Speakers Profiles

CRAIG HAMMER

Craig Hammer is Program Leader of The World Bank Institute’s Global Media Development program, a partnership-driven initiative which focuses on information and media as drivers of good governance. A licensed attorney, his work at the World Bank has included strengthening laws, policies, and regulations to enhance the enabling environment for media, as well as collaborative approaches with media practitioners (journalists, editors, media owners/managers, students, developers, and more) to strengthen the role of media as a key driver of the global knowledge economy, and as a tech-enabled, institution of transparency and accountability.

JUSTIN ARENSTEIN

Justin Arenstein is an award-winning investigative journalist and digital strategist currently helping Google and the African Media Initiative strengthen Africa’s watchdog media by working with newsrooms to implement better forensic research and evidence-based reportage. This includes helping media adopt digital tools and data journalism strategies. Justin manages the $1m African News Innovation Challenge, is spearheading the rollout of HacksHackers.com chapters across Africa, and supports newsroom-based experiments with citizen reporting, mobile news, and augmented reality platforms. Justin is also a former Press Councillor in South Africa, and he continues to serve on a number of media industry bodies and think tanks. His investigative reportage has helped put a South African senator, two legislature speakers and a provincial cabinet minister behind bars, and contributed to the ouster of two provincial premiers and several other cabinet ministers and state officials on charges ranging from child rape to corruption.

SPEAKERS

MICHAEL BAUER

Michael Bauer is a technologist, digital activist, and open data specialist with the Open Knowledge Foundation. He has deep experience in medicine and medical research, and his passion is to create knowledge out of data. Michael is currently focusing on crystallizing open data knowledge and learning, toward the creation of the School of Data.

AMI SEDGHI

Ami Sedghi has been a data researcher and data journalist for the Guardian UK Datablog for more than two years. She graduated from the University of Westminster, where she had won the Media Society journalism bursary award in June 2012.

MARK DE BLOIS

Mark de Blois is Managing Director of Upande Ltd, a consulting firm which provides advisory and technical development services with an emphasis the geoweb, including Geographical Information Systems development, training, and projects implementation, as well as software development and project management. Mark worked as a GIS specialist for more than 13 years. Having started in the Netherlands providing consulting services and GIS training to largely government organizations, Mark joined Google Kenya where he was the Geo Lead in charge of geo-related work across Africa. Mark left Google in June 2011 to inaugurate Upande (a name refers to ‘location’, ‘direction’, ‘destination’, ‘alongside’ and ‘up’, all of which are terms commonly used in GIS).

GEORGE MULAMULA

George Mulamula is CEO of the Dar Teknohama (ICT) Business Incubator (DTBi), hosted at the Commission for Science & Technology (COSETCH) as a PPP. He is also the Senior Government Advisor at COSTECH on ICT, Entrepreneurship & Innovation. Prior to that, he was appointed by President Kagame to be the Principal Deputy Chief Executive Officer (PDCEO) of the Rwanda Development Board (RDB). He was tasked with spearheading the organization in fast-tracking investment in Rwanda, primarily in Tourism, ICT and capacity building. Just before the appointment he had been the Senior ICT Advisor in the Government of Rwanda for 3yrs. In that capacity he was the lead policy Advisor on the Rwanda National Information Communication Infrastructure (NICI) Policy Plan II.

Bernadette Ndege

Bernadette is a geographic information systems (GIS) expert with Upande Ltd, a Nairobi based consulting firm. Bernadette has been a VirtualKenya.org brand representative and as an outreach co-coordinator has organised trainings to various interest groups cutting across education, conservation/wildlife and information technology, government institutions and private companies on issues around data management, sharing and visualisation techniques. She has previously worked with Google Inc. as a Geo Specialist where she conducted trainings and outreach programmes for over 50 organisations in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia and has negotiated contracts with partner organisations in data collaboration, sharing and hosting on Google mapping platforms across Africa. Her key qualifications are in spatial data management, Google mapping platforms, KML, components of the ESRI suite and Open Source GIS Solutions.

LUCHIRI OMOTO

Luchiri is a geographic information systems (GIS) expert with Upande Ltd, a consulting firm offering training and technical development services with an emphasis on the geoweb. This includes GIS development, training, and project implementation, as well as software development and project management. Before joining Upande, he established GISasp Kenya to capitalize on the emerging opportunities of GIS as it grew in Kenya from a very technical discipline used in mostly climatic studies, to one affecting all sectors including health, transportation, city planning, tourism, etc. Prior to that he worked with Google.org promoting the use of Google tools and applications by organizations such as UN-Habitat, Uganda Bureau of Statistics and local NGOs. He started off this professional journey with an initial team of Geo Specialists at Google Inc., involved in creating Google Maps content for most of Africa and parts of Asia.