The community in Donkerbos is currently contributing to the development of natural hand gestures, which are to be used in a Virtual Reality (VR) system. Bringing VR into the bush with local communities provided community members an opportunity to re-explore interactions in VR as they enhanced and extended their VR experience with the said system.

On a recent MTC-funded trip to Donkerbos , led by Prof Heike Winschiers-Theophilus from NUST and Dr Kasper Rodil together with Emilie Arendttorp, both from Aalborg University (AAU), Denmark, a new prototype developed by students at AAU, was evaluated. The prototype consisted of hand gestures which have been co-designed by the community on a previous visit. Four movement gestures were implemented, which are used to guide a person back, forwards, left, and right.

After having tried the prototype the community provided feedback upon the implemented gestures for further development. The next step is to implement an old traditional San story into VR while continuing the work on exploring the use of natural gestures.

Namibia’s ICT solution provider, MTC and the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST),

signed a Memorandum of Understanding, which focusses collaboration in areas such as

Emerging and Disruptive technologies, Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing, Electronic Engineering

and other Engineering Disciplines, Marketing and Communication, Telecommunication Products and

Services, Cyber Security and Forensics, User Experience, amongst others.

As part of this partnership, MTC availed digital equipment to facilitate a cutting-edge

EdTech innovation research and community development project that NUST runs in collaboration with

the People’s Primary School (PPS) in Windhoek. The project aims to establish novel learning ecologies

including remote presence learning and interactive technologies, which enable children across the

country and continents to jointly learn, share and create new knowledge.