ISOC award winners found tech center in remote Kenyan town

The remote lakeside town of Kendu Bay in the Karachuonyo district of Kenya is expected to get a lift after winners of an Internet Society (ISOC) award decided to set up an academy that will extend Internet technical skills in the country.

The Internet Society (ISOC) gave the Jonathan B. Postel Service Award for 2009 to CSNET (the Computer Science Network), the research networking initiative that in the 1980s acted as a bridge effort between the early ARPANET and the modern Internet.

The award, presented to people who have made outstanding contributions to the data communications community, comes with a US$20,000 honororium. That money will be used by the recipients to set up a tech academy with equipment, personnel, and connectivity.

"The people of Karachuonyo are really looking forward to building ICT skills with support from the 2009 Jonathan B. Postel Award winners," said Kennedy Kabasa, an ICT coordinator in Karachuonyo. "This initiative will enable us to help bridge the shortage of ICT skills and infrastructure in the region, and allow our people to participate more fully with others from all over the world in this wave of technology."

The new technical academy will be part of the Kendu Bay Community Knowledge Centre, which is run by the local organization Rachuonyo Online Networks, and will be co-located with a Cisco Networking Academy, which will provide additional opportunities for collaboration for the the center's students and instructors.

Most technology academies and training centers are located in cities and big towns leading to increased rural-urban migration and widening the digital divide between the two settings.

The new center, dubbed the Jonathan B. Postel Technical Academy, will provide individuals in Kendu Bay and the Karachuonyo district the opportunity to gain technical skills and experience, increasing their capacity to communicate, collaborate, and interact with people throughout the world as well as use e-government services.

The award was given to CSNET in recognition of the pioneering work of the four principals who conceived and later led the building of initiative -- Peter J. Denning, David Farber, Anthony C. Hearn and Lawrence Landweber-- as well as Ken Curtis, the U.S. National Science Foundation program officer and visionary responsible for encouraging and funding CSNET.

"The Postel academy also continues the CSNET legacy of empowering people around the world to communicate and collaborate through the use and understanding of networking technology," said Lawrence Landweber.

Establishment of the Technical Academy will be coordinated by Inveneo, a nonprofit social enterprise that gets the tools of information communications technology, such as computers, telephony, and Internet access, to people and organizations in rural and highly under-served communities.