The IST Africa 2011 Conference and Exhibition was held from the 11th to the 13th of May 2011 at the Gaborone International Conference Centre in Botswana. This year’s conference, which was the sixth of its Annual Conference series, focused on bridging the Digital Divide by providing a platform to share knowledge, experience, lessons learnt and good practice and discuss policy related issues.

It featured over 160 presentations, 40 thematically focused paper sessions and 17 exhibition stands. A Best Paper Award and Best Demonstration Stand were presented at the end of the conference. Siyakhula Living Lab researchers are the recipients of the Best Paper Award at IST Africa 2010.

This year, of particular interest to us, was an interactive IST-Africa/ ENoLL Living Labs pre-conference workshop held on Tuesday the 10th of May. This workshop featured among others, sessions on the 8th Africa- EU Strategic Partnership, global Living Lab initiatives and Public-Private Cooperation and Financing for Living Labs. LLiSA network representatives, Prof Marlien Herselman (LLiSA), Sibukele Gumbo (Siyakhula Living Lab) and Henri Coetzee (North West Living Lab) had the opportunity to present their work in South Africa to the attendees. More details on this pre-conference workshop are available on the following links on the ENoLL and LLiSA websites. IST Africa 2011 was hosted by the Government of Botswana through the Ministry of Infrastructure, Science and Technology and supported by the European Commission and African Union Commission. Major sponsors included the Botswana Post, Mascom and Cisco and technical co-sponsored by IEEE.

Article by Sibukele Gumbo