‘Gorilla Highlands’ interactive ebook places Uganda among the world’s best in e-Culture and Tourism

Ladies and gentlemen bring out the champagne, the fireworks, party poppers and why the heck not, some cake too. Anything you normally have at a celebration will do. Some slow people might right now be asking themselves why we are celebrating. Well, let us save you from some of the misery of being you. You see, ‘Gorilla Highlands’ which is an interactive ebook about south-western Uganda was recognised as one of the world’s most innovative ICT products. Cue Obugalo. If you thought Uganda was done winning after Kiprotich’s second gold medal, think again.

Gorilla Highlands received this honour after competing against outstanding ICT ventures and applications from 168 countries, and coming out as one of the 40 best ICT ventures by the World Summit Award (WSA) Grand Jury. The jury was comprised of 17 high profile IT professionals and e-content experts, hailing from every continent and with such diverse backgrounds as industry leaders, researchers, social entrepreneurs and journalists.

The World Summit Award (WSA) is the global follow-up initiative of the United Nations World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) organised by the International Center for New Media (ICNM), Salzburg, Austria. WSA demonstrates the local diversity and rich creativity of ICT use in over 160 countries by selecting and promoting the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications.

Studio Edirisa, the multimedia team behind Gorilla Highlands, believes that the world should appreciate Africa more and that Ugandans should be prouder and more knowledgeable of their heritage. They decided to create an interactive ebook that would do justice to the natural beauty and cultural richness of their home region.

Thus began an incredible story of a village-based team joining forces with expert volunteers all over the globe to make a world-class product. Gorilla Highlands presents the landscape, people and wildlife of Kabale, Kanungu and Kisoro districts through stunning photography, well-researched text, plentiful videos, interactive illustrations and maps. The ebook also includes an extensive audio phrasebook in Rukiga and Rufumbira. Currently available for the iPad, the ebook will soon be readable on Macs, with other platforms and a comprehensive website following in 2014.

“Winning the Award is recognition of the efforts of our small but dedicated team. Several years of volunteer work have gone into making Gorilla Highlands a fitting tool for promoting our region, and we hope international visitors and Ugandans who enjoy the ebook will be convinced to experience the real thing,” said.

The creative minds of Studio Edirisa can now present their venture at the 2013 Gala organised by the WSA team and its Sri Lanka partner organisation ICTA in Colombo from Oct. 23 to Oct 26, the global hub for the world’s best e-content.  They are up against products from Europe and the Indian subcontinent. Our well wishes are with the team and we look forward to seeing them coming out as the overall winners.

If you want to help increase their odds of winning, follow this link (www.wsis-award.org/winners/vote) and go and vote for them.  Being one of the best five isn’t enough for them so make sure you do your part for Gorilla Highlands to be declared THE BEST product in the world. The voting will be open until Oct 19th, 2013 so quit postponing this. Don’t forget you can vote as many times as possible.

[button color=”orange” size=”medium” link=”http://www.wsis-award.org/winners/vote” target=”blank” ]Go on now, click me and go cast your vote now![/button]

This is a very well thought out product and it would be nice to see it expanded to include information on all regions of East Africa. Cheers to you team Gorilla Highlands.

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Click on the images below to enlarge and view screen shots of the app.