Opportunity: matching local learning needs and existing learning resources, through an unprecedented collaborative effort driven by the UN and development agencies. The Open Training Platform (OTP) is a web-based sharing and access space that offers learning and capacity building resources in all development topics to better serve local people’s knowledge and skill acquisition needs in developing countries.

Barbara Fillip from the Academy for Educational Development (AED) and Mark Surman from Telecenters.org, accepted to answer some of our questions in a very complete and extensive interview for the ICT4D dgCommunity. The interview comes back on major telecenters' issues, outputs of a recent publication untitled "Making the connection: Scaling Telecenters for development" and finally introduces Telecenter.org and its wiki tool for going further.

FPIs are multi-stakeholder activities catalyzed by GAID to leverage joint resources and to spur visible action toward attaining its objectives across the four GAID focus areas (education, entrepreneurship, governance and health). FPIs differ from COEs in terms of their output, scope and operating modalities.

The EA-TLF is a bi annual East African telecentre event with rotating venues within the sub region. It focuses on different themes. It is a part of the global framework of telecentre.org and partners' gatherings that are focused at facilitating learning and sharing of ideas and solutions among telecentre practitioners. As such the EA-TLF uses open space facilitation methods – in which every participant is a learner and facilitator.

3rd EA-TLF Theme: Promoting ICT for rural development - meeting the movement challenges

Location(s)

The Telecentre Knowledge Network is an editable and evolving reference wiki about building and sustaining telecentres. This wiki discusses issues facing the global telecentre movement, presents a condensed view of the knowledge about telecentres, and offers activists a place to share the knowledge and wisdom that comes from running telecentres.

The East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) is an initiative to construct and operate a submarine fiber optic cable along the east coast of Africa to connect eight coastal countries and island nations to each other and to the rest of the world (the Project). The cable will have an initial equipped capacity of 20Gbits/sec, and an ultimate capacity when fully upgraded of 320Gbits/sec. The route will be from South Africa to Sudan, covering about 8,500 km, and connecting the following countries: South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan.

Making an international phone call or connecting to high-speed internet is beyond the reach of the average citizen of East and Southern African countries in part because the region is not connected to the global optical fiber broadband infrastructure. The 'missing link' explains why the region accounts for less than one percent of the world's international bandwidth capacity.

At a Headquarters press conference, panellists from the private, non-governmental and public sectors discussed ways to make information and communications technology more accessible to persons with disabilities.

A "dazzling array" of technologies is bringing persons with disabilities into the workforce and integrating them further into society, an expert on assistive technologies said at a forum at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

The many ways information and communication technology (ICT) can improve the lives of persons with disabilities will be the topic of a meeting taking place at the United Nations (Conference Room 4) on Monday, 26 March.