Dear friends,

Welcome to the 27th issue of our newsletter. It has been a while since the last newsletter and a lot of exciting things have happened and are about to happen. We have had several changes in staff and we welcome our new acting director Astrid Dufborg to SPIDER. Dr. Afzal Sher has returned Sida where he will continue to work with ICT4D and Karoline Beronius has been recruited to EIT ICT Labs at KTH.

2010 will be an interesting year for SPIDER; we have a new application for further funding and partnership with Sida being processed and we are hard at work evolving our strategy and methods. Meanwhile, our activities continue and new ones are underway.

There have been many positive signs that ICT4D is climbing upward on the development agenda in Sweden. The Swedish ministry for foreign affairs has commissioned a report from Sida on what is being done in the field. ICT4D is gaining political recognition and we are very excited to be able to continue our contribution its development. 

Best Regards,
the SPIDER team

Staff changes

Our director Dr. Afzal Sher has decided to return to Sida after 5 years as director of SPIDER. At Sida he will continue to champion ICT4D in development cooperation.

Karoline Beronius is also moving on to new challenges. As of March 8 she will be working at KTH with the new EIT ICT Labs.

INFORM opens website to encourage better information-content training

INFORM (International Network for Online Resources and Materials) at Uppsala University, delivers onsite information training in lower- and middle-income countries, teaching information end-users how to get into free, high-quality resources.

Travel scholarship for e-learning Africa in Zambia, May 26-28th 2010

SPIDER is offering 6 travel scholarships á 25 000 SEK. Priority is given to Swedish researchers presenting at E-learning Africa, but is secondly available for all Swedish researchers focusing on e-learning who belong to one of the 16 SPIDER affiliated Universities.

Call for Chapter Proposals for next issue of ICT4D Series

 Proposals Submission Deadline: 15 March 2010 

SPIDER hosted by the Dept. of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University from January 1st, 2010

Due to reorganization at KTH, SPIDER is hosted by the Dept. of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University (SU) from January 1st 2010. SPIDER will remain as a center at DSV, which until now has been a department of both KTH and SU.

Master's program in ICT for development at Stockholm University 2010

Stockholm University will run a Master's program in ICT for development during 2010. The programme is intended for students and top-level or mid-level
administrators and executives who would like to broaden and deepen
their knowledge of ICT, its management and application to the
developing world.

Students from outside the EU/EEA should apply no later than January 15th, 2010 and students from the EU/EEA apply no later than April 15th, 2010.

SPIDER, UNCTAD och DSV anordnade seminarium om svensk ICT i utvecklingsländer den 19 november

Sverige, världsledare inom ICT enligt ny UNCTAD-rapport - men överförs svenskt kunnande till utvecklingsländer?

SPIDER tillsammans med UNCTAD (United Nations Conference for Trade and Development) och Data- och Systemvetenskapliga institutionen (DSV) på Stockholms Universitet/KTH arrangerade den 19 november ett seminarium i Stockholm med titeln "Sverige, världsledare inom ICT enligt ny UNCTAD-rapport - men överförs svenskt kunnande till utvecklingsländer?".

Syftet med seminariet var att öka och bredda kunskapen och kännedomen
om ICT och dess användning för att stödja företagande och handel i
utvecklingsländer.

UbuntuNet-Connect 2009

The Research and Education Network of Uganda (RENU) hosted UbuntuNet-Connect 2009 from 12th-13th November 2009 at Hotel Africana in Kampala, Uganda. UbuntuNet-Connect is the premier event in the area of research and education networking in Africa and brings together policy makers, regulators, service providers, researchers, teachers, content providers, and ICT professionals from around the world. Conference proceedings are available from the conference website.

ECEL - the 8th European Conference on e-Learning

The number of e-Learning conferences has rapidly grown during the last years. One of the established conferences in Europe is the yearly European Conference on e-Learning (ECEL), which in the end of October 2009 was arranged for the 8th time at the University of Bari in Italy. About 100 persons from all over the world where attending the conference that mostly was divided into 5 parallel streams.

Join us at: