Uncategorized – Arterial Africa

Call for applications for the selection of CSOs: participation to national seminars on gender equality and women’s rights in media, in Yemen and Iraq

Application form

As part of Makanati project, CFI is launching a call for applications to identify and select Yemeni and Iraqi civil society organizations, working on gender equality and women’s rights.

“Makanati” project promotes a wider participation of women in Iraqi and Yemeni societies and a better understanding by the local population of their challenges and problems, particularly through the production and dissemination of media content. Moreover, the project aims to raise awareness among journalists and future journalists about gender equality and women’s rights in the media. The project also contributes to enhance the professional skills of female journalists, in order to promote their access to decision-making positions.

For Yemen, selected CSOs will participate to national seminars with Yemeni media as well as women and men journalists sensitive to gender equality. The objective of the seminars is to promote a common reflection on the issues of gender equality in Yemen and identify the main needs and concrete possible actions through media. The first seminar will take place in October 2020. The second one in planned for 2021.

For Iraq, selected CSOs will participate to national seminars on advocacy actions in Iraq, to encourage the evolution of the laws and practices related to gender equality in the media. Two seminars are planned for 2021.

Call for applications for the selection of CSOs: participation to national seminars on gender equality and women’s rights in media, in Yemen and Iraq

The CSOs must have relevant experience in the field, with proven commitment and activities on gender equality and women’s rights. Experience in working with local media is highly appreciated.

As part of Africa Day 2020, Arterial Network is talking to its members

As part of Africa Day 2020, Arterial Network is talking to its members … you will have in the hours that follow the interventions of different members of the Arterial family

APPEL A CANDIDATURE | ATELIER DE FORMATION À LOMÉ

Please note that this opportunity is only open to French speakers.

DATE LIMITE DE CANDIDATURE: Lundi 30 octobre 2017 à 0h00

L’Université Senghor, université internationale de langue française au service du développement africain, Opérateur direct de la Francophonie, dont les diplômes sont reconnus internationalement, en particulier par le CAMES, est basée à Alexandrie (Égypte).

D’une part, sa politique de formation se décline sur un cursus de Master en développement africain. D’autre part, elle organise un certain nombre de formations dans différents pays de la Sous-Région.

Ainsi, le Département Culture lance un appel à candidature pour un atelier de formation sur l’« organisation d’un évènement culturel pour les collectivités territoriales « qui se tiendra du 13 au 17 novembre 2017 à Lomé (TOGO).

NOMBRES DE PARTICIPANTS
20 participants seront sélectionnés pour bénéficier de cette formation.

QUI PEUT PARTICIPER
– Agents des collectivités territoriales,
– Agents du ministère de culture,
– Promoteurs et/ou entrepreneurs culturels privés,
– Étudiants en animation ou gestion culturelle.

CONDITIONS DE PARTICIPATION
– Résider sur le territoire Togolais,
– Avoir un niveau d’étude universitaire,
– Avoir un projet culturel à l’endroit d’une collectivité territoriale du Togo,
– Être disponible et s’engager à être présent sur toute la période de la formation.

INSCRIPTION
Pour s’inscrire, envoyer votre dossier de candidature à nicolas.sohoungani.2015@alumni-usenghor.org
Avec comme mention en « Objet » : ATELIER DE FORMATION NOV 2017

COMPOSITION DU DOSSIER DE CANDIDATURE
– Une lettre de motivation adressée au Directeur du département culture de l’université Senghor
– Un Curriculum vitae

CERTIFICATION
Un certificat correspondant à une Unité d’Enseignement (UE) de l’Université Senghor sera délivré aux participants à la fin de la formation.

LIEU DE LA FORMATION
Commission Nationale de la Francophonie (CNF) du Togo
Quartier Togo Gaz – Tokoin Gbovié – SOTED,
Derrière l’Hôtel EXCELLENCE, en face de la radio KNTB
Tél : (00228) 22 22 88 90 / (00228) 90 13 30 12

NB :
– L’atelier est gratuit
– Les candidats retenus recevront par mail, la notification d’acceptation, le programme détaillé et tout informations complémentaire.
– Pour toute information complémentaire, contacter nicolas.sohoungani.2015@alumni-usenghor.org

Crédit photo : Mariam SANOGO

AFRICA CENTRE | AIR RESIDENCY 2017

APPLICATION DEADLINE: December 16th, 2017

(Click here to download these guidelines. These guidelines are only applicable to our General Call for applications. Click here for a guide to the Bellagio Center applications.)

