-This paper presents the results of a content analysis of computing job adverts to assess the types of skills required by employers in Botswana. Through the study of job adverts for computing professionals for one year (i.e., January 2008 to December 2008), we identified the types of skills required by employers for early career positions. The job adverts were collected from 7 major newspapers (published both daily and weekly) that are circulated throughout the country. The findings of the survey have been used for the revision and development of curricula for undergraduate degree programmes at the Department of Computer Science, University of Botswana.The content analysis focused on the identification of the most sought after types of qualifications (i.e., degree types), job titles, skills, and industry certifications. Our analysis reveals that the majority of the adverts did not set a preference to a particular type of computing degree. Furthermore, our findings indicate that those job titles and computing skills which are on high demand are not consistent with previous studies carried out in the developed countries. This requires further investigation to identify reasons for these differences from the perspective of the practices in the IT industry. It also requires further investigation regarding the degree of mismatch between the employers computing skills demands and the knowledge and skills provided by academic programmes in the country.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a communicable disease spread by tiny airborne particles that are expelled when a person with the disease coughs or sneezes. Botswana has had one of the highest TB notification rates in the world since 2000, mainly as a result of increasing rate of HIV prevalence in the country. People at a high risk of contracting TB are close contacts to a person who already has the disease. It is therefore important that after being diagnosed with TB, all close contacts of the affected patient are traced and interviewed to decide whether they need to be tested for the disease or not, so as to combat the spread of TB. This paper explores the issues involved in the design of a mobile phone-based application for TB contact tracing in Botswana. Problems with the current paper-based method are discussed, and a design and architecture of a mobile phone-based Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) platform is presented.

Information Systems (IS) curriculum development in developing countries faces the challenge of balancing conformance to international trends while remaining relevant to the local context. Model curricula such as IS2010 provide a clear and up-to-date reflection of IS curricula trends. However, such curricula cannot be directly implemented especially in developing countries where there are a number of environmental factors that affect the curriculum. In this paper we describe the approach taken to develop a contextualized undergraduate IS curriculum in a highly interdisciplinary African university. In an effort to harmonize the 3 undergraduate IS programs at the University of Botswana (UB), it was necessary to identify the content and direction for a new common IS core curriculum. To achieve this, several activities were carried out, namely: study of existing model curricula, survey and study of the needs of the local IS industry, tracer study of UB IS graduates, study of some regional and international IS curricula, and study of some relevant local policy documents. The paper discusses how the results of our empirical enquiries (i.e., different studies) have shaped the proposed IS curriculum appropriate to the emerging economic context in Botswana. We emphasize on the importance of proper adaptation/contextualization and exploiting the interdisciplinary nature of IS that can resolve important resource (both human and physical) constraints which is common in many African universities.

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