Personalized learning tailors material and strategy to student requirements, interests, and goals in e-learning. These developments help educational institutions and other organizations to keep up with the fast pace of information technology, communications, and computing power. Studies show that self-adaptive learning and relevant learning information improve study efficiency. Compared to traditional teaching methods, the practice of online education is well in its infancy. On the other hand, the pedagogy and evaluation of students in online courses have a large gap that has to be filled, necessitating significant improvements in e-learning. We call this approach to education "personalized learning," which is a central focus of today's leading online education platforms. Several studies have been conducted on e-learning and personalized learning, but few investigated the development trend of personalized learning technologies and applications. Therefore this study examines the literature to close the gap and promote the development trend for personalized learning technologies and applications in higher education from 2010 to 2021 by analyzing related journal articles. The pivotal studies used inclusion criteria after a search generated 372 complete research articles and reduced them to 146 publications based on their proposed learning domains and research themes. Through carefully reviewing current trends and successes in numerous aspects of personalized learning, this discussion analyzes prospective future research directions in the field of personalized learning. 

This study examines the challenges and students’perceptions of adopting and implementing e-learning in Tanzanian universities to facilitate the shift towards personalised learning. Although technology and online courses provide chances to customise training for unique student requirements, challenges impede the successful incorporation of e-learning in Tanzanian higher education, particularly regarding user training and technical support. The absence of crucial amenities for online education, such as computer laboratories and dependable internet connectivity, exacerbates the challenges in executing implementation endeavours.

We employed a mixed-methods approach to investigate universities’preparedness for implementing e-learning and evaluate the impact of e-learning platforms and Artificial Intelligence(AI) in facilitating personalised learning experiences.

Our findings emphasise the significance of tackling identified obstacles to enhance education quality and provide a basis for customised learning. Subsequent studies should focus on filling the existing voids to improve the incorporation of artificial intelligence in e-learning platforms, explicitly addressing the obstacles faced by universities in underdeveloped nations. The study suggests that institutions should allocate resources towards developing e-learning infrastructure, offer extensive training for instructors, and create customised e-learning methods.

The epistemological basis for computer science (CS), on which research and education as well as development of applications are founded, are fundamental for its production of knowledge. In this paper we raise the issue of how gender research developed within science and technology can be used within computer science, to approach and discuss foundations of the discipline, and what the implications of this reflection are for CS education. After an introduction, which serves to motivate the questions raised, we discuss issues concerning the foundations of computer science. We then introduce gender research, as we use it, and present some points where this type of research can contribute to the question “What does it mean to know CS?”.

I denna uppsats diskuterar vi samverkan mellan högskolan och företagen genom olika berättelser. Den första berättelsen hämtar inspiration från begreppen ´triple helix´ och ´distribueradkunskapsproduktion´. Med hjälp av dessa begrepp kan vi åstadkomma en berättelse som syftar till att fånga in en övergripande samhällsdiskurs och därmed en mer abstrakt berättelse om hur relationerna mellan akademin och företagen kan omformuleras och omprövas. Den andra berättelsen landar i Blekinge och tar sin empiriska utgångspunkt från att presentera historia och nutid för två kunskapsnätverk som drivs i samarbete mellan Blekinge tekniska högskola och två företagsbranscher, nämligen tillverkningsindustrin och callcenterföretag. I vår historiebeskrivning och analys hämtar vi inspiration och verktyg från Actor-Network Theory (ANT) och dess vidareutveckling, Actor-Network Theory and After (ANTA). Den första analytiska blicken omfattas av hur ´samverkansdiskursen´ och de befintliga regionala nätverken deltar i pågående förhandlingar/processer där olika förståelser av kunskap står i centrum. Den andra analytiska blicken riktar vi mot nätverkskoordinatorn, anställd av högskolan. På vilket sätt initierade koordinatorn som talesman de övriga deltagarna till projektet? Hur tydlig var ´invitationen´? Vilka förväntningar hade de olika nätverksdeltagarna? Utöver människor finns det också icke-mänskliga aktörer, som till exempel tid och pengar. Hur agerade de? Med vilket kunskapsperspektiv gick högskolan in i nätverksarbetet? Vilka kunskapssyner hade de deltagande företagen? Kan vi förstå kunskapsförhandlingar genom att utgå från två samexisterande kunskapsperspektiv: teoretisk kunskap och praktisk kunskap? Hur förhöll sig högskolan respektive de deltagande företagen till dessa perspektiv? Den andra blicken riktar vi oss mot kunskapsnätverkens stabilitet. Hur stabila är de existerande kunskapsnätverken? Vad innebär stabilitet? Har nätverkens ursprungliga mål och innehåll förändrats under tidens gång? Är stabilitet alltid något eftersträvansvärt eller kan det finnas negativ stabilitet? Vi syftar till att genom de lokala tillämpningarna kunna förstå på vilket sätt samarbete mellan akademin och företagen kan växa fram så att samarbetet kan bli givande för bägge parter. Vi syftar också till att synliggöra de kritiska punkterna för samarbetet mellan akademin och företagen. Parallellt med detta syftar vi också till att se vilka faktorer som kan bidra till att samarbetet blir meningsfullt och kraftfullt.

