Proceedings of the 2008 annual research conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists on IT research in developing countries: riding the wave of technology

The South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information technologists (SAICSIT) has, over a number of years, developed into a highly acclaimed and respected forum for exchanging and sharing knowledge. The annual SAICSIT conference has steadily gained recognition not only in South Africa, but also internationally. Significantly more international researchers are submitting contributions to the conference and a substantial proportion of the programme committee is from the international research community. At this year's conference, much like previous years, we have strived to provide an opportunity for academics in Computer Science, Information Systems and Information Technology to review, present and discuss research in their respective fields. We have also maintained the international participation in the conference, specifically as far as the programme committee is concerned. Out of a total of 69 reviewers, 45% of them were from the international research community. We would like to thank our international reviewers for their much valued contribution. We trust that the Programme Committee will remain involved in the conference and will advertise the work and opportunities provided by the SAICSIT conference in their fields of influence. This year's conference once again comprises of two sections: a main conference of which this is the proceedings, as well as a post-graduate Research Symposium aimed at supporting and developing young researchers from a capacity building perspective. A total of 22 submissions of work-in-progress or proposal reports was accepted for presentation at the Research Symposium. The main conference received 80 submissions of which 33 were accepted for presentation at the conference, resulting in a 41% acceptance rate. All papers were subjected to a single blind peer-review process (identities of reviewers were not revealed to the submitting authors) with each paper receiving a minimum of three reviews from the international programme committee. We have no doubt that the process yielded papers of high quality and would like to thank the reviewers for their efforts in this regards.