The Artists In Residency (AIR) Programme accepts submissions from emerging, mid-career and senior level artists across artistic discipline i.e. visual arts, performing arts, curatorial practice, performing arts, music, creative writing and literature who are either self-taught or formally trained in their respective discipline.

RESIDENCY CRITERIA

Applicants must:

Be over 21 years of age;
Have a valid passport;
Be from the African continent and must minimally reside in Africa for six months of the year, and
Display a high proficiency in English

SELECTION PROCESS

Applicants are shortlisted by a panel of AIR staff, strategic partners and seasoned art practitioners (curators, collectors, and art critics) who form part of the extensive Africa Centre network. Artists will be shortlisted based on the quality of their work/portfolio, written narrative (i.e. the ability to adequately process and respond to the application questions) as well as their previous experience and history of developing artistic work that advances social change and transformation in their communities.

APPLICATION METHODS

Applications can be made through the following avenues

1. Online Applications Portal:

Visit the Africa Centre AIR website to apply via our Online Application Portal

2. E-mail Application:

Download the AIR application form and send your application directly to airsubmissions@africacentre.net. Please ensure that all attachments are less than 5MB. Be sure to add the artistic discipline you are applying under i.e. visual arts/performing arts; music, etc followed by a dash and your full name in the email subject field. If your attachments are larger than 5MB, you can upload them using Google Drive and share a link to the folder with us.

Website: http://www.africacentre.net/air-2017-application-guidelines/

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS | WORKSHOP ON WORLD HERITAGE… (BELGIUM)

Deadline: 6 December 2017

Call for Participants | Workshop on World Heritage, Sustainable Development and Civil Society (Belgium)
The UNESCO policy on the ‘Integration of a Sustainable Development Perspective into the Processes of the World Heritage Convention’ was adopted in November 2015. This policy aims to ensure that the conservation and management of World Heritage properties are aligned with broader sustainable development objectives (environmental sustainability, inclusive social development, inclusive economic development, as well as the fostering of peace and security). A number of meetings have been held and reports have been published on how to operationalize this policy. Yet, workshops involving civil society are still missing, which is problematic as civil society stands at the heart of this policy.

This workshop aims to identify concrete approaches and models to implement the UNESCO policy on sustainable development and World Heritage, through a workshop involving civil society. This workshop also aims to find innovative ways of involving civil society to help implement the policy.

Thematic sessions will be included in the workshop: Inclusive social development, Inclusive economic development, Environmental sustainability and Fostering peace and security.

This workshop is open to activists, members of civil society, academics and professionals with expertise in sustainable development or cultural and natural heritage, or people with expertise and interests in social, economic or environmental issues.

Limited funding (including for travels) is available on a case by case basis particularly for participants from developing countries.

Click here for more details.

Weighing Cybersecurity Risk Factors in Life & Healthcare

We don’t have to go very far back in time for a good example of one of these attacks on a healthcare or pharma organization. On June 27, 2017, Merck, one of the largest pharma companies in the world, and 2,000 other companies were hit with ransomware called Petya that infected employees’ computers across 65 countries and left a ransomware note demanding a bitcoin payment to decrypt their infected files. Weeks later, the pharma giant is still trying to get their infrastructure back on track.

So, before a company like Merck – or any company for that matter – can determine a plan of action to prevent the next cyberattack, it must consider why the attack happened in the first place. With that in mind, let’s explore a few narratives that could come into play in the process of becoming a cyberattack target.

