One of the enduring features of an Old Economy is the large amount of physical stuff that gets shipped around in order to get things done (printed documents, people). Yes, in the end some physical objects do have to be loaded up and delivered. After all, factories and homes are built with physical bricks, and people eat physical food. Still, looking around southern Africa, it is amazing the amount of stuff that gets shipped physically from one place to another. This includes people — shipping themselves to meetings, training courses and the like. In our business it is not unusual to have several people fly all the way from Kasane to Gaborone for a 2 hour training session, or drive 4-6 hours one way to Gaborone for a meeting. In an earlier post we introduced YouSendIt, a free file upload service that eliminates the insane physical delivery of electronic documents. Today we offer Yugma, a free solution that can help your organization eliminate unnecessary physical shipments of people all over the place.

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We often get the questions - “What is RSS?”, “How can I read RSS?” and “How can we use RSS on our website“. Truth be told, many explanations of Web terminology are too self-important and too loaded with technical jargon to be useful to many people. Today we bring you a short video explanation of this technology in a fun and completely accessible way. This video from Common Craft is about 3.5 minutes long and is entertaining enough that you’ll forget you are learning something.

The video controls include sub-titles in many languages other than English. Sadly no African language is included other than Afrikaans. Volunteers are invited to help translate the film. When you’ve finished viewing it, let us know what you think as we’re always on the lookout for useful resources to share with you.

Many of our clients are familiar with our website design and development portfolio. Fewer are aware of our consulting and research activities. For example, building on our pioneering background in Africa-wide Internet infrastructure and services (see Africa Online’s history), we were privileged to carry out World Bank- and IDRC-funded research on the cost and availability of Internet connectivity at African universities across the continent. These studies, which we carried out in 2004 (view report here, and earlier reports here) and updated in 2006 (view report here), concluded that “Internet connectivity in tertiary institutions in Africa can be characterized as too little, too expensive and poorly managed.” We recommended the creation of bandwidth-buying consortia as one viable approach to improving the situation.

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Botswana’s American Business Council (ABC) is a member-driven non-profit organization dedicated to increasing trade and investment between Botswana and the United States of America. Clearly, information dissemination and exchange is a crucial element of such an initiative. With the recent launch of it’s website (click here to view), ABC hopes to increase its effectiveness through better and more timely communications with members and the general public. In addition to the standard organizational information, the website showcases ABC’s highly successful public events such as seminars and includes a photo gallery and list of member organizations.

“When can you come pick it up?” — This is a common question heard around Gaborone when dealing with people who work with large electronic documents. These graphics, documents and multimedia files are so large that email systems refuse to transmit them. The Gaborone solution is to have someone zip across town with a memory stick or blank CD, copy the file, and zip back across town. (more…)

Botswana’s Motor Vehicle Accident Fund (MVA Fund) has taken a big leap towards greater efficiency and effectiveness by launching Cyberplex Africa’s intranet solution. The document and information management system will allow MVA Fund’s staff throughout the country to publish and manage documents and information in a central location. The solution also provides a number of convenient tools such as meeting room booking, project information sharing areas, forms management, image management, and a powerful search. (more…)

Gaborone-based VPB knows the value of information and com munication. As the first professional, dedicated, venture capital and private equity fund manager in Botswana, the company is dedicated to making things happen for their entrepreneurs and team members. As part of their communication strategy, VPB recruited Cyberplex Africa to revamp their existing website, including overhauling the visual design by incorporating the company’s new branding direction, and improving the user interface in order to increase usability.

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