As usual, this week’s UK-Nigeria online meeting proved a real gem.

Feedback from John suggests the community is becoming used to the new realities of slow business output in the wake of the post-election conflict.

He reports that the Kafanchan Peace Market traders are gradually getting their businesses going again, with some of venturing into new businesses areas.
Twelve of the 27 traders are Muslims and these women have negotiated with Fantsuam Foundation to defer their loans until after Ramadan.

In recent blogs I have documented the loss of experienced staff from Fantsuam, mostly as a direct consequence of the recent troubles. However, a related ongoing problem which afflicts FF was explained by John. Once again he has lost another valuable member of his staff who has been offered five times the salary that FF can afford. This is a recurring problem for John. He trains people who have minimal skills but, by the time they have served their unofficial apprenticeship at Fantsuam, they have gained valuable experience and are poached by bigger organisations
This is because FF offers a fasttrack training and unique hands-on approach to integrated development. John reflected: “The way we are starting to look at this is that taking youths from Ground Zero to become employable by bigger organisations may be one of our callings - but it costs us so much."

The Peoples Open Access Education Initiative: Peoples-uni continues to go from strength to strength. It is now open for enrollments for the first semester 2010. It is offering 12 courses, including a new one, and one offered in two additional languages. Dadamac is proud to have been associated with People's Uni from its very earliest days. Professor Dick Heller (Coordinator of the Peoples-uni) has asked us to share the following information:

This is to tell you that we are now open for enrolments for the first semester 2010. We have 12 course modules, including one new 'Public Health Nutrition'. One of the modules, 'Public Health Concepts for Policy Makers' is also offered in French and Spanish versions.

We are learning the lessons from each semester as we go, and are working closely with Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK to try and develop a partnership that will allow students to receive an academic award from them on the basis of study with Peoples-uni. We remain on the lookout for other similar linkages. We have a further number of new modules in development, and various other plans and changes.

It's almost exactly ten years since I was first involved in communication between UK and Nigeria. In those days my friend, the late Peter Adetunji Oyawale, could only phone one person in his entire Oke-Ogun Community Development network. If we made a phone call it was to the landline of Chief Adetola, in the state capital Ibadan. What a contrast now. Today, from rural Ago-Are i got this text: "Mornin ma, my wiv gave birth 2 a bouncin baby boy yesterday afternoon, thanks Fola." 

Not only did Fola send his information to me, via SMS he also went online through is phone and shared his news publicly through a couple of yahoo groups saying "Hi all, God gave my family a healthy,handsome,bouncing baby boy yesterday afternoon and I really wish to say this is God' revelation and manifestation in my new family. Thanks be to Him alone." The two groups be wrote to were LearningFromEachOther (one of the Minciu Sodas groups) and FantsuamSLD - self-directed learners (a group set up to demonstrate yahoo groups to participants on the SDL course in Fantsuam in 2008).

Hi Vijay

I think that anyone in 21st century who is interested in studying development (as you are) must also be interested in the development of ICT (as you obviously are, given your input to Dadamac.net)

You might like to read The Googlenet has you By Martin J Young published in the online Asia Times.

I confess I am a Google user and would now be in serious trouble without it. I avoided it at first because I didn't like the "big brother" feel of using Google - but then.. well... Google mail was so useful... and then sharing docs via Google made such good sense and worked so well... and Google spreadsheets made similar sense... and gradually it was easier to do most work "in the cloud" using Google rather than storing it on my laptop.

How about you? Has the Google net got you too?

Pam

Hi Pam,

Here is something that might be of interest to Dadamac and FF. I am pasting a press release that I got from my friend, who is a doctor in the US. Here goes:

Researchers from Makerere University and their collaborators from Norway, India, Ethiopia, South Africa, the United States and Pakistan unveiled openXdata at Kampala on November 12.

OpenXdata is a community-developed, open-source, enterprise end-to-end software solution that revolutionizes surveys and studies by changing the way in which data collection, data management, and data analysis is carried out. Computer scientists and experts in public health, education and development from these countries gathered for the launch event in Kampala, which will be followed by similar events in Karachi, Bangalore, Bergen and Cape Town in 2010.

OpenXdata eliminates bulky paper forms and subsequent data entry as well as costly errors related to manual data entry and lack of data validation at the time of data collection.

Hi Pam, Your chat with me this morning set me thinking about ICT. As I told you, I have been toying with the idea of studying further and adding to my knowledge and skills. But it almost seems impossible for me, since most of the online courses (I am not even thinking of proper, offline courses) seem unaffordable, in term of time and money. Some of the best online courses in UK and US cost a bomb for somebody like me in India. This is where I think ICT can play a crucial role in filling the gap for many like me who want to learn even as they earn. And also, importantly, I want to do a course where learning is constant sharing, fun and enlightenment. Structured courses and manuals are not for me. So do you think ICT can change the way we learn? Should we at Dadamac be thinking of it and doing something about it? Vijay

Folabi (Fola) Sunday teaches in a primary school in rural Nigeria -  a motor-cycle ride away from Ago-Are, in Oyo State. He is a Dadamac Self Directed Learner, who keeps in contact with the "connected community" through his phone, and joins in First Thursday chats whenever he can. Fola is currently learning more about ICT and solar energy from Ricardo and Graham (in the UK) and others in Minciu Sodas and Dadamac, through chats and emails.

When Dadamac started to have regular UK-Nigeria team meetings we used Yahoo. (It was the natural choice, because people in the team already knew Yahoo and had Yahoo IDs.) Then we had problems with the reliability of Yahoo and moved over to Skype instead. (By then some people were using - or trying to use - Skype for transnational voice chats, so the interface was not completely unfamiliar.) This week, when we gathered at our various locations ready for our online session, Skype had a glitch, which seriously interupted the business of the meeting. That glitch prompts this consideration of what we had chosen for our meetings, and why, and what plan we should have to be better prepared for future glitches.

We started with Yahoo for our online meetings, because most of our people in Africa had Yahoo IDs. This is because cyber cafes offer Yahoo. A Yahoo email address is a natural starting point for people using email in Africa. Learning to use instant messaging is a fairly natural follow up. Many people prefer it to emails.