The IST-Africa Conference and Exhibitions, 3rd -5th May 2006 at the CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

Deadline to submit paper presentations or a proposal for the workshop is 30th November 2005.

The Conference in Pretoria is part of a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on reducing the digital divide in Sub-Sahara Africa. Called the Regional Impact of Information Society Technologies in Africa (IST-Africa) the initiative brings together several partners in the business of promoting ICT for development, namely: ICT Policy Implementation Technical Unit (UTICT) in Mozambique; Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa; Commonwealth Network of Information Technology for Development (COMNET-IT) in Malta and the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) in Tanzania. As a group they are coordinated by the International Information Management Corporation Limited (IIMC) in Ireland and receive support from the European Union.

Some of the initiative’s main objectives are:
• Promote dissemination and exploitation of IST research results in Sub-Sahara Africa
• Develop training modules for e-Government, e-Health, e-Learning, ICT for agriculture and ICT sensitization
• Organize two international conferences in Africa on information society technologies to facilitate European Union (EU) Africa and Caribbean and Pacific Countries (ACP) networking and highlighting IST exploitation and international cooperation.

In pursuit of one of the above objectives the project is organizing the IST-Africa Conference and Exhibition as one event in a series of activities aimed at bridging the digital divide. On its part COSTECH will be organizing a number workshops on e-adoption in the country covering such areas as e-learning, e-health, e-agriculture, e-government. We will be inviting some of you to these workshops to participate as resource persons or ordinary participants. But when an announcement is made for a workshop and you feel we should have invited you, then don’t hesitate to contact us. For today the major announcement is about the Conference.

Please obtain further details about the Conference at http://www.costech.or.tz/ist_africa.htm