Submitted by Mike Grenville on Wed, 14 Dec 2005 11:15

Human rights organisation Fahamu has been awarded a Silicon Valley technology award for its work using web and SMS at a recent ceremony in San Jose, California

Fahamu, (which means ‘understanding’ or ‘consciousness’ in East African language Swahili) was one of five winners of the Microsoft Education Award, and beat stiff international competition from 85 entries. The 25 winners of the Tech Museum Awards were honoured for their application of technology to better the human condition in the categories of environment, economic development, education, equality and health. Now in their fourth year, the awards are a joint effort between the academic world and the corporate sector. Sponsors of these highly prized awards include Microsoft, Intel and Accenture.

An Oxford and South Africa-based organisation, Fahamu supports the struggle for human rights and social justice in Africa. Fahamu was recognised for its distance-learning course that were developed in collaboration with Oxford University.

These courses are designed for low specification computers and for civil society organisations based in areas where access to the internet is limited. The themes of the training programmes range from human rights, advocacy, leadership and management to fundraising, the media and genocide, as well as gender and conflict."

Fahamu has been increasingly using SMS as part of its work, and contact with course participants has involved both email and text messaging as a means of ensuring contact between tutors and participants. Fahamu has used SMS also as part of its campaign on the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, successfully getting the requisite 15 African governments to sign and ratify the Protocol so that it came into force on November 25th. Fahamu sends our regular SMS Alerts to keep activists informed of key events and actions.

“This is a recognition by Silicon Valley of the importance of human rights in Africa,” said Firoze Manji, the Director of Fahamu. “It is a tribute to the many human rights activists who have been involved in the development of these learning materials.”

“This is an acknowledgement of the power of the technology we have developed, which has now being used by leading institutions such as the UN High Commission for Human Rights, Article 19, the University of Oxford and others,” said Becky Faith, Fahamu’s Production Manager.

In addition to producing training materials, Fahamu stimulates debate, discussion and analysis on social justice in Africa through its authoritative weekly newsletter, Pambazuka News, which provides cutting-edge commentary on politics and current affairs.