre community in East African region will seize this
> opportunity to broaden their local content activities or even initiate new
> ones. Great that you have shared this.
> >
> > Best, Meddie
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ugabytes-bounces at lists.ugabytes.org
> [mailto:ugabytes-bounces at lists.ugabytes.org] On Behalf Of Pete Cranston
> > Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 1:52 PM
> > To: ugabytes at lists.ugabytes.org
> > Subject: [UgaBYTES] Local Content in East Africa
> >
> > Hi
> >
> > What are people and organisations in development in East Africa doing with
> Local Content?
> >
> > I'm reviewing what has been happening in with Local Content since we last
> worked in the area for the Open Knowledge Network, with IICD and with
> telecentre.org. I am working with Peter Ballantyne and the reserch is for
> www.ikmemergent.net. We'd like to hear from people and organisations who are
> working in this field. We are interested connecting with the original
> partners of those projects, but also with other people working on Local
> Content.
> >
> > When we talk about Local Content we mean "the expression of the locally
> owned and adapted knowledge of a community - where the community is defined
> by its location, culture, language, or area of interest", the definition used
> in Peter Ballantyne's 2002 paper. We know that content is expressed in all
> forms - voice, song, text, art objects, pictures and videos and many more.
> Increasingly this content is being captured online, and newer Web 2.0 tools
> are also having an impact.
> >
> > We are focusing on East Africa at this stage, partly because this is a
> small piece of research and we want to look at issues in some detail and
> partly because we know about some work that is happening in that region.
> >
> > Please get in touch if you'd like to talk about what is happening. I am
> travelling to Kenya, and possibly Uganda, either in mid-June or mid July this
> year, and would like to meet and talk to people who would like to be
> connected to the research and develop ideas for how the subject could be
> developed.
> >
> > Best wishes
> >
> > Pete
> >
> > Pete Cranston
> > skype: petecranston
> > mobile: +44 (0)7917 390133
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
>
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>
> Francis Mwathi
> Support Community Facilitator
> UgaBYTES Initiatives (www.ugabytes.org)
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