In the era of Industry 4.0, fostering innovation through strong collaboration among universities, industry, and government is crucial. However, the Tanzanian economy has faced challenges due to, among others, weak links between these entities. To address this, Sida initiated the Innovation Systems and Cluster Development Program (ISCP-Tz) in partnership with the University of Dar es Salaam. This was followed by a program at COSTECH focused on fostering innovation for socio-economic development. As part of these programs, 15 clusters, including KIWANGO Leather, were selected for documentation of their experiences. KIWANGO Leather exemplifies successful collaboration between cluster firms, the university, local government, and research institutions. Operationalizing guidelines for collaboration led to cooperative innovations, knowledge exchange, internships, and long-term partnerships established through Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The cluster's experiences highlight a less-linear, inclusive innovation process with positive outcomes. Thus, this paper not only illustrates a less linear, inclusive innovation process, but also its results can motivate actors in emerging innovation ecosystems in the Global South to adopt and scale up suggested approaches for knowledge co-creation benefitting sustainable development. By adopting these approaches and fostering collaborative networks, countries can leverage their resources and expertise to drive innovation, create economic growth, and address societal challenges.

Science, technology and innovation plays a critical role in enhancing economic growth and contributing to national development. It is the means by which new products and services are developed or improved and brought to the market. However, to make this contribution, science, technology and innovation must be integrated in the national development planning process. Over the years, the integration of science, technology and innovation in Uganda’s national development planning has been implicit. Intentions to use science, technology and innovation as the vehicle for economic growth were evident in the country’s comprehensive development framework such as the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (1997 – 2008/09) and the National Development Plan (2010/11-2014/15). However, strategies of how to use it to bring about the desired outcomes of economic growth were lacking. The recent designation of science, technology and innovation in the National Development Plan of Uganda as a sector that provides institutional and infrastructural support to the production of goods and services demonstrates that integration of science, technology and innovation in development planning could be accomplished through endogenous efforts. But such inclusion of science, technology and innovation in the Plan should not be taken as an end in itself; rather it should be seen as a process. And implementation of the science, technology and innovation provisions of the National Development Plan ought to be undertaken within the context of the national innovation system.

This paper provides insight into Uganda’s evolving innovation system. The framework used to gain this insight presents science, technology and innovation as a function of financing, governance, human capital and the strength of interactions within and across the functional spheres. From the framework, it appears universities and public research organizations are playing a major role in building Uganda’s innovation system. Public research organizations should, however, collaborate more closely with universities, and be more pragmatic in technology dissemination. It seems that in Uganda the public sector will continue to play a leading role in fostering innovation in the foreseeable future as the private sector grows. A crucial element of the public sector support is to have in place stable merit-based system of science funding where competitive grants are awarded annually for research and innovation.

