NEW REPORT benchmarking ICT in Afghanistan:
The state of Telecommunications and Internet in Afghanistan; Six Years Later (2006-2012)

Just ten years ago Afghanistan had a barely functional post-war infrastructure, with no independent media and literally no telecom services. Afghans had to travel to the neighboring countries to make a phone call. Today the story is very different, as outlined in a new independent study conducted by Javid Hamdard, of Internews Network, under the USAID-funded Afghanistan Media Development & Empowerment Project (AMDEP).

The Lab has been successfully completed; a job well done to all who participated!

See it all here: OUR PHOTOSTREAM

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Kabul, Afghanistan | January 23-26, 2012 — This week Afghanistan’s premier ICT experts gathered together to participate in the Kabul Innovation Lab; an event bringing ICT professionals together in one venue to address social problems and develop technical solutions. Together, Internews, the Ministry of Communication Information Technology (MoCIT) and the International Synergy Group, hosted the event for the first time in Afghanistan. The Lab was a three day event; the first day opened to all participants and the remainder of the lab only pre-selected candidates were invited.

D A Y 1: P U B L I C   F O R U M
The public forum began with the Deputy Minister of the MoCIT, Baryalay Hasam, discussing the way forward for Afghanistan’s IT development. As compared to its status 10 years ago, the telecom sector seen today is the best it’s ever been. The Deputy Minister reported 85% of the country is now covered by the telecom sector; making it the leading sector in Afghanistan…read more.

D A Y 2:  L A B  B E G I N S
Today marked the beginning of the lab and the focus of today was to introduce the participants to their groups and learn their challenges. As lab participants entered the conference room, 6 tables were marked with different tags; agriculture, health, education, crisis response, media, and governance. Participants sat at their assigned groups, based on the top 3 choices they submitted prior to the first day…read more. 

D A Y 3:  L A B  C O N T.
Anahi Ayala, Internews Innovation Adviser from the Africa region, kicked off the second day of the Lab by discussing Ushahidi and Crowdmap. These tools are for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping – and most importantly for sharing. All the software and tools discussed during the lab revolved around the importance of open source software and information sharing…read more. 

D A Y 4:  L A B  P R E S E N T A T I O N S
The final day of the Innovation Lab has arrived and the participants arrived early to get their projects up and going before the ICT lessons began for the day. Bobby Soriano opened the Lab this morning with a presentation on internet and mobile security. To emphasize to the participants how insecure their information is on the web – he logged into several different Facebook accounts. His presentation highlighted the need to protect your computer and phone, because as he showed the group, hackers can easily get into your personal accounts which can lead to identity theft…read more.

Photograph Taken of the TV mountain from the Kabul Internews building.

Brought to you by Internews, with the support of USAID, and in consultation with both the Ministry of Information Communication Technology (MoICT) and INSY Group; in order to facilitate future development of technical entrepreneurialism and innovation in Afghanistan.