Postdoctoral Position : Agent-Based Modeling of Social Complexity in Ancient Egypt : University of Cape Town, South Africa
UCT CS Colloquium by Marshini Chetty of the University of Maryland, USA
CS Colloquia and Seminars and other talks
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Seminar: Research, Innovation and Development in East Africa
Why did Google choose to set up its regional offices in Kenya and not in South Africa? Is South Africa truly the sub-Saharan regional powerhouse in ICT research and innovation? Do we understand enough about development in Africa to lead research in ICT for Development? To answer these and similar questions, I spent a month traveling through East Africa to study how the ecosystem is similar and/or different.
| What | Colloquium |
|---|---|
| When |
2013-08-29 13:00
2013-08-29 13:45
2013-08-29 from 13:00 to 13:45 |
| Where | Computer Science LT 303 |
| Contact Name | Hussein Suleman |
| Contact Email | hussein@cs.uct.ac.za |
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Abstract
Why did Google choose to set up its regional offices in Kenya and not in South Africa? Is South Africa truly the sub-Saharan regional powerhouse in ICT research and innovation? Do we understand enough about development in
Africa to lead research in ICT for Development? To answer these and similar questions, I spent a month traveling through East Africa to study how the ecosystem is similar and/or different.
What I found was a common culture across 4 countries in East Africa; but one that is foreign to South African norms. While there is fierce competition within East Africa, this is not conceived as competition with South Africa,
but as competition to establish an identity as the hub for ICT in Africa. Research is weak, innovation has varying quality and development is almost taboo; but there is an excitement that is all-pervasive. This excitement, coupled with
institutional and government support, has propelled ICT to the forefront of society.
A new African ICT-intoxicated society is rapidly emerging, but outside the borders of South Africa. South Africa risks being marginalized as the agenda gets set elsewhere, unless we actively engage with the evolving notions of research, innovation and development, and their implications for universities, industry and society.
About the Speaker
Hussein Suleman is an Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Cape Town. His research is situated within the Centre for ICT for Development and the Digital Libraries Laboratory. He completed his undergraduate degrees and MSc at the then University of Durban-Westville and finished a PhD at Virginia Tech in the USA in 2002, in the area of component-based digital libraries. He actively advocates for Open Access in South Africa, and works closely with the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), which promotes/supports the adoption of electronic theses and dissertations and generally digital libraries worldwide. He currently manages the South African ETD portal as well as the international ETD Union Archive. He actively collaborates with the Centre for Curating the Archive at UCT, developing software tools for preservation, dissemination and discovery for the Bleek and Lloyd and related
collections. Hussein's main research interests are in digital libraries, ICT4D, information retrieval, cultural heritage preservation, Internet technology and high performance computing.