In August 2001, Harsha Wijayawardhana participated in the information and communication technology programme of the Non-Aligned Movement Centre for South-South Technical Cooperation (NAM CSSTC) in Jakarta, Indonesia, and presented the Sri Lankan contribution, E-Linkage in Sri Lanka.
The Non-Aligned Movement’s technical-cooperation centre
NAM CSSTC is the Non-Aligned Movement’s Jakarta-based centre for South-South technical cooperation. Created through an Indonesian and Bruneian initiative endorsed at the eleventh NAM Summit in 1995, it became a forum through which developing countries could pool expertise, build capacity and exchange practical experience.
Building an electronic network among NAM countries
Official NAM CSSTC records show that ICT networking was a major programme in 2001. An expert group meeting held in Jakarta from 27 to 29 March brought together 13 countries from five regions to consider a networking system linking NAM member states. It recommended regional interconnection, stronger ICT capacity and an e-NAM task force to help narrow the digital divide.
NAM CSSTC records a follow-up meeting in August 2001 on the technical feasibility of regional electronic linkages. That programme produced e-readiness manuals for countries at different stages of development. Harsha’s presentation on Sri Lanka belongs to this documented August phase of the initiative, placing Sri Lanka’s experience within a wider effort to connect institutions and share development knowledge across the Global South.
The surviving publication record
A public bibliographic entry preserves the title E-Linkage in Sri Lanka, NAM CSSTC, Jakarta, August 2001, and associates the work with Harsha Wijayawardhana and Prof. V. K. Samaranayake. A separate published bibliography of Prof. Samaranayake’s work lists Harsha Wijayawardhana and Dr. A. R. Weerasinghe in connection with the presentation.
Archival status: the presentation title, venue, month and year survive online, and NAM CSSTC’s official archive confirms the associated 2001 networking programme. A complete copy of Harsha’s paper or the August participant list has not yet been located. The contributor wording above therefore reports the available bibliographic evidence without claiming that a full proceedings paper has been recovered.
Why this work matters
The presentation was part of an early international attempt to make electronic connectivity a tool for cooperation among developing countries. It also forms a natural bridge between Harsha’s work on Sri Lanka’s Internet infrastructure, government websites, e-government and community access: the Sri Lankan experience was carried into a Non-Aligned Movement forum concerned with connectivity, e-readiness and collective technical capacity.
Sources: NAM CSSTC — Scope of Works; NAM CSSTC — Proceedings of the Expert Group Meeting on the Establishment of a Networking System, 27–29 March 2001; NAM CSSTC — Historical background; NAM CSSTC — Reports archive; Harsha Wijayawardhana — public Google Scholar bibliography; and public bibliography of Prof. V. K. Samaranayake’s presentations.