In this paper, bioethanol and fruit processing clusters in Uganda were taken as sectoral innovation systems, and enabling conditions and barriers to their growth were analysed from a technoscientific and innovation systems perspective. Active participation of entrepreneurial university scientists in the clustering process appears to be an enabling factor. Absence of goals and incentives specifically to attract investments in the cluster areas and to drive formation of markets for cluster products is a major barrier. Adopting more inclusive innovation policies, and having in place good community engagement strategies, could help overcome the barriers and expand opportunities for clusters in low resource settings to grow and become competitive.

GENISLAB, is a four year project (2011 - 2014) within the 7th Framework Programme for research and technology. The aim of the project is to promote organizational change in six European scientific organizations. Each partner develops its own Tailored Action Plan based on three dimensions, Gender Budgeting, Human Resources (HR) Management and Gender and Organisational Culture and Stereotypes. This report presents results of quantitative and qualitative data on Gender Budgeting and HR management as well as comments on organizational culture.

The aim of the article is to discuss alternatives to the traditional peer review system and reconstruct the review praxis to include ideas from Mode 2 and the second generation of web solutions, often called Web 2.0. The article starts by discussing the concept of Research 2.0 which basically propose a gentle marriage between the concepts Mode 2 in the the researchosphere and Web 2.0 in the webosphere. The following discussion concerns the concept Open Peer Review. Open Peer Review is a young and still quite open concept, used to describe a general transparency in the review process as well as a complete shift in the ideology of peer review. Our preference goes to the later interpretation. The last section before the conclusion describes International Journal of Feminist Technoscience. The journal is a way of realising our ideas in a working praxis.

The aim of this book is to develop knowledge and understanding about how ICT can be involved in local and national innovation systems in developing countries. Special attention is paid to the role of the university as an important stakeholder in local and national development processes. For this purpose, the interdisciplinary group of researchers has made the study carrying the question about the prerequisites for postcolonial identities to make their mark on a national situated ICT development and implementation. The study addresses the emerging implosion of postcolonial situations and ICT development. The theory frame of feminist technoscience studies is included in the analysis as a special resource.

Vi önskar i denna artikel uppmärksamma 1990-talets forskningspolitik både i Norge och i Sverige. Denna forskningspolitik var explicit både vad gäller samhällsansvar, forskningens politiska roll och utmaningar som idag gör sig alltmer märkbara såsom klimatkrisen.

Scientific Excellence has become the catch word for research politics, manifesting itself in the establishment of centres of excellence all over Europe as well as in the European Research Council. What is the meaning of this phenomenon? What will we find when trying to open up the black box of “scientific excellence”? The need to question evaluation processes seems intrusive, when we realize the increasing demands on knowledge production to be societally robust, not the least within the energy and environmental sector. How do we move towards a situation where scientific ‘excellence’ is automatically taken to include reflection and wider engagement concerning societal dimensions?

Knowledge creation today increasingly takes place within the overlapping areas between universities, industry and government. One model explored for the processes taking place has been the triple helix model. In this paper we address our understandings and experiences of the triple helix-figuration. We formulate situated knowledges about how to start building a local innovation system, NetPort.Karlshamn, in a small town in the south of Sweden. The practices within NetPort.Karlshamn can exemplify one way of understanding a triple helix system and why this kind of cooperation is important and a prerequisite for becoming functional, innovative and developmentally strong. We recognize the necessity for a co-evolution process, where relevance and situated knowledges compose keystones. We notice the transformation of the situated knowledge production in our context to move from contract negotiation focus towards co-evolution focus. The theoretical frame is reinforced by technoscientific reflections.

Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) has been integrated in education in many developing and developed countries alike, but the use of ICT in Tanzanian schools is dismal. Many Tanzanian secondary schools have no computers. The few schools with computers use them primarily for secretarial services and computer literacy training. The Tanzanian education system at other levels like secondary school level has to undergo substantial transformation, underscored by the growing application of new information and communication technology. This paper presents the e-readiness survey result from secondary schools in Tanzania. The paper also suggests how Tanzania can make use of the few present ICT resources to support and improve teaching and learning functions to improve performance and acquisition of knowledge by using e-Learning Management System (e-LMS).