Four Narratives that Could Explain Why

A decade ago, cybersecurity was all about securing the perimeter to ensure that corporate IT systems were closed to outsiders. In the past five years, however, working remotely has become more and more ubiquitous with a high percentage of employees working outside of the perimeter, accessing sensitive data through the cloud and unsecured systems, and often doing it all via a mobile device. As a result, the entire enterprise has become fundamentally more vulnerable, making it difficult to determine where the perimeter ends and the outside world begins.
Healthcare and life sciences companies have long been slow to innovate when it comes to digital, and this hasn’t been helped by the fact that technology is not their core business proposition. In fact, as other industries have had to adopt new business models to grow their revenues, which typically resulted in disproportionate investment into technology, healthcare and life sciences have stayed a little behind the digitization curve.
For many organizations, being slow to innovate is not by choice. Instead, it’s often for compliance reasons, like in a scenario where a business has to choose between meeting the latest regulatory standard and rolling out a new technology. In this case, the company may stay in business without the new software component, but not without meeting the regulatory standard. Indeed, compliance has long been a burden to the CIO agenda.
Finally, considering the above narrative about the ever-expanding perimeter and how the June cyberattack on Merck affected so many employees, it’s worth noting that the companies making headlines for data breaches aren’t small or even medium-sized. Instead, hackers go after the biggest and, by extension, most profitable targets – companies with the highest numbers of employees, locations, and potential entry points.

How to Plan for What’s Next

Considering the size and scope of the data breach against Merck, it’s hard not to start posing what-if questions. What if they had implemented better or more security controls sooner? What if they had run a mixture of Windows and iOS to stave off Windows-attacking viruses like WannaCry and Petya? What if they had identified the virus before it made its way across the entire enterprise?

There will always be what-ifs, but with so many possible access points for a data breach, it’s nearly impossible to ever be 100% uncompromised, especially when you’re a huge company trying to balance growth and revenue with compliance and security.

It’s not easy, but it is absolutely worth your time to not only determine a plan to improve your cybersecurity, but also create a plan for how to respond if your company falls victim to a cyberattack. The best way to get started is to assume you’re already compromised, or that you’ll be compromised tomorrow at the latest, and then find a partner who can help you. The faster you make cybersecurity a priority, the better off you’ll be.

How to Leverage Customer Analytics in the Retail Industry

As the retail industry turns increasingly digital, customers are now more well-informed and connected than ever before. To take on this challenge, and drive significant customer engagement, retailers need to blur the lines between the offline and online retail experience. This calls for making data analytics—operational and customer—a key component of an organization’s growth strategy.

In our latest white paper, Retail Analytics: The 5 Keys to Success for Customer Analytics in the Retail Industry, we focus on how data analytics can help retailers to better serve their customers and in turn increase conversion rate, loyalty, and ROI. We go over the importance of having a personalized shopping experience for your customers and how to build an effective personalization strategy.

This latest piece is a follow-up to our white paper from last fall, Retail Analytics: Turning Operational Data into Actionable Insights, which highlights the importance of operational analytics and its potential in solving the various challenges that retailers face. More specifically, retailers are able to analyze various internal functions within their organization and subsequently streamline them for a greater ROI.

Both these papers show the importance of data analytics within the retail industry and how insights drawn from data analytics can help retailers discover business capabilities/challenges and increase overall ROI.

Overcoming Healthcare’s Challenges in Design Thinking

In a recent posting we discussed “journey mapping” as a tool for improving customer experiences in the healthcare sector. This week, we share thoughts on “design thinking,” an approach that is described as “a human-centered way of innovation that draws from the designer toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success,” according to design thinking guru Tim Brown, Chief Executive Officer, IDEO.

Put simply, design thinking tackles problems with the objective of keeping peoples’ needs always in mind while working towards solutions that succeed from a business perspective as well. It does so by a process of divergent thinking – ideating, prototyping, testing – that ultimately converges on the most viable solution.

When it comes to the United States’ healthcare sector, however, applying design thinking to working with health plans and health providers is particularly challenging. Here’s why:

Firstly, the healthcare sector’s complex regulatory framework means stakeholders are sanctioned more for under-regulating than for over-regulating, so they tend to be cautious when design and regulation come face-to-face. One approach, however, is to brainstorm design challenges as if the rules simply don’t exist, and then to overlay them to see where they create pain points, adjusting the design as needed.

