CIA, Other Government Agencies Offer Scholarships for Intelligent Intelligence

http://washdiplomat.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8849:cia-other-government-agencies-offer-scholarships-for-intelligent-intelligence&catid=1496&Itemid=428

By Karin Zeitvogel
Uploaded on December 27, 2012

Watch what you say: That young intern heading into Washington on the Metro might be training with the CIA.

That's partly because the U.S. intelligence agency offers one of the most generous scholarships for college students — $18,000 a year to successful applicants, with few strings attached.

Besides the requirement of working for the CIA after graduation for one and a half years for every year of scholarship aid received, recipients have to maintain good grades while at school. But even though the CIA is best known for espionage and intelligence, that's not all it or any other U.S. intelligence agency does — and there are quite a few of those agencies. So students with a CIA scholarship can study whatever they want.

Photo: Jason Stitt / Fotolia

Not to be outdone, the DIA, or Defense Intelligence Agency, offers students majoring in everything from international relations to toxicology paid internships or generous scholarships. Seniors in high school can apply for the scholarship, and then have to get their choice of university approved by the DIA.
If a young man or woman thinks they might be interested in a career in military intelligence, this scholarship is well worth it. The DIA not only pays $18,000 toward tuition and fees, but it also reimburses the cost of books and supplies, pays the student an annual salary, and guarantees them a full-time summer job that's related to what they're studying at university.

That's not all, though. The DIA also provides health and life insurance, retirement benefits, and a guaranteed job at the DIA after graduation. And it's not just filing papers: The job is "appropriate to their skills and abilities."

While in school, students must maintain an overall cumulative grade point average (GPA) of 2.75 for the freshman year and 3.0 on a 4.0 scale (or its equivalent) for each semester/quarter thereafter.
CIA and DIA scholars must also be able to obtain security clearance and must be U.S. citizens. Their families have to be, too. "All members of the immediate family must be U.S. citizens. Permanent resident status is not sufficient," the DIA says. Dual nationals have to renounce their other citizenship to be eligible for security clearance.

The scholarships are aimed at bringing a more diverse, and more diversely trained and qualified talent pool into the U.S. intelligence community.

Another program set up to achieve that end is the Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence (IC CAE), which began in 2005. The program falls under the umbrella of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the parent company, if you like, of the CIA, DIA and 14 other U.S. intelligence agencies, including some that might not automatically be associated with intelligence gathering, such as the Departments of the Treasury, Environment and Energy.

Photo: Fotolia

But of course, intelligence gathering isn't all ODNI agencies do. Around a dozen U.S. universities, from Virginia Tech to Howard and Trinity University in D.C., to Wayne State in Detroit and California State, are part of IC CAE. Schools selected to be participants in the program receive a grant from the ODNI and set up their own unique curriculum to avoid producing "cookie-cutter" intelligence officers.

Virginia Tech says its CAE program is aimed at "helping to meet the intelligence community's critical need for diverse personnel who possess the technological, analytic and critical language capabilities needed for the 21st-century world." Students from all majors who are interested in a career in national security are eligible for scholarships and fellowships, including "substantive study abroad experiences," the university's website says.

The State Department, which is part of the same intelligence community as the CIA and FBI, offers language programs that have the added draw of whisking you off to places like Morocco, Indonesia, Jordan, Korea or a dozen other destinations.

Students selected for the State Department's Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program get to take intensive classes during the summer in 13 languages deemed "critical" to the United States. Last year, 631 scholarships were awarded to students of Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Mandarin, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Farsi, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish and Urdu.

Language scholars do not all have their eyes on an intelligence career. William Zeman, who studied Turkish as a Critical Language Scholar, moved to Istanbul after he'd finished his studies and is now a copy editor for the Oxford Business Group and a freelance journalist who regularly contributes pieces to Time Out Istanbul. And scholar Damian Harris-Hernandez, who also studied Turkish, produced a short film about the Pink Bicycle Movement, which wants to get more Turkish women and girls on bikes. Harris-Hernandez voiced the film in Turkish, proof that the scholarship works.