The knowledge on how ICT and its application can improve the social and economic lives of people generally is very limited in many communities of developing countries, Tanzania being among them. Although many people may have and be in contact with computers, does not mean that they really understand the impact that ICT if used effectively could have on improving performance. Developing computer systems for people to use, if lack of knowledge is not carefully considered, the motivation to use the system may be very minimal or completely absent. The emphasis on participatory action research methodology is that the introduction of technology into organizations accompanies learning and generates a specific form of knowledge. Finding appropriate system requirements depends on how close the developer is to the system users or stakeholders. Focus group discussion as inspired by the qualitative and participatory action research methodologies is the key to being close to users. This paper presents how focus group discussion was employed during developing Tanzania Secondary Schools e-Learning (TanSSe-L) system, specifically during requirement specification and analysis phase. It shows the importance of involving users while developing contextual information systems for a specific purpose. It also shows how secondary school stakeholders were made closer to the process of TanSSe-l System development, together with users’ response to reveal real problems in Tanzania education system.

Tanzania secondary schools in rural areas are geographically and socially isolated, hence face a number of problems in getting learning materials resulting in poor performance in National examinations. E-learning as defined to be the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for supporting the educational processes has motivated Tanzania to apply ICT in its education system. There has been effort to improve secondary school education using ICT through several projects. ICT for e-learning to Tanzania rural secondary school is one of the research projects conceived by the University of Dar-es-Salaam through its College of Engineering and Technology. The main objective of the project is to develop a tool to enable ICT support rural secondary school. The project is comprehensive with a number of components, one being development of e-learning management system (e-LMS) for Tanzania secondary schools. This paper presents strategies of developing e-LMS. It shows the importance of integrating action research methodology with the modeling methods as presented by model driven architecture (MDA) and the usefulness of Unified Modeling Language (UML) on the issue of modeling. The benefit of MDA will go along with the development based on software development life cycle (SDLC) process, from analysis and requirement phase through design and implementation stages as employed by object oriented system analysis and design approach. The paper also explains the employment of open source code reuse from open source learning platforms for the context sensitive development of the e-LMS for Tanzania secondary schools.

Tanzania secondary schools in rural areas are geographically and socially isolated, hence face a number of problems in getting learning materials resulting in poor performance in National examinations. E-learning as defined to be the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for supporting the educational processes has motivated Tanzania to apply ICT in its education system. There has been effort to improve secondary school education using ICT through several projects. ICT for e-learning to Tanzania rural secondary school is one of the research projects conceived by the University of Dar-es-Salaam through its College of Engineering and Technology. The main objective of the project is to develop a tool to enable ICT support rural secondary school. The project is comprehensive with a number of components, one being development of e-learning management system (e-LMS) for Tanzania secondary schools. This paper presents strategies of developing e-LMS. It shows the importance of integrating action research methodology with the modeling methods as presented by model driven architecture (MDA) and the usefulness of Unified Modeling Language (UML) on the issue of modeling. The benefit of MDA will go along with the development based on software development life cycle (SDLC) process, from analysis and requirement phase through design and implementation stages as employed by object oriented system analysis and design approach. The paper also explains the employment of open source code reuse from open source learning platforms for the context sensitive development of the e-LMS for Tanzania secondary schools.

This paper shows how an ICT/GIS Research Center was established in a remote, poor and insecure Ugandan rural district of Arua, 500 kms from Kampala, the capital city. The triple helix methodology was used in this process. The Research Center which was meant to support the implementation of hybrid e-learning in two girls’ secondary schools in Arua, is now offering Internet access, ICT training, digital library services and ICT technical support in the West Nile region of Uganda (8 rural districts), Southern Sudan and Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The paper discusses the challenges experienced in the implementation of the triple helix processes. It concludes by highlighting the role of multi stakeholder collaboration in knowledge generation in rural areas.

