Opening Keynotes

 Chief Chikanta (click arrow to read more)
Chikanta is a Chiefdom located in Kalomo District in the Southern province of Zambia. His Royal Highness Chief Chikanta was born and raised in Chikanta. He was anointed Chief in 1995, after the death of his uncle.

In 2004, he was appointed by his fellow chiefs, and represented them in the Zambian Parliament. His main goal as chief is to make sure that the lives of his subjects are continuously improved. He strongly believes that a better life can be achieved through relevant and tailored ICT products and services.
See also: Chief Chikanta, H. R. H., & Mweetwa, F. (2007). The Need for Information and Communications Technologies. Retrieved from www.share4dev.info/kb/documents/4782.pdf
  Prof. Imen Trabelski
Prof. Imen Trabelsi has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, and is a member of the Research Unit: Sciences and Technologies of Image and Communication (SETIT) at Sfax University, Tunisia. She is also the secretary general of the Association of Scientists, Developers and Faculties ASDF (Africa Region), and a member of the Tunisian Association HMI (responsible for scientific co-operation).
Her main areas of interests include speech processing, IHM interaction, pattern recognition, machine learning, image recognition, artificial intelligence and emotion recognition. She has published several peer-reviewed papers in reputed international journals and conferences and is a holder of a patent entitled “Speech Emotional Recognition System in Tunisian Dialect”.
Prof Meoli Kashorda
Prof Meoli Kashorda is currently the Executive Director of Kenya Education Network (KENET), the National Research and Education of Kenya providing a broadband platform for facilitating research collaboration and sharing of educational and research resources (www.kenet.or.ke).
He is also a professor of information systems at United States International University – Africa (USIU) in Kenya with research interests in measuring the Institutional ICT readiness of higher education institutions, educational technologies for science and engineering, telecommunications regulation and Internet measurements. He previously served as dean of the USIU business school in Nairobi and a telecommunications expert in the Communications Appeals Tribunal of Kenya. He is currently a board member of UbuntuNet Alliance, Kenya Network Information Center (KENIC) and the COMESA Innovation Advisory Council. He holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Nairobi and a PhD in Electronic Systems Engineering from University of Essex in England. He is a Member of the Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (MIEEE) and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (MIET).

ACM SIGCHI Keynote

 Dr. Susan Dray
Since 1979, Dr. Susan M. Dray has worked in the field of human factors and human-computer interaction (HCI) to increase the quality and intuitiveness of products for users around the world. She specializes in the full spectrum of user experience research from foundational user research, to concept evaluation, usability and iterative design.

She has made particular contributions to the evolutions of field and contextual research. She has done research, given Keynotes, and taught classes in 26 countries on every other continent (except Antarctica) She has written extensively and co-edits the Forum on Evaluation and Usability in Interactions magazine. Susan is very active in professional organizations including SIGCHI, where she is currently Vice-President, at Large, and UXPA, where she was Director of Publications.She is a Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, a member of the CHI Academy, and has been honored with SIGCHI’s Lifetime Service and Lifetime Achievement in Practice Award. She received the UXPA’s Lifetime Achievement award this year, making her the only person to have been so honored by both organizations.

Closing Keynotes

 Prof. Janet Wesson
Janet Wesson is currently a Professor in the Department of Computing Sciences at theNelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth. Janet Wesson is also Head of theTelkom/NMMU Centre of Excellence, which is funded by several industry partners, including Telkom, Internet Solutions and THRIP.
Janet is a member of the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA), the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists (SAICSIT), the ACM Special Interest Group on Human-Computer Interaction (ACM SIGCHI) and the IFIP Technical Committee on Human-Computer Interaction (IFIP TC13). She has supervised six PhD students and more than 20 Masters’ students.Her current research interests are concerned with interaction design, mobile and ubiquitous computing, and using smart homes to support healthcare for the elderly. She is a NRF-rated researcher and has published widely in the field of human-computer interaction.
  Prof. Paula Kotze
Prof Paula Kotzé is Chief Researcher at the Meraka Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa, where she focuses on enterprise systems engineering and socio-technical systems. She is also Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. Her background is multidisciplinary combining computer science, information systems, industrial psychology, human-computer interaction and education.
She holds a PhD in Computer Science with specialisation in Human-Computer Interaction from the University of York (UK), which she obtained in 1997.

She is a specialist in human factors engineering, enterprise architecture and engineering, design thinking, design research and health informatics, as reflected in an extensive publication record. Her most recent work focused on developing approaches to improve the quality of healthcare in developing countries, and equipping healthcare workers with the necessary knowledge to do so. She was the leader of the project to develop the National Health Normative Standards Framework for Interoperability in eHealth for South Africa. She has also made extensive contributions to the human factors fields in the practice of enterprise architecture.

She is a National Research Foundation (NRF) B rated (internationally acclaimed) scientist, the recipient of various national and international awards, and serves on various international committees and advisory panels in the IT and research domains.

Guest Speaker

 Prof. Med Salim Bouhlel
Med Salim BOUHLEL was born in Sfax (Tunisia) in December 1955. He is a full professor at SfaxUniversity, Tunisia. He is the Head of the Research Group: Sciences and Technologies of Imageand Communication since 2003. He was the director of the Higher Institute of Electronics andCommunications of Sfax-TUNISIA (ISECS) 2008-2011.
He received the golden medal with the special appreciation of the jury in 1999 on the occasion of the first International Meeting of Invention, Innovation and Technology (Dubai, UAE). He was the vice president and founder member of the Tunisian Association of the Specialists in Electronics and the Tunisian Association of the Experts in Imagery. He is the president and founder of the Tunisian Association on Human-Machine Interaction since 2013. He is the Editor in Chief of the international Journals “Human-Machine Interaction”, “Machine learning and humanized computing” and a dozen of special issues of international journals.He is the Chairman of many international conferences and member of the program committee of numerous international conferences. His research interests are Image processing, Telecommunication and Human-Machine Interaction in which he has obtained more than 20 patents so far. More than 500 articles were published in international journals, conferences and books.Moreover, he has been the principal investigator and the project manager for several research projects dealing with several topics concerned with his research interests mentioned above.