No need for Military training to be compulsory in Uganda

Military (hardware) training and donning military uniforms might be a was. The information age needs citizens who are skilled in information age warfare. but here is a farce being contemplated in Uganda: making Military training to be compulsory in Uganda. Do we need military training? Is somebody trying to entice citizens to the gun? Sun Tzu! We don't need militarisation. But is a nation being prepared for the new wars? Could the NRM party in Uganda be playing mind games on its rivals at the expense of a nation?But where are the Military scientists in Uganda, Southern Sudan, and Africa?

What is any fellow trained in military hardware and without an AK 47 gun in Africa? Soldier? Strategists? or or cowards? Isn't Uganda being remilitarised needlessly? Supposing we don't need among other irrelevants to don military uniforms, to know how to dismantle the AK 47, need guns, need retreat to learn how to pull a trigger in the information age and don't want to pull the trigger any yet the battle has to be fought, was that proposal the best somebody to come up with? Where are the national strategists?

Times are changing. Today and for a very long time, guerrilla tactics in wars like the one pioneered by General Y.K Musenveni in 1981 in Uganda will pit the large force against an indefeasible, and undefined (small) force. And no one wise will dare an endless conventional war anymore. No one wins so only dialogue is the way forward because today's battle are being fought from countless fronts and any Lt. General might lose track of developments since it is an eternal battle! You will eat as you fight, go to school because you are you are in the midst of the heat, have nNo geographical battle maps because the battle ground will be in your mind, internet and the waves, every where and no where. War is turning out to be any attempt to survive. The battle ground and tools have changed.

Let me let us into my favourite and a public secret author and reading: Sun Tzu, the Chinese military philosopher and his multi-applicable writting - The Art of War. In Sun Tzu's addictive reading and oldest military treastie, the message is addressed to the General and the commander. The general and the commander is you, the citizen. Teach a citizen some ICT skills, hacking, cracking, Information literacy and Sun Tzu's philisophy in the Art of War, leave us to operate guerrilla warfare tactics and national stratgeic planners will be amazed of how many birds these skills will accomplish in a battle and all without militarisation!

Sun Tzu's Art of War is actually a strategy of life and is therefore applicable to every day life activities like in marketing, advertisement, business, I even use the Art of War in games like chess. There is a which can cause one who proposed the said compulsory military training for citizens to rethink the ideas. From my tacit and explicit knowledge, let somebody learn from Sun Tzu The Art of War when;

Laying Plans
1. Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State. 2. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected. 3. The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one's deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in ....

Read more by clicking Sun Tzu: The Art of War or copy and paste the URL http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html

Once bitten, twice Europe and Africa and this time the resource in ICTs

It is on record that Europe, and the Americas (Read: Western Economies) conquered Africa the continent, exploited her human capital - call it slavery -, natural resources and that the result is that Africa was raped senseless and her earlier civilisation laid bare, laid to rest while Europe is no doubt among the super powers in the 21st Century. Europe's industries and economies developed at the expense of Africa. Africa the cradle of humanity is the laughing stock, she is being ridiculed, her underdevelopment, hoodwinked, her backwardness, confused, and hopelessly partitioned to an extent that she might never reap sense from the age that was Industrial and while still beautiful and bare, she also might consume her own.

With imperialism, neocolonialism, balkanisation, unfair terms of trade, compounded social engineering, canopies all over, yolk at her neck, hackles still at her legs and naked, will the Western Economies show mercy to this poverty stricken continent in the Information era, the Information Society, and Knowledge Economies? Should Africa still afford to be exploited in this age and era of globalization? Does somebody want to chart their way to prosperity at the expense of anothers ignorance and naivety?

Can Africa still afford to close her eyes in prayer the way she did when religions were introduced only to conclude prayers and her pride, her fertility long gone, her resources swindled, her social systems dismantled, her territories partitioned, and voiceless even by the 21^st century? Shall Africa know ICT the technology, ICT the culture, ICT the business, ICT the industry and ICT the tool, and that Internet could be a tool for futuristic conquests? Shall Africa research ICTs the way she should? Shall Africa set a research agenda for her selves and an appropriate agenda? Will ICT help Africa make up for the past loses due to imperialism and colonialism? Or might ICT and the internet cripple Africa in relation to other economies? Once bitten twice shy! Should Africa trust Europe not to exploit her again? Does Africa still trust? Is the exploitation mentality over or being dealt with? Today Africa and Europe are in another cooperation of sorts. They are going to bed over a western civilisation called ICTs: EuroAfrica-ICT'’s webportal is devoted to [Research and Development] R&D cooperation between Europe and Africa in the field of Information and Communication Technology.

The EuroAfrica-ICT initiative is ambitious but pragmatic and results oriented. It is driven by a strong determination to build on and complement existing successful programmes and projects, and to be widely open to the European and African ICT communities.

The fourth EuroAfrica-ICT awareness workshop will be held on July 26 & 27 at the Hilton Hotel (Nairobi, Kenya).

Africa has borrowed a civilization and would definitely wish to understand ICTs better. Yours truly is enjoying this civilization too. I am not attacking the organisers of the said workshop. And I wish I could attend this working shop too! What would be besides my motive? What would be besides your motive? So this is not a hard feeling to Europe but then here is a fellow and his routine exercise: Understanding the nature of the Information Society and its dynamics. I believe politics and policies in other economies might have negative and exploitive effects on Africa as a continent in my beat - Information Society for which ICTs are a key factor. Perhaps I am also an advocate of fairness and am not only playing the vanguard to Africa - if I could effectively, I would

What is at the heart of the matter when Europe - very highly developed and Africa - the lowest developed continent discusses and cooperates in an ICT research? Is it a cooperation among equals? What is the motivation for this drive? African development or alternative European markets, damping grounds and dustbins? How many successful ICT programme and projects in Africa and from whose perspective? What will be shared? What will be exchanged? What will they learn together and who will want to be the teacher to the other? Whose research agenda will it be? What and whose opportunities will be addressed? Whose culture to whom? Is a 50 / 50 deal possible?