Advanced-level rural female students perform very poorly in Physics and Mathematics at national examinations in Uganda. Consequently, they fail to get state sponsorship for engineering and technology training in Universities. Hybrid e-learning was introduced for two years in two typical rural girls’ advanced-level secondary schools (Ediofe and Muni) in the rural district of Arua to support the learning and teaching of Physics and Mathematics and was expected to result in an improvement in the achievement scores.. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of such an intervention on the achievement scores of the female students in both subjects. Multistage sampling was done to identify 21 participants for Mathematics (11 from Ediofe and 10 from Muni) and another 19 for Physics (12 from Ediofe and 7 from Muni). Six students of Ediofe were offering both Mathematics and Physics while Muni had four such participants. In the hybrid e-learning project, the main course delivery platforms were the training CD-ROMs that were developed based on the requirements of the local curriculum. Senior teachers from Makerere College School, one of the elite advanced level secondary school in Uganda, took part in the development of the content. Additionally, the participating students were allowed access to resources from the Internet from the Faculty of Technology ICT Research Center in Arua town. The Center was set up using the Triple Helix Methodology. External examinations were given to the participating female students in May, June, July and August 2007. The results of these examinations were analyzed as incomplete longitudinal multivariate data. The results of the analysis of the sources of variabilities in performance scores of students show that student level factors were more dominant than school level factors. These results were discussed in light of the Ugandan national policies on rural education.

The Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and the Wide World Web (WWW) have fundamentally altered the practice of teaching and learning world wide. Many universities, organizations, colleges and schools are trying to apply the benefits of the emerging ICT. In the early nineties the term learning object was introduced into the instructional technology vernacular; the idea being that educational resources could be broken into modular components for later combination by instructors, learners, and eventually computes into larger structures that would support learning. However in many developing countries, the use of ICT is still in its infancy stage and the concept of learning object is quite new. This paper outlines the learning object design considerations for developing countries depending on learning environment.

The concept of e-Learning is now emerging in Sub Saharan African countries like Tanzania. Due to economic constraints and other social and cultural factors faced by these countries, the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is increasing at a very low pace. The digital divide threat has propelled the Government of Tanzania to put in place the ICT Policy in 2003 which is defines the direction of all ICT activities nationally. Among the main focused areas is the use of ICT in education, since for the development of any country, there is a need of creating knowledge based society. This paper discusses the initiatives made so far to introduce the use of ICT tools to some secondary schools using open source software in e-content development to facilitate a self-learning environment

Small and Medium sized enterprises have proven to be capable of catalyzing national economies owing to their high growth potential, their role in promoting innovations, employment creation and economic development. However, in the early days of their growth period, these firms face difficulties that may lead to their failure. Business incubation has been identified as an effective growth mechanism for such entrepreneurial firms. This paper mainly looked at the concept and description of business incubation, development process and contribution of incubators to start-up firms. It examined the impact to regional entrepreneurship and economic development globally. The paper concluded by highlighting the existing incubators in Uganda and identified recommendations for strengthening the business incubation in Uganda.

Uganda, like many other African countries has not been developing primary science, technology and innovation Indicators and to make them accessible to public and private sector decision makers for social economic development and investment purposes. Indicators have not been given serious attention as engines of long-term development. This paper reports the results of a research undertaken to develop a set of relevant science, technology and innovation Indicators for Uganda. From a population of 7,336 firms, 300 firms were sampled for innovation surveys and 200 institutions for the Research and Development survey. The data collected were represented in tables and was grossed up. Data entry was taken in CSPRO and the analysis was done using STATA statistical software There is a global perception that businesses in developing countries like Uganda are generally dominated by Small and Medium enterprises; and that is where most innovations were happening. This paper will discuss the core indicators of Research and Development (R&D) and Innovation; the empirical data of the state of Uganda’s Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators. The paper further explores the potential benefits and the best practices in incubation process. The major conclusions are; prioritizing science and technology policy will create more opportunities and build capabilities for innovations and technology. The monitoring of industry, government and university R&D programs is crucial to successful policy making and analysis.

innovationssystem, innovativa kluster, triple helix, samverkansprocesser, regional utveckling

