What began with a University of Cape Town (UCT) lecturer donating her breast milk to Milk Matters has resulted in a lasting relationship that has seen UCT students conducting research on and for the milk bank, as well as the development and upgrade of an app.
The first 1 000 days of being a parent and of your baby’s life can be overwhelming. There’s a lot to adjust to, particularly transitioning from pregnancy to birth and then to childcare.
What started out as a fieldwork project for 10 postgraduate computer science and information systems students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) burgeoned into a multifaceted, interdisciplinary, creative learning experience using remote teaching and design thinking.
Colleagues, family and former students of the much-loved and visionary Professor Gary Marsden gathered to name a meeting room in his honour at the Centre in Information and Communications Technologies for Development (ICT4D) in the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Department of Computer Science.
As a postdoctoral researcher in information systems, Dr Hafeni Mthoko aspires to go beyond the boundaries of her discipline to explore how information systems and technology can support the social sector.
Who is the internet designed for? Is it locally relevant? Who are the people being left behind in the fourth industrial revolution? These are a few of the questions that have emerged from Dr Melissa Densmore’s research into bandwidth-constrained communities in and around Cape Town.
The University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Department of Computer Science is set to enjoy a major boost with the naming of Dr Melissa Densmore, senior lecturer and Information and Communications Technologies for Development (ICT4D) staff member, as a recipient of the prestigious $500 000 National Academies Keck Futures Initiative (NAKFI) Challenge grant.
For most residents of Ocean View, internet access is unaffordable. There’s no public Wi-Fi and school internet is not available at night or on the weekend. But now that’s all set to change, thanks to a collaboration between University of Cape Town (UCT) researchers, iNethi Technologies and Ammbr Research Labs (ARL South Africa).
With the advent of mobile technologies, many hoped that these information communication technologies (ICTs) would be able to fast-track development on the African continent. But ICT for development (ICT4D) projects come with their own sets of complexities.