Development of a Kiswahili-user-centered cloud-based site building platform: A contribution to local content development initiatives in Tanzania

Abstract

This thesis reports about a project undertaken to develop a Kiswahili-user-centered cloud-based website building platform. An extensive study based on literature review built a basis for forming requirements for the platform. The desire to undertake this project was triggered by a call by the government of the United Republic of Tanzania on local content development, as documented in the national information and communications technology policy of 2016. The project employed a combination of certain research methodologies and system development methodologies. Literature review, experimentation and observations played a vital role in helping the researcher form a clear picture of how to develop the platform. The project employed Object Oriented System Analysis and Design (OOSAD) approach, the incremental model of System Development Life Cycle (SDLC), entity relationship diagramming tools, web wireframes and a set of several Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams as system design tools. System building was accomplished using a number of languages and libraries: PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript/JQuery and Bootstrap framework. System testing was done at different levels: the unit level, the integration level, and the system level. Further, white-box, black box, and grey-box testing was conducted along with dynamic testing technique. The main deliverable of this project was Kiswahili user-centered cloud-based website building platform that is meant to serve the local community with higher level of convenience as compared to similar solutions available in the market. The researcher ultimately conducted a test with 30 participants, results of which indicated that the platform is friendly enough to serve the targeted users