Selecting the data modeling technique for an information system is determined by the objective of the resultant data model. Dimensional modeling is the preferred modeling technique for data destined for data warehouses and data mining, presenting data models that ease analysis and queries which are in contrast with entity relationship modeling. The establishment of data warehouses as components of information system landscapes in many organizations has subsequently led to the development of dimensional modeling. This has been significantly more developed and reported for the commercial database management systems as compared to the open sources thereby making it less affordable for those in resource constrained settings. This paper presents dimensional modeling of HIV patient information using open source modeling tools. It aims to take advantage of the fact that the most affected regions by the HIV virus are also heavily resource constrained (sub-Saharan Africa) whereas having large quantities of HIV data. Two HIV data source systems were studied to identify appropriate dimensions and facts these were then modeled using two open source dimensional modeling tools. Use of open source would reduce the software costs for dimensional modeling and in turn make data warehousing and data mining more feasible even for those in resource constrained settings but with data available.

The exponential growth of databanks in health care creates opportunities for knowledge generation using data mining. Advancements in information and communication technologies now mean that large quantities of data collected from different sources can be easily stored, secured and retrieved for analysis using databases. For data mining to be carried out the data sets from the different interacting source systems have to be organised in a data warehouse. Data mining offers the potential for exploring hidden patterns in data sets of a particular domain in this case health care. This can eventually be used to perform diagnosis and prognosis on different patient health care condition. Furthermore it places health care providers at a more informed point by enabling predictions hence through classification enhancing generation of new knowledge. This paper provides the state-of-art on data mining and its role on knowledge discovery in the health care sector.

ICT and the role of universities - a technopolitical and postcolonial challenge When ICT (information and communication technology) development issues are situated in the context of knowledge- and technology co-development between low and high income countries, the need for understandings and praxis of postcolonial ICT emerge and the challenges for the academy and its technical faculties enhance. Relevance seems to be a core concept often raised. For development the change of position from merely technology transfer to co-development is strongly in demand. Feminist technoscience with emphasis on ICT is certainly motivated by transformation goals. The reasons for transformation are not only seen in the ongoing difficulties of achieving appropriate ICT system solutions especially in low income countries, but in the way we face contemporary processes of knowledge and technology development. The prerequisites for the latter are still to be met, and urge for transformation not the least within technical faculties of universities. Experiences from development of feminist technoscience within technical faculties implies recognitions of techno- and research politics deeply rooted in understandings of knowledge and technology production as processes, which occur in distributed systems. In other words, knowledge creation takes place on the boundaries between universities, companies (private sector) and other regional, national and international actors (public sector). Hence the role of the university comes into sharp focus and its (dis)ability of transformation. In the study presented experiences from University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, will be discussed.

Informationsteknik, IT, postkolonialism, feministisk teknovetenskap, genusforskning, teknopolitik

Universities play a vital role in development and innovation in small and local businesses in East Africa. This has been made possible through Triple Helix processes linking academia, business and government in Innovative Cluster Initiatives. The cluster initiatives are coordinated through country chapters of Pan African Competitiveness Forum (PACF). Scandinavian Institute for Collaboration and Development (SICD) has been linked to PACF since start. In this anthology, active partners in cluster initiatives in Tanzania and Uganda present their experiences of university involvement. The contributors represent business persons in clusters, cluster facilitators, researchers in Uganda, Tanzania and Sweden and key persons of the PACF network.

Poultry farms in Tanzania are characterized by inadequate management practices which are mainly caused by the lack of adequate systems to guide the small-scale poultry farmers in decision making. It is well-established that information is a key factor in making effective decisions in numerous sectors including poultry farming. Furthermore, various researchers have identified the use of mobile decision support tools to be an effective way of aiding farmers in making informed decisions. In this paper, we present a mobile-based decision support system that will aid rural and small-scale poultry farmers in Tanzania to obtain reliable information that is crucial for making proper decisions in their farming activities. In this context, a mobile-based decision support system was achieved through a mobile application integrated with a chatbot assistant to provide a solution to various poultry farming-related problems and simplify their decision-making process. We used a data-driven approach towards developing an informational chatbot assistant for Android smartphones that is capable of interacting with small-scale poultry farmers through natural conversations by utilizing the RASA framework.

