South Africa

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Open Access Comes To Africa

Britt E. Erickson | Chemical & Engineering News | December 17, 2012

Hundreds of scholars gathered in Stellenbosch, South Africa, last month to build a stronger case for making the results of scientific research freely accessible worldwide. Calling scientific knowledge the motor of economic development, delegates to the international gathering, the Berlin 10 Conference on Open Access, urged scientists to radically change how they evaluate and communicate their work. Read More »

Open access is a development issue – the status quo needs to be challenged

South Africa is doing some amazing research but cannot share it globally because of restrictive copyright laws or unreasonable policies and embargo periods set by publishers. South African authors cannot become known and cited if their works are locked up behind expensive paywalls, accessible only to a limited audience. South African students and researchers also need access to the best international and local up-to-date journals, books and other research to be able to contribute new knowledge in their fields. This is the reason open access is so crucial for South Africa and other developing countries.

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Open Data Key To Tackling Neglected Tropical Diseases

Open data access could promote collaborations among researchers in Africa and help in the fight against malaria, tuberculosis (TB) and neglected tropical diseases such as sleeping sickness, also called African trypanosomiasis. At a time when demand for open data in health and drug discovery is dominating the digital space, some researchers say the model could work for Africa and alleviate the sufferings of many from these diseases. Following the call on 23 April this year from the WHO for the disclosure of all results from clinical trials of new medicines, there is a push towards greater transparency.

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Open Data Platforms: A Tool To Revolutionise Governance

Jay Naidoo | The Guardian | April 16, 2013

Jay Naidoo shares lessons on how to engage citizens in governance and strengthen civil society through open data Read More »

Open Government Partnership Celebrates Open Innovation in Africa

As diverse delegates gather in Cape Town this week for the OGP regional meeting, we reflect on open innovation, ODI projects and promising initiatives in the continent. This week, South Africa hosts the third Open Government Partnership (OGP) Africa Regional Meeting 2016. The two-day event brings together a wide range of delegates from African governments and civil society, startups and international organisations. It offers a platform to share lessons from programmes across the continent, with a particular focus on promoting sustainable development...

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Open Source Misconceptions Fading in South Africa

Tracy Burrows | ITWeb | November 1, 2012

South Africa may be up to five years behind the rest of the world in terms of vendor-supported open source software adoption, but the old misconceptions are falling away and adoption is picking up. Read More »

Open Textbooks 4 Africa

The first Open Textbook Summit in Africa was hosted in Cape Town on March 11-12 by Open Textbooks for Africa (OT4A). This two-day event bought together 45 local University lecturers, open education practitioners, and open textbooks experts from around the world. OT4A is a pilot project designed to support the adoption and adaption of currently available open textbooks as well as build and design our own textbooks to showcase African knowledge to the world.

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Pharmaceutical Giant 'Plotted to Destroy Cancer Drugs to Drive Price Up 4,000%

Katie Forster | Independent | April 15, 2017

Leaked internal emails appear to show employees at one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies calling for “celebration” over price hikes of cancer drugs, an investigation has revealed. Staff at Aspen Pharmacare reportedly plotted to destroy stocks of life-saving medicines during a price dispute with the Spanish health service in 2014. After purchasing five different cancer drugs from British firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the company tried to sell the medicines in Europe for up to 40 times their previous price, reported The Times...

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Poor Uptake By Healthcare Workers In mHealth Pilot Program

Greg Slabodkin | FierceMobileHealthcare | June 10, 2013

A pilot study of an app for mobile healthcare workers in a rural South African multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) treatment program has valuable lessons for scaling new mHealth initiatives in other resource-constrained environments, concludes an article published in PLoS Medicine. Read More »

Post-Berlin 10 Open Access Meeting For Those Interested In SCOAP3

Staff Writer | Stellenbosch University | November 1, 2012

Dr Ralf Schimmer of the Max Planck Digital Library will meet with members of institutions that publish in high energy physics journals on 8 November – directly after the conclusion of the Berlin 10 Open Access Conference. Read More »

Promoting Shared Hardware Design

Tal Nawy | Nature | June 27, 2013

Now is the time to move open-source hardware development into basic research labs. Read More »

Revealed: The World's Most & Least Advanced Countries

Matthew Bishop | LinkedIn | April 4, 2014

UNTIL recently, the popular way to compare the progress of one country relative to another was to use the size of their economies. America had the biggest GDP (and almost the biggest per capita GDP), so it stood to reason it was the most advanced country in the world.

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SA losing to Kenya in tech race

Duncan McLeod | TechCentral | June 9, 2013

South Africa appears to be losing its status as the preferred investment destination on the continent for international technology companies. By Duncan McLeod. Read More »

South Africa losing to Kenya in tech race

Duncan McLeod | TechCentral | June 9, 2013

South Africa appears to be losing its status as the preferred investment destination on the continent for international technology companies. That honour, increasingly, is going to Kenya, which may be on the cusp of a technology-fuelled era of economic growth. Read More »

South Africa’s Areta Health Selects Medsphere Healthcare IT Solutions

Press Release | Medsphere, Areta Health | September 20, 2017

Medsphere Systems Corporation, the leading provider of affordable and interoperable healthcare information technology (IT) solutions and services, today announced that the company has reached an agreement with South Africa’s Areta Health for comprehensive support of the organization’s hospital network. The contract covers Areta Health’s Specialist Day Hospital (SDH) system spread throughout South Africa. The hospitals, in turn, anchor an integrated health network with remote clinics and in-home monitoring that allow patients to heal at home without sacrificing attentive care...

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