Connected World Outreach event: Symposium “Perspectives on ICT4D”

Amsterdam, 24 June 2024, Francis Saa-Dittoh (UDS) was invited speaker at the symposium “Perspectives on ICT4D” that was held today at VU Amsterdam. This event was organized in the framework of the Connected World profiling theme of VU Amsterdam, EURIDICE, and with co-funding from Erasmus+ mobility and the EU Digital Europe Programme.

Francis presented his research project “From Radio to AI in Africa”, Decolonizing the Internet, based on a decade of technological design for communities in Africa.

The symposium started at with three short presentations by groups of computer science and AI students working in a collaboratorium-like hybrid space between Amsterdam (NL), Tamale (GH) and Sarawak (MY), together with students from three EURIDICE partner universities: VU, UDS and UNIMAS.

After the student presentations, there was a thesis presentation on Maternal mobile health in rural regions in Ghana.

Andre Baart (Babafla) and Marie-Lou David presented the design of a voice-based market information system for farmer women in Burkina Faso, that aims to improve access to the market, through a voice-based bot interface in the local African language Mooré.

After the key-note there were presentations by Francis Amaning, president of the Internet Society – Ghana Chapter and Joshua Opoku Agyemang, president of the IoT Africa Network. The event was concluded at 18.00 with social drinks. This EURIDICE event was attended by 30 people on site and 12 online.