A second challenge when applying design thinking in healthcare is designing a service that works for an entire population. Most products and services are aimed at specific demographics. With healthcare, however, a true design solution must cater to people of varying ages, accessibility needs, income levels, language abilities, as well as housing and employment status.

One more major challenge for healthcare-related design is its multi-agency structure. A care plan for someone can involve several different providers, from a hospital to a physical therapist, all of whom need to be brought onboard during the design thinking process. Add in the growing importance of home care, the accompanying family & friends support network, and the ability to apply this concept at scale is apparent.

To combat the variables of design thinking in healthcare in the real world, it is critical that hospitals and healthcare companies prioritize prototyping and testing before implementing change. Focus groups enable concepts to be tested with a variety of patient demographics and, importantly, with service providers, sometimes overlooked in an increasingly patient-centric industry.

Real change requires stakeholders to work together, often necessitating a shift in culture and the willingness to reject “custom and practice.” For those willing to embrace change, design thinking offers a way to reconcile the needs of both patients and service providers.

3 Ways Financial Institutions Can Optimize Their Customer Experience

Design thinking is making positive waves across industries and is enabling companies to rethink and rebuild the way they do business. The same is true for banking and financial services companies, as today’s rapidly changing consumers are driving an evolution of business process and design. While design thinking alone can be a large task, there are three simple ways to make the most of design thinking in banking and financial services to positively impact your customer experience.

Walk in your customers’ shoes.

It is important for all companies to take a step back and walk in their customers’ shoes. Instead of designing products and services based on past results with current offerings, following trends to guess which way consumers will jump next, or implementing new technology in pieces, financial institutions can have a solution ready for the future needs of the consumer by applying design thinking, a human-centric approach to digital transformation. Whether solving frustrations along the customer journey, improving digital channels, or identifying new service opportunities, design thinking puts customers first.

Have flexible tools and options to be able to operate nimbly when testing initiatives and gathering critical data.

Human-centered design has the potential to make interactions with your product or services more accessible, productive, beneficial, and thus more desirable. Once the desired customer experience is identified, imagination and exploration produce various possible designs, adjusting as necessary per the company’s strengths, resources, and technical capabilities until the right solution presents itself. Banks and financial institutions must stay on their toes to keep up with the changes in consumer preferences, competition from non-traditional players, and ever-changing regulatory scrutiny. Getting help upfront with research, design, and bridging any gaps can have a huge impact on retaining and growing your business.

Leverage support from inside and outside your industry.

In addition to design thinking, now is the time for banks and other financial institutions to leverage a more consultative approach. A recent Forrester study focused on the digital readiness of financial services firms. During the study, Forrester divided respondents into two groups: doers and aspirers. The authors of the study describe doers as those more likely than average to follow best practices most or all the time, compared to the aspirers. The doers, the study found, were more likely to seek outside help. There are several barriers to embracing digital, which can include lack of resources (or competing internal priorities), insufficient buy-in from all stakeholders, and even cultural barriers. One such barrier of note is the lack of creative and innovative thinkers within the organization. An ingrained culture of “this is how we’ve always done it,” or “it is not in the budget” can squash the very innovative thinking that can take their organization to the next level. Going it alone, without the proper resources, vision, documentation and ROI comes with a lot of risk and can cost more in the long run, while falling considerably short of expectations. Seeking inspiration from outside one’s own organization can also improve the solution and provide an edge against competitors who simply follow the leader. It is important to adopt a comprehensive digital solution that addresses entire processes to have the most positive impact on your customer experience and resulting profitability.

In sum, design thinking and customer journey mapping are processes that require investment in time. Yet a simple investment of time into exploring the user journey can lead to ideas and innovations that will take your business and customer experience to the next level with reduced risk, and a structured plan for measurable success. Stay tuned for more tips and ideas on how to maximize digital in your organization. Until then, be sure to check out our recent white paper, “Embracing Digital to Transform the Banking and Financial Services Industry.”