Three major South African ICT projects are on show at the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), which is under way in Geneva.
WSIS, organised by the UN`s International Telecommunications Union, is aimed at bridging the digital divide and has attracted officials from 175 countries - but most of the heads of state at the event are from developing nations rather than from North America or Europe.
The delegation from the Department of Science and Technology, led by the science and technology minister Ben Ngubane, and the CSIR, is showcasing three projects at the ICT for Development exhibition running alongside the summit.
The projects on display include an "ICT for rural development" project, which includes a wireless network system developed by CSIR icomtek to provide a fast and cost-effective communications infrastructure to rural communities.
Another project on show, "Digital Doorway", encompasses the use of minimally invasive education for large-scale computer literacy to support the advancement of the information society.
The CSIR`s "developments in human language technologies" (HLT) project is currently in use for HLT-enabled e-government service delivery and in the "Local Language Speech Technology Initiative" - a collaborative effort involving India, the UK, Nigeria and SA, aimed at developing an open source toolset for the effective development of a text-to-speech system in any language of the world - the South African effort will develop an isiZulu TTS system as a first pilot.
The CSIR is also using HLT in developing an augmentative communication device for people with speech disabilities.
EU science, tech funding welcomed
Ngubane has welcomed the European Union`s decision to allocate funds from the European Development Fund (EDF) to support science technology in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.
Ngubane said: "We would like to acknowledge the support from EU to enable ACP countries to build research and development capacity within their own countries, because crucial development-oriented research could not take place without this capacity.
"While we understand that this is seed funding we hope that there will be a possibility of a much-expanded fund in future years. Although SA does not have a direct access to the fund because of our bilateral agreement with EU, nevertheless we are well placed to benefit from it as brokers, project managers and service providers," he added.
"Given that the European Commission has expressed interest in becoming a partner in the implementation of the New Partnership for Africa`s Development (NEPAD) initiatives in science and technology, we hope that half of the funds will be available to Africa to support the NEPAD Science and Technology Plan of Action."
Share