Most rural areas of the developing countries lack Information and Communication (ICT) infrastructures such as access network (last mile connectivity) to deliver ICT services. The lack of connectivity is due to high cost associated with implementing ICT infrastructures. Wireless technologies are envisioned as candidates for rural connectivity. They are not only easier and faster to deploy but also cheaper than the wired technologies. This paper presents a techno-economic analysis of two wireless mobile technologies in Tanzania called third generation (3G) implemented at 900MHz and at 2100MHz frequency bands. Objectives of techno-economic analysis are to investigate economic feasibility and to determine a cost effective option between the two connectivity options. Results show that 3G at 900HMz is a feasible and cost effective connectivity technology in Tanzania. These results can be generalized to other developing countries, since their rural areas pose similar characteristics with regard to ICT infrastructure development.

Rural areas of Tanzania are still disadvantaged in terms of diffusion of IP-based services; this is due to lack of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructures, especially lack of connectivity. One of the limitations for connectivity problems in rural areas of Tanzania is the high cost to establish infrastructures for IP-based services [1-2]. However the cost of connectivity varies from one technology to the other and at the same time, the cost is also different from one operator (service provider) to another within the country. This paper presents development of software system to calculate cost of connectivity to rural areas of Tanzania. The system is developed to make an easy access of connectivity cost from different technologies and different operators. The development of the calculator follows the V-model software development lifecycle. The calculator is used to evaluate the economic viability of different technologies considered as being potential candidates to provide rural connectivity. In this paper, the evaluation is based on the techno-economic analysis approach.

In response to address different development challenges, Tanzania is striving to achieve its fourth attribute of the National Development Vision, i.e. to have a well educated and learned society by the year 2025. One of the most cost effective methods that can reach a large part of the society in a short time is to integrate ICT in education through e-learning initiatives. However, e- learning initiatives are challenged by limited or lack of connectivity to majority of secondary schools, especially those in rural and remote areas. This paper has explores the possibility for rural secondary school to access online e-Learning resources from a centralized e- Learning Management System (e-LMS). The scope of this paper is limited to schools that have computers irrespective of internet connectivity, resulting in two categories schools; those with internet access and those without. Different connectivity configurations have been proposed according to the ICT infrastructure status of the respective schools. However, majority of rural secondary schools in Tanzania have neither computers nor internet connection. Therefore this is a challenge to be addressed for the disadvantaged schools to benefit from e-Learning initiatives.

Rural areas especially those of the developing countries provide challenging environment to implement communication infrastructure for data and Internet based services. The main challenges are the high cost of network implementation and lack of customer base, as rural areas are characterized by low income, highly scattered and low population density. This situation drives network operators to establish network infrastructures in urban/city centers leaving rural areas as underserved community. This paper surveys the available connectivity technologies with potentials to offer broadband access network to rural areas. The scope of this survey is on wireless access technologies, due to the fact that they are efficient in terms of cost, time of deployment and network management for rural environment. We provide comparison of the surveyed technologies in terms of their capacity (data rates) and coverage. We also discuss the current deployment of WiMAX and 3G technologies in Africa, which is a home to most of the developing countries. The survey results indicate potential broadband access technologies for rural areas of the developing countries.

One of the reasons for lack or limited ICT infrastructures in rural areas in developing countries in general and Tanzania in particular, is the lack of strategies to implement already established policies, regulations and legislations that support roll-out of such ICT infrastructures in rural areas. In addition, high cost of connectivity, lack of energy, low ICT literacy and shortage of local contents also contribute to the lack of ICT infrastructure in the rural areas. Despite the presence of eighteen (18) licensed service providers of network facilities in the communications market in Tanzania, rural areas are still unconnected. Notably, there is a government initiative to build a countrywide terrestrial fiber optic broadband backbone with penetration presence down to the level of district headquarters. This is a commendable initiative; however, areas that are far from district headquarters will still be disadvantaged. The public private peoples partnership (PPPP), is recommended as a sustainable model for rural connectivity. This paper investigates the readiness to deploy the PPPP model for rural broadband connectivity in Tanzania. Furthermore, it recommends implementation strategies to build a sustainable model for rural connectivity in Tanzania by borrowing best practices from existing PPPPs projects for broadband rural connectivity.