This year`s African Computing and Telecommunications Summit, ACT 2004, is to be held at the Mauritius CyberTower from 7 to 9 September.
ACT 2004 will focus on the theme "building partnerships to mainstream Africa`s ICT sector". It will feature a number of forums, including one on business process outsourcing (BPO), which is particularly important for Mauritius, as the government hopes to develop the island as a BPO destination.
The island nation will host the event at its new CyberTower, which has been designed to provide BPO facilities and forms a key element of the Mauritian BPO strategy.
Other specialised forums at ACT 2004 include the African Telecom Operators Forum, the African Open Source Forum, a Forum on GSM Applications for Development, and the African eGovernment Forum.
The African ISP Association (AfrISPA) will hold its annual general meeting at the event, and according to Mauritius ISP Association chairman, Viv Padyatchy, it is hoped that all ISP associations across Africa will send at least one representative to the meeting.
Sean Moroney, group chairman of event organiser AITEC Africa, says ACT 2004 is gaining momentum as a true partnership event.
"ACT 2004 has a wide range of private sector, government and developmental organisations supporting it as a platform to share knowledge and experience across sectors and countries, to develop partnerships, and to seek best practice solutions to drive forward the rapid roll-out of computing and communications development across the continent."
He says that among the organisations supporting the forum are the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the Global VSAT Forum, the Free and Open Source Foundation for Africa, the Canadian Government`s Connectivity Africa Programme, and the International Federation for Information Processing.
Issues that will be raised at the forum include: ICT for public sector modernisation in developing countries, entrepreneurship as the bedrock for Africa`s expanding ICT sector, ingredients for successful partnerships in Africa, and the impact of new economy business models on traditional business practices.
On the telecommunications side of the forum, discussions will focus on telecommunication monopolies being incompatible with the rapid roll-out of the Internet, surviving regulatory uncertainty in a tough telecoms market, VSAT technologies to bridge the digital divide, and rolling out end-to-end VOIP networks in Africa.
Full details of ACT 2004 are available on the AITEC Web site.
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