The deployment of an e-commerce platform and related projects in a rural area in South Africa

In our paper we describe the development and deployment of an ecommerce platform in Dwesa, a rural area in the former homeland of Transkei in South Africa. The system is designed to promote tourism and advertise local arts, crafts and music, and it entails a number of re-lated projects. Deployment of infrastructure, technical support, promo-tion of the initiative and teaching of computer literacy take place during monthly visits of approximately one week, and involve young research-ers from two universities (one previously disadvantaged; the other his-torically privileged). This ensures a synergy between technical exper-tise and understanding of the local context. Findings so far emphasise the importance of contextualising the intervention to suit local needs and adjust to the local context. The platform is currently being extended to include e-government, e-learning and e-health capabilities. If proven successful, this model can be exported to similar areas in South africa and in the rest of Africa. This could open up potential opportunities for the still unexplored market for ICT in rural Africa

IPSec overhead analysis in dual stack IPv4/IPv6 transition mechanisms

Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is the current IP in use at the backbone of the Internet. Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) is proposed to succeed IPv4 by IETF. IPv6 addresses among other issues the lack of security in IPv4 at network layer, in IPv6 this is addressed by the use of Internet protocol security (IPSec). This research reports on the evaluation of IPSec in an IPv4/IPv6 dual stack networ

Design and development of an user agent for streaming lectures - a South African case study

The Internet today is recognized as the network that is fundamentally changing social, political and economic structures. Its ability to transcend geographic borders and limitations makes it one of the greatest equalizers this civilization has seen. In this paper we discuss research that takes advantage of the robustness of the Internet by developing a SIP based VoIP application that is used as an interaction tool for rural learners receiving streaming lectures via the Internet. We use open source and standards based software in developing this applicatio

Powerline networking as an alternative networking solution: A South African experience

In the recent years, many new networking technologies have been introduced, and powerline communications (PLC) is one such technology, this paper gives a detailed description of PLC. Firstly a brief history of PLC is given. The different PLC technologies are described, a comparison of PLC to other networking technologies, namely Ethernet, wireless and another no new wires technology known as phoneline networking is given. The comparison focuses on media access control and the frame format. The short comings of PLC are highlighted. A discussion of the results of tests carried out on a low voltage powerline network at the University of Fort Hare and other test sites follows. In conclusion the paper focuses on interference from PLC and the future of the networking technolog

Design, Development and Deployment of a Mobile E-Commerce Application for Rural South Africa -A Case Study

Fort Hare University is located in the rural town of Alice in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The university runs several poverty alleviation projects in those villages to help the people. One of the prospering projects is the Lingelihle cooperative which specializes on making handmade artifacts for sale. The computer science department built an e-commerce Web site for marketing the products to the world. In this project we report on the mobile e-commerce application that we designed for this cooperativ

Smart card initiative for South African e-governance - A study

The paper presents the feasibility of setting up a smart card based platform using free and open source that is card terminal vendor independent. This is important in accelerating smart card usage since lack of vendor independence has been a barrier to smart card adoption. The thesis also proves the feasibility of integrating free and open source technologies in enhancing e-government in the South Africa context. This is important because adopting free and open source software allows African government the opportunity to roll out online government services at lesser costs and be in full control of localization and adaptatio