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GV Transparency: Is ICT all it’s cracked up to be? posted on March 5, 2010 - 12:45am
As part of the Global Voices Technology for Transparency Network, my fellow researchers and I will be blogging about ICT all over the world. My first post, on a failed ICT for governance project in Sudan and the implications for tech efforts during the upcoming elections, went up today: In a December 2009 Global Voices article titled “ICT4D: Past mistakes, future wisdom,” Aparna Ray points out that many technology for development projects have “started with a bang and later died with a whimper.” According to a recent article in the Financial Times, such is the fate of a multimillion dollar World Bank plan to supply Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, with computers and Internet access. Read the full article » We’re hoping to get a discussion going over at Global Voices that not only highlights the tremendous power of the Internet and other digital tools, but also explores the challenges and difficulties of using these tools for political development and civic engagement.
Celebrating the new year with GayUganda posted on January 2, 2010 - 6:28pm
How to celebrate the new year, from GayUganda: I looked at the trans guy, and I decided that, even if dancing with him outs me fully, his feelings do matter. He wants to dress, flamboyant, flashy in Uganda. That is an expression of what he is, of what he feels. He might not fully understand himself. He might know less about what he is than I do know. Life is a journey, and he is still discovering what it is. In a place and hostile to gender role crossing like Uganda, his is a difficult journey. A very lonely journey even when he seems to be so confident and bright, a kingfisher bird amongst weaver birds. I didn’t take pity on him. I understood what he felt. And, I understood what I felt. And, we danced. Right there on the floor, with other guys around us, looking on. The music flowed, life pulsed, the lights throbbed. And, we were in heaven. Read the full post here.
GV Uganda: President Says He Will Block Anti-Gay Bill posted on December 23, 2009 - 10:07am
My next piece is up at Global Voices Online: Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 still awaits a final decision by the country’s Parliament, but the country’s Daily Monitor newspaper reported Wednesday that President Yoweri Museveni has “assured the US State Department of his willingness to block the Bill”: President Museveni has reportedly assured American authorities that he will veto Ndorwa West MP David Bahati’s proposed anti-gay law, a position that breaks with his recent stance and the statements of officials in his government. Read more » Gay Uganda and AfroGay, both of whom have been blogging tirelessly about the threat the Bahati Bill poses, are featured in the post.
My biggest frustration with grad school so far has been how difficult it is to bring what’s happening in the real world of ICT and development — mobile phones for health, Ushahidi, debates over what online privacy means for activists — into the classroom. With the exception of a few phenomenal professors, much of the SIPA academic world seems disconnected from the entire field. In my opinion, this is a sad mistake. Photo from codiceinternet on Flickr. It’s also why I am so excited about Policy Making in the Digital Age, a conference that The Morningside Post is sponsoring at Columbia in February. Policy Making in the Digital Age will bring together faculty and students at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs with the wider Columbia and New York City communities to explore trends and future implications in ICT and development, privacy issues, open governance, and humanitarian affairs.
Uganda takes death penalty out of anti-gay bill posted on December 10, 2009 - 7:32am
Bloomberg is reporting that the Ugandan anti-gay bill will no longer include the death penalty or life imprisonment. The revision is an attempt “to attract the support of religious leaders who are opposed to these penalties,” according to ethics and integrity minister James Nsaba Buturo.
Twitter Revolution? posted on December 2, 2009 - 7:36pm
Image courtesy of TouchTheStars09 on Flickr. “This is it. The big one…. It’s Twitter.” For those of you who haven’t been following the media hype surrounding Iran’s is-it-or-isn’t-it-a “Twitter Revolution,” that’s Clay Shirky, speaking four days after the June 2009 presidential elections. Ouch. Awkward. It’s not that Shirky was alone in his enthusiasm, nor was he the first to champion Twitter as a revolutionary force in Iranian politics. Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic wrote of the protests, “You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before,” and the New York Times chimed in with an article on how “new kinds of social media are challenging those traditional levers of state media control and allowing Iranians to find novel ways around the restrictions.” It’s more that…well…nothing much has changed.
How to stop Uganda’s anti-gay bill posted on November 24, 2009 - 8:15pm
I’ve been keeping shamefully silent on Ugandan MP David Bahati’s proposed anti-homosexuality bill, which would not only provide harsher penalties for gay and lesbian sex but would also criminalize blogging about homosexuality: 5.