ERMIS Africa Kenya
ERMIS Africa a Kenyan-based NGO that promotes information sharing within Eastern and Central Africa region. We support local communities’ access and utilize information products and services embedded in their traditional knowledge systems towards endogenous development.
For over 5 years, ERMIS has effectively introduced ICT’s, including Participatory GIS e.g. P3DM, GPS, Video, and Free GIS software, Web-GIS; Web 2.0 tools e.g. Skype, Dgroups, open-source CMS; and low-cost connectivity solutions e.g. internet sharing, low-cost hardware, free and open-source operating systems at grassroots levels. Consequently, we network over 100 development-practitioners around Africa to share their knowledge, ideas, strategies and skills in community-mapping and trained 420 development practitioners and community members on participatory GIS and Multi-media technologies. Currently, are a regional test-bed for free web-mapping (open-source Geonetwork and Geoserver software), free GIS software (fgis, Quantum GIS, gvSIG, Udig) and CMS (Joomla software) to promote sharing of spatially reference content.
Our key challenges include i) Funding mechanisms to conduct our research (ii) lack of policies from government to promote technological advancement and securing derived benefits iii) lack of regional strategies for sharing information gains.
In overcoming these challenges ERMIS has mainstreamed technological research in all her projects, established private-public-government-donor partnership and established local ITC testing centers.
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