Country focus: Ethiopia breaking new technology ground

Looking past the turbulent history of Ethiopia, one that has been impacted by famine, drought and war, there is evidence today which confirms that this East African region has fully embraced ICT to advance itself and establish a secure position amongst developing economies with high-growth potential.

However, challenges do remain – including slow response by government to mobile money adoption, infrastructure, connectivity, as well as the country’s repressive stance on digital freedoms, particularly social networking and the internet.

It was only at the beginning of 2013 when Ethiopia’s government approved mobile money in the country, allowing banks and micro-finance institutions to provide transaction-based banking online.

The 2013 Web Index, brought out by the World Wide Web Foundation, gave Ethiopia an overall ranking of 80^th position out of 81 countries (taking into account several sub-indexes including universal access, relevant content and impact & empowerment). The country also scored 12.9 in terms of freedom and openness, the criteria of which includes the degree to which users have rights to online information, their ability to express opinion, as well as safety and privacy.

The internet brimmed with information and reports in mid-2012 when news broke  of the Ethiopian government’s intention to ban Skype and other VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services, as well as video chat platforms, for businesses.

source: www.itnewsafrica.com

Traditional matchmaking goes hi-tech

Agrasen Social Group will use video chat to help prospective partners interact.

If you thought that traditional matchmaking conventions limited your choices just because those  outside Indore are not able to participate and interact with you, then Agrasen Social Group has a solution for you.

The Group has decided to make match making convention of Agrawal society in the city a high-tech affair. Video chats and conferences over the net or 3G-enabled phones will be set up to facilitate those based in metros or overseas wishing to be part of the convention.

“If a boy or girl is not present during the matchmaking, a mere picture normally fails to suffice while taking a decision on marriage. As such we have decided to arrange video chat to let these future partners have a live interaction,” said Group’s coordinator Rajesh Garg.

Taking advantage of the growing usage of technology, the group has this time uploaded registration forms on its website -asgshadi.com and also accept registration fee online.

“We have received 1593 entries and out of these, around 125 forms are from metros and countries like US, South Africa, UAE, Thailand and Australia,” he said.

“We have included around 1200 of these entries into our booklet which would be given to the participants as the convention gets underway on Sunday,”

source: www.dnaindia.com