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First Nepad e-school to launch in Uganda


Johannesburg, 01 Jun 2005

A consortium headed by HP has announced that the first Nepad e-school is to be launched in Uganda next month.

The announcement, made at the World Economic Forum Africa Summit in Cape Town this week, comes two years after the Nepad e-schools project was first publicly launched at the 2003 African Economic Summit in Durban.

The project will equip schools with PCs, software and Internet access, as well as providing learning material and establishing health points at schools in support of the Nepad e-Health programme.

Delivery targets have been set to turn all African high schools into Nepad e-schools within five years of the implementation start date and all African primary schools into Nepad e-schools within 10 years of the implementation start date. Around 600 000 schools are set to benefit.

The Bugulumbya Secondary School in Busobya Village, Uganda, will become the first such school.

"During the last two years, a considerable amount of work has been done in planning the continent-wide project. The launch of the first Nepad e-school is a significant step in realising the vision for African`s renewal as outlined in the Nepad framework and delivering real and tangible results," says Olivier Suinat, MD of HP Africa.

"With high targets set, the initiative will rely heavily on strong private public partnerships between African governments and the participating private sector companies. This type of collaboration between the HP consortium and the Government of Uganda lays an important foundation for the future success of the initiative," says Isaac Musumba, Nepad minister of Uganda.

A number of private companies, including the HP consortium, have committed to sponsoring the demonstration project for 12 to 18 months in 16 participating countries. Participating countries are Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, SA and Uganda.

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