Within eight weeks of the announcement made by NEPAD about its e-School Demonstration Project, with the support of Oracle Consortium, African children have started getting direct access to the rich repository of information, through the acquisition of ICT skills.
Describing it as a NEPAD flagship project with a continental scope, Dr. Chasia, Deputy Chairman of the e-Africa Commission said the programme, which is over a ten-year period, would initially cover 96 schools in 15 countries, but would eventually spread all over the continent.
The vision of the NEPAD e-Schools Initiative is to install information and communication technology in over 600,000 primary and secondary schools on this continent and connect them to the Internet.
Dr. Chasia noted that, apart from assisting African children to express their individuality, the initiative, has multiple visions of helping them coordinate the provision of essential information that relates to nutrition, hygiene, livelihoods, physical fitness and epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, all on a health point.
The Department Chairman, who is in charge of the NEPAD ICT Task Force, expressed the happiness at the remarkable response and participation of private companies in bringing to bear, the hardware and software required for the teaching and learning process.
For his part, the Managing Director of Oracle (African Operations), the world's largest enterprise software company, Mr. Desi Lopez Fafie, said the successful implementation of the project in Ghana would be a model for other countries to follow.
Dafie assured that in addition to Internet connectivity, members of the consortium, which included Mecer, Sentech and Astra, Multichoice Africa, Xerox, CompuTainer, Learnthings, DHL, Fujitsu Computers, Intel, Accelon and Cambridge-Hitachi, delivered digital content, learning management systems, and an e-communication infrastructure to enable pupils communicate with participating schools on the continent.
Miss Elizabeth Ohene, Minister of State responsible for Tertiary Education, stressed on the importance of well-trained and equipped teachers to make the necessary impact on the students.
Apart from being a powerful vehicle for integration of Africa, the initiative has the potential for a huge market in educational goods and services, including those related to information and communication technology.
Other schools slated for the demonstration in Ghana are the Wa Secondary (Upper West), Walewale Secondary Technical (Northern) and St. Augustine Secondary (Western) Schools.
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