Master's students graduate

Two of the Master's students on our project have graduated. Congratulations to Nalukui Malambo and Daniel Mutale.

Both were awarded MCom degrees by research at the graduation on the 27th March 2018.

 

Nalukui Malambo

Ms Malambo's thesis was titled: "Adoption of Smart City Agendas: Exploring the cases of Cape Town and Nairobi" and was supervised by Prof Judy Backhouse. Ms Malambo has since been appointed as a lecturer in Information Systems at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Daniel Mutale

Mr Mutale's thesis was titled: "Continued use of e-government services: An expectation confirmation theory and trust theory approach" and was supervised by Jean-Marie Bancilhon.


We are all very proud of their results.

Public Lecture Presentations

Our concluding public lecture on the 27th September was well attended with over 30 people present including several from the City of Johannesburg.

Attendees at the public lecture listen intently to Prof Cohen

Professor Jason Cohen introduced the project and Professor Judy Backhouse set the scene by discussing the various ways in which Smart Cities are defined and how our project had adopted an inclusive definition.

Prof Backhouse defines a Smart City

There were two strong themes that emerged from the project. The first was the ways in which Smart Cities contribute to equality. Prof Cohen shared work which showed that connected people enjoy far better quality of life than those that are not connected. The second theme was the need for trust between government and citizens which emerged from many of our sub-projects. Mr Jean-Marie Bancilhon presented some of these results.

Mr Bancilhon discussing the importance of trust

As an example of the kind of smart application that would lead to smarter cities, Mr Obakeng Matlhoko showcased the AftaRobot transport app intended to improve the experience of mini-bus taxi commuters and improve the management of taxi fleets.

Mr Matlhoko presents AftaRobot

Thanks to all who attended as well as to all who supported our research over the past four years.

The presentations can be downloaded here:
Smart People, Smart Cities
AftaRobot

The event was covered by Wits Vuvuzela. Read their story.

Research retreat

From the 12^th to the 14^th of August the Information Systems for Smart Cities in Africa research team retreated to Foxwood House for three days of writing and thinking. The time was used to advance our research in a number of ways. Honours students were finalising their data collection plans and the team spent time debating those strategies to optimise the value of the research. Others worked on conference and journal articles, while time was also spent on analysing data from the Gauteng City Regional Observatory’s quality of life survey, which is throwing some interesting light on how people in Gauteng use information technologies.

Team members Malefa Topo, Jean-Marie Bancilhon, Jason Cohen,
Tom Grace and Preshlen Reddy, hard at work

Writing retreat

Six members of the project team retreated to Foxwood House during January to spend three days writing conference and journal papers based on the research that was carried out in 2014. In tranquil surroundings, and fortified by the excellent food, we worked on four papers for publication during 2015.