ACT Summit once again provides Africa's IT and communications professionals
and policy-makers with a high-quality education programme

The third annual African Computing & Telecommunications Summit, to be held
in Pretoria, South Africa over 30 July - 2 August, will yet again provide a
unique education and marketing platform for IT & telecommunications
managers, executives, service providers, policy-makers, resellers and
innovators from throughout Africa.

The four-day event consists of a series of specialised briefings, workshops
and forums which together provide broad coverage of latest developments in
computing and telecommunications, as well as in-depth specialised knowledge
on key topics. Lead sponsor of the event is Nortel Networks, with
co-sponsors including UUNET, the South African Department of Communications
and IT Web.

The main conference programme includes Strategy and Management Briefings as
well as a stream on New Technical Frontiers, to appeal to both technical and
management attendees.

Management and Strategy topics include:
Ø Moving Africa into the collaborative commerce era
Ø Starting small with e-commerce and avoiding a dot bomb
Ø Extending online procurement to SMME players in an emerging market
Ø How to develop an e-business plan
Ø Transform the finance department from bean-counters to deal-makers
Ø The cyber war is now!
Ø How to play globalisation in Africa and win

New Technology Frontier topics include:
Ø IP - The foundation of new market innovations
Ø The embedded information technology revolution
Ø VSAT solutions for Internet connections
Ø Go global in 20 minutes
Ø A return to network-centric computing
Ø Cost-effective Linux soultions for Africa
Ø SMS applications to extend Internet connections in Africa
Ø The opportunities of Internet telephony

Keynote presentations in the Plenary sessions include:
Ø IT in banking - The challenges and opportunities facing African banks
Ø Wireless Africa - Hype or reality
Ø Policy models that work and Africa ignores at its peril
Ø Nurturing Africa's entry into the Information Age

Alec Erwin, South Africa's Minister of Trade & Industry, will be the opening
keynote speaker.

One of the special events at ACT is the African e-Governance Forum. The
keynote address for this will be given by Professor Thomas Riley, Chief
Executive of the Commonwealth Centre for Electronic Governance. Other
presentations in the forum will be by Dr John Onunga, Co-ordinator of the
East African Electronic Consultative Group in Kenya, Rogers Okot-Uma from
the Commonwealth Secretariat and Neville Nicholas, project director of South
Africa's SAITIS Project

There is also an Educations & Training Forum, which will focus on Africa's
IT skills shortage, as well as the application of information technology in
the continent's educational development.

A major highlight of this year's ACT will be the African ISP Forum which is
intended to bring together representatives from ISPs throughout Africa to
provide them with an intensive information programme on the technical and
organisational ways in which they can work together at national and regional
levels to increase the efficiency and reduce the costs of their Internet
links. The Forum is being co-ordinated by South Africa's ISP Association,
with support from the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation. The UK's
Department for International Development and the French government are
providing scholarships for representatives of African ISPs to attend the
Forum. The keynote address for the Forum will be given by Dave Meintjes,
Commercial Director of UUNET: "How competition and co-operation are both
necessary to bring Africa into the Information Age".

With network security being a major concern for all organisations, ACT 2001
has a major eSecurity Briefing, sponsored by South Africa's eSecure
magazine. Speakers include Darren Smith, MD of the magazine, Alan Draper of
Sophos Anti-Virus in the UK, and Maeson Maherry of the South African
Certification Agency.  Kevin Isaac of Symantec will speak on "Security in a
connected world: What every CEO, CIO and IT executive should know about
security".

The eSecurity Briefing will be followed by a workshop on "Developing a
security model to suit your needs, including a live network hack
demonstration by UUNET and Nanoteq.

The Global VSAT Forum is hosting two VSAT workshops at ACT:
Ø African satellite regulation - National reforms in the regional context
Ø African networks redefined - Money, margins and markets

The Association for Progressive Communications and SangoNet are hosting two
training workshops:
Ø Using a results-oriented approach in planning for medium and small ICT
enterprises, public sector, civil society and development institutions.
Ø Database-driven web publishing and portal management

The Linux Professional's Association of South Africa is hosting a workshop
on Open Source software solutions at ACT in response to the increasing
interest around Africa in the lower costs and higher levels of stability
offered by Linux-based systems.

ACT 2001 will also include a range of social events, providing the high
level of hospitality for which AITEC is renowned throughout the continent,
giving delegates, exhibitors and speakers the opportunity to mix socially
and make valuable business and professional contacts. The hospitality
programme will culminate with the annual ACT Gala Dinner, sponsored this
year by UUNET. This year's dinner will include presentation of the Nancy
Hafkin Award for achievement in development-oriented ICT projects.

ACT 2001 will include a major exhibition including most of Africa's major IT
and telecommunications suppliers, including Alcatel, Nortel, UUNET,
Symantec, IP Planet, Siemens, Transtel and Sybase. Arivia.kom, South
Africa's huge state-owned IT and telecommunications company, formed recently
through the merger of three state corporations, has booked a large stand of
670 sq metres.

The full ACT 2001 programme and delegate registration form can be found on
the AITEC web site: www.aitecafrica.com