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About the Author

Karin Zeitvogel is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

Last Edited on December 27, 2012

First African-designed smartphone and tablet hit market

By Dave Mayers | December 25, 2012, 4:48 AM PST

 

Verone Mankou with the Elikia

When 26-year-old Congolese entrepreneur Verone Mankou followed up the introduction of the first African-designed tablet with the announcement of the first African-designed smartphone, some within the local tech community looked on skeptically. This was Africa after all, and other tablets and smartphones claiming to be “African” were shown to be little more than Chinese designs with only superficial unique traits.

It also didn’t help that Mankou’s company, VMK, was based in the Republic of Congo.
Speaking at the third annual Tech4Africa conference in Johannesburg last month, Mankou touched on the difficulties of running VMK from Congo. He also stressed, despite the hurdles, why he thought it was important for an African company to invest in the local smartphone and tablet markets. “Only Africans can know what Africa needs,” he said.

“Apple is huge in the U.S., Samsung is huge in Asia, and we want VMK to be huge in Africa.”
His products, the Way-C tablet and Elikia smartphone are part of an effort to take on the technology giants in his own back yard.

The Way-C, or “the light of the stars” in the local Lingala language, is a small tablet roughly the size of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. It measures 7.4″ x 6.7″ x 0.5″ and weighs 13.4 ounces. Wi-Fi connectivity and 4GB of internal memory come standard. While its specs aren’t eye-popping, the price is. At $300, it comes in less than the iPad mini.

The Elikia (”Hope”) is an Android-based smartphone with a 3.5-inch display, rear and forward facing cameras, 512MB of RAM, and a 650MHz processor. It retails for $170 without a contract.

The aim, says Mankou, is to get these products into African hands by making them easier to afford.



There has been some negative reaction on local tech blogs, and much of it seems to come from a belief that these products are made by what is called an original equipment manufacturer, or OEM. A few years ago, Africa’s “first” tablet was found out to be an OEM product available not only in Nigeria, but throughout the world sold under different names. Its claims of being African were shot down, and the company was regarded as just another merchant pushing foreign products on local consumers.

Mankou’s VMK is adamant that this is not the case with its products, even devoting a page on its website to address the accusation.

Brazzaville, the capital city and home base for VMK, is known more for being an entrepôt to the nation’s huge oil reserves than a home for innovative business. The World Bank ranks Congo-Brazzaville as the 183^rd worst country to do business in, out of the 185 nations measured. It often takes more than half a year to start a company in Congo-Brazzaville, compared to just 13 days in the States.
But this is where Mankou chooses to do business.

“Congo has the same problems as all sub-Saharan African countries: it’s difficult to get funding, so it’s difficult to create big projects,” he told local technology blog TechCentral.

After spending nearly two years fundraising, Mankou finally had enough to start making African-deisgned tablets and later smartphones for his countrymen.

Some of the first images of Elikia show an engraved “Designed in the Republic of Congo, assembled in China,” intentionally mirroring Apple’s  “Designed by Apple in California.” Much of the marketing behind the Elikia and the Way-C seems like an attempt to ape the products’ Apple counterparts.

The Elikia being manufactured in China

Like Apple, VMK has had to answer for manufacturing its products in China, a country with a higher per-capita GDP than the Congo.

Earlier this year Mankou told the AFP that VMK wanted to keep as much of the phone African as possible, but decided to manufacture it in China “for the simple reason that Congo has no factories and for price reasons.”

Yet some question the wisdom of manufacturing high-priced items overseas and marketing them to what remains a wealthy elite in Congo.

Mankou plans to sell his products outside of Congo in the near future, and has already moved into 10 other West African countries and even Belgium, France and India.

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/global-observer/first-african-designed-smartphone-and-tablet-hit-market/8563