SchoolLink 2.0

Almost two years ago I had a small posting about ‘SchoolLink and the land of the workshops’: for the sake of the Namibian state of education – which many people say is going down every year despite the more money put in (Education receives with 23.6% (US$ 1,15 bn) the biggest share of this year’s …

MCA site inspections in Omusati and Oshana

Almost the whole of last week I had been out of the office doing site inspections at 13 schools in the Omusati and Oshana region which will receive new computer laboratories funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) soon. Two technicians from the head office, a technical administrator from the company who will supply the …

lunch break stories: what rain and a ISDN handset have in common…

…you don’t expect both of them. Last week the North received some heavy rain and a sharp drop of the temperature after months of drought and heat. Some say that this is already the beginning of the ‘small’ rainy season which usually starts by the end of November. Although happy for the clean, cool air …

the power of the ink has come to the office

One on of the first lessons you’ve to learn when entering the Namibian Government service is about stamp & signatures. No matter what kind of paper you intend to sent within the Government (physically; for the paperless office visit this blog again in a century) don’t forget the right stamp and your signature or the …

‘We have arrived – the globe is linked’ – but not this week

The landing of the WACS (West Africa Cable System) in Walvis Bay on the 8th of February had been the theme of last months ICT summit. When becoming operational next February it will cut down immediately the latency and hopefully increase the bandwidth for the Namibian Internet end user in the long run. Since last …

Open source user acceptance field trial: Edubuntu at the Outapi and Okahao library

Open source solutions at schools and within the administration are a mine field since the Namibian Government shut down SchoolNet a few years ago. Their legacy can still be found at many schools where surprisingly some of the OpenLab installations (Linux Terminal Server running on common Desktop PCs + old machines with 64 or 128MB …

Windhoek here we have been again: ICT summit 2011

My second time at the biggest event for the country’s ICT industry. Thanks to the informal communication channel among the Directorates and Regional Councils which is developing quite well not just technical personal from the 4-O-Region attended the summit this year: Kavango, Hardap and Karas came also aboard. This is the good news. The bad …