CoE, TLCGM 2016-2017
Engage with Global Compact Local Networks
Nov 2016 - Apr 2017: TLCGM team was contacted by the Fiduga flower farm to design a concept titled HER (Health Enables Returns) as an extension of their social investments into the Labour Pillar. Fiduga Uganda Limited (a subsidiary of Dummen Orange Group); one of the largest flower farms in Uganda; employing over 600 staff (men and women) and thus retaining vibrant young workers. This discussion on labour productivity precipitated the discussion of extending the company clinic from treating the staff and their children or dependents to reaching out to the adolescents in the community. The target is 5,000 pregnant, out-of-school girls with reproductive health services.
We are working on upgrading their company clinic to serve the local community. A concept note for GBP1.5mn was written by the TLCGM team in collaboration with the Company Doctor; it was submitted to the UK’s DFID (Department for International Development) - Girl’s Education Challenge under the Leave No Girl Behind Track.
Join and/or propose partnership projects on corporate sustainability
Proposed projects
Nov 2016: We started a partnership with RENU (Research and Education Network of Uganda, www.renu.ac.ug) and attended their 2-day UbuntuNet Conference (https://www.ubuntunet.net/uc2016_call_for_paper)
at Imperial Resort Hotel, Entebbe.
Since 2006, RENU’s Mission has been supporting Ugandan researchers & universities to be fully integrated into and fully contributing to the global knowledge society.The Vision: To promote knowledge creation and sharing amongst scholars and researchers through the provision of advanced network services.
UbuntuNet-Connect 2016. 3-4 November, 2016, Entebbe, Uganda.
Theme: "Optimising the Impact of NRENs on Africa's Research.”
Authors were invited to submit abstracts for presentation at UbuntuNet-Connect 2016, the 9th Annual Conference of the UbuntuNet Alliance for Research and Education Networking. The UbuntuNet-Connect series of conferences has been held for the past eight years and is regarded as one of the premier conferences in Africa. That year the conference took place from 3 to 4 November 2016 in Entebbe, Uganda and was hosted by RENU, the NREN (National Research and Education Network) of Uganda.
The UbuntuNet Alliance is an organisation of NRENs, and its immediate “community” comprises people who might be regarded as “REN Insiders” – people who are responsible for network engineering, interconnection agreements, service levels, help desks, governance processes, business models and so on. There’s no denying that many of these are complex, difficult and important areas of endeavour.
Nevertheless, all REN Insiders know that an NREN is not a purpose unto itself but is a means to an end that lies outside of the NREN. They know that the purpose of an NREN is to provide the connectivity and related services that enable the universities and research institutions in its country to pursue their missions. For this reason, for UbuntuNet-Connect 2016 the Alliance has chosen a theme: viz. “Optimizing the Impact of NRENs on Africa’s Research”, that will focus attention on the enabling of scholarly research in Africa through REN services.
Authors are invited to submit abstracts of proposed unpublished work that, if accepted, will lead to papers publishable in the proceedings. While abstracts should preferably address the sub-themes listed below, prospective authors are encouraged to submit any contribution that is interesting and relevant to research and education networking.
UbuntuNet Alliance hopes that the submitted papers will include, inter-alia, some that present interesting conceptual insights relevant to the Theme; some that discuss governance, business and technical problems; and some case studies that extract important lessons for practitioners in Africa.
Sub-Theme 1: Facilitating access to online research services - Grid computing, compute and data storage services; Federated identities, single sign-on, catch-all federations; Storage, distribution and sharing of massive data sets; Roles of and experiences with science gateways
Sub-Theme 2: NREN’s direct services to researchers - Video-conferencing; Connectivity for remote instruments and arrays of instruments; Provision of dedicated light-paths
Sub-Theme 3: Dissemination of research results and scholarly works - Trends in academic publishing; NRENs and library consortia; Scielo and the like
Sub-Theme 4: General connectivity to support research in Africa - The Global Network Architecture (GNA) program; “Research networks” vs “commodity networks” – still a worthwhile distinction?; Extending the reach of the NREN within its country; Extending the reach of Africa’s Regional RENs within their Regions
——— 1SMILE Initiative
TLCGM participated in the European Union-funded project, African Science Gateway 2014-2016 as a Science Champion (http://www.sci-gaia.eu/champions/thomas-munghono/). In collaboration with ECAI Ltd and Makerere University, TLCGM has developed a concept called 1SMILE One Square Mile Infrastructure Leveraged for Emergencies.
Our use case is The Blackspot Detective mobile app that we designed to target ‘Boda Boda’ (a local term for “commercial motorcycles”) with a gamified approach to app design their CLE (continuous learning and education) of 1st responder (frontline Community Health Work) for this Generation-G (gaming generation). We have also borrowed from UCL’s Extreme Citizen Science framework to optimise participation of citizens in intractable, social problems like the rising road traffic accident deaths that are killing and maiming the young people; all of these Boda Boda riders are young men aged 16-30 years.
Our endgame is a community-led three-zeroes strategy: 0 Boda Boda casualties, 0 delays in accessing care, and 0 deaths.
Engage companies in Global Compact-related issues
Mar 2016 to date: started a working partnership with ECAI Ltd (East and Central Africa Interpretation Services Ltd) on health promotion for tourists who ply the local highways; especially emergency evacuation.
Join and/or support special initiatives and work streams
In the next 1000 days, TLCGM is working to do ‘economic gardening’ i.e., supporting the development and sustenance of 1000 startups along the emergency health value chain with special emphasis on the re-imagining the ambulance vehicle.
Provide commentary to companies on Communications on Progress
Going forward vision 2020, we have started interesting local companies, cities and civil society organizations in signing up to into the UN Global Compact. TLCGM is currently engaging with a number of our stakeholders in the health and education sector to that effect e.g.:
Going Forward,
TLCGM and its partners are developing the 1SMILE concept around Health Systems Strengthening to achieve a 10 minute response time for ambulance service providers. That is our system design challenge if Uganda is going to half the number of accidents by 2020 in the UN Decade of Action on Road Accidents.
Eversince then, we are working on emergency health systems strengthening designing EVA1, an Electric Vehicle Ambulance. A sort of social enterprise idea where the 70 universities of Uganda under the RENU cooperative with a possibility to rollout it out to the 23 Nations under the UbuntuNet Alliance for Research and Education Networking (based in Malawi and Netherlands, www.ubuntunet.net)