What is happening? Isn’t Africa courting exploitation in the farce of the ICT movement? Workshops? Yes! WorkSHOPS. Shops! Africa might leak bigger wounds being naïve in the Information Society than the wound inflicted by exploitations of human and natural resources. Africa is becoming a damping ground for outdated hardware from Europe and in the long run when these gadgets become worthless, Africa will have no choice but built a grave environmental hazard in her own backyard. This pain is being outsourced as donations by other economies and yet Africa begs for them!Naivety!

Where has Africa put ICT in relation to Science and Technology? Will she then catch up when she has borrowed civilisations? What is Uganda, Southern Sudan and Africa to do? Wail and wail? No! Are we developing our own scientists or are we striving to only engineer principles of sciences - creating engineers?

The ICT department in their own world: Why Information systems will fail!

ICT / IT Departments are simply the new players in many institutions in Africa, Uganda, Southern Sudan and world over. This department is being introduced into some institutions with inadequate knowledge as to what ICTs ought to be doing and without knowledge that along came a new management challenge, task and a culture. Many times the expensive and modern ICTs and the internet have only been introduced for reading e-mails, browsing the internet and to replace the donkey old type writer and the other aspects of integrating ICT into management and the management of the new resource is neglected by top management. ICTs are hardly integrated into other every day businesses activities and neither is it manned effectively. Will we ever realise the potential of Informatics in Africa, Uganda, Southern Sudan and in the south?

Has nobody noticed that the juicy ICT / IT department seem to live in their own world in relationship to other organisational departments? I have! I say "I have!" because I am making a very tamed as opposed to a wild allegation. The ICT / IT department hardly complements management. Whereas human resources, financial resources, knowledge resources and logistical resources were being overseen and directly managed by top management, information and ICTs or ITs are proving unique to manage - so we delegate its management to a Generation X guru! A who? "Those people of IT"

Many have noted and I have also observed and agreed that something amiss is happening, reflected in a functional and systems line of thought and have come to some agreement with the self:

These departments haven't been tamed by top management. The entire institution and the ICT / IT department are therefore lead from behind by young computer geeks and professionals who unfortunately are not in top management. When it comes to the IT / ICT department, top management is unfortunately at the mercy of these geeks. The geeks speak a unique tongue that management has no choice but to follow.

Talk of lack of Hybrid Management. Top Management is inadequate when it comes to properly managing the ICT / IT department let alone lead in integrating ICTs to better organisational performance. As a result, the information, ICT / IT department is many a times (mis)managed through delegation, outsourcing, hope and merciful wishes to "computer specialists" - Let those who know IT better manage the department for us - and there begins the unchecked mismanagement of Information Systems, ICT / IT departments and projects. Do we get to know why Information Systems, and projects will fail us in one way or another? Do we? Oh yes! We lack Hybrid management! So who is to blame? (Mis)managers! Who bears the blame? The (mis)managers too! If the ICT / IT department is lucrative, do we have an idea of the cost of having it mismanaged?

Have I presented a grave situation in your institution? Do you want it tamed? Are you in East Africa or Southern Sudan? Will you aspire to become a hybrid manager? No!?
You may contract me also, or else kiss bye bye to your career because you will be retrenched and archived if you don't join the new breed of managers called Hybrid Managers!

So what the fuss a Hybrid Manager?

"A person with strong technical skills and adequate business knowledge or vice versa .... hybrids are people with technical skills able to work in user areas doing a line job, but adept at developing and implementing IT application ideas" - David J. Skyrme

Join the club because you will know the difference between Management Information Systems and Information Systems Management and that you badly need both of them to operate in this age. Manage ICTs. Make ICTs work for you, learn Information Literacy. Reduce on the failure rates of ICT Projects / Information Systems. Understand ICTs. Borrow a Civilisation!

Nose to the South

The Sudan Tribune reports that Southern Sudan's H.E Salva Kiir is taking no chances with the (political?)developments in Southern Sudan! Six cabinet posts were (unbelievingly? / strategically?)reshuffled and among those affected were the Vice President of Southern Sudan, Dr. Riek Machar and Mrs. Garang. The vice President is no longer enjoying his previledges as a Minister of Housing and Lands, while Garang's widow, who was Minister of Transport and Roads, became a Presidential Advisor of Gender and Human Rights and ironically becoming a symbol of an entrenched gender imbalance in the same government she is supposed to advise on gender strategies: Women in Development. Women and Gender. Gender Mainstreaming. Gender every where, gender no where! Gender no where, Men 99% Vs Women 0.99%. Invalids possible.

Meanwhile UgaBYTES reports that the East African Secretariat down south in Tanzania wants SMEs to show case internet potential in East Africa through its East African Community Regional ICT Support Programme: Open Call for Proposal. Project should cost between 5,000 - 20,000 Euros and last a maximum of 12 months!
The deadline for applications is 9th July 2007 at 17:00 (EAST) Visit http:///www.eac.int for more

A note to the 27th Comrade. How do you do it? You seem to be allover the Ugandan blogsphere! Get for Ish a site meter! Am busy, thinking, waiting and hoping! Let her have a borrowed civilisation too!

It is a borrowed civilisation to blog