Spreading the word
The e-Schools project – led by Henry Chasia, whose objectives include raising interest in the ICT sector among the most deprived schools in remote Africa – is the brainchild of the Nepad secretariat. Chasia says that various state interventions throughout Africa aimed at mitigating the ICT skills challenge have been slow in churning out the required numbers.
Boosted by cash and material injection from HP, Motorola and Cisco (among others), the project has so far provided Internet connectivity to three of the selected schools in Egypt and two in Uganda.
Maripe – a remote high school west of Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga – recently became the first of the six high schools identified in SA to benefit from the project.
Thoko Mokgosi-Mwantemba, HP SA’s country manager, says: "We’ll run the projects in schools in which we have provided connectivity for 12 months from the date of launch. Then on expiry of that period we intend handing over the project to local schools. But the idea is to generate an interest in technology among students in Africa."
Motorola SA country manager Judy Nwokedi is peeved that SA’s ICT industry is being held to ransom by a pool of qualified ICT personnel. She hopes that the project will help generate interest in ICT among pupils at remote SA schools. Says Nwokedi: "Due to a limited pool of ICT skills it’s becoming difficult for us to hold on to our best talent because the competition is always dangling even better packages."
Finweek
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