Intel has plans for Africa and will open a knowledge centre in SA next month to take its pro-Africa strategy forward.
SA country manager Devan Naidoo says the chip-making giant has a "plan in place to look at each African country".
He says the plan takes a realistic look at each state's readiness for engagement on ICT issues and groups them into three tiers.
"'Tier one' means we will have someone on the ground there, like in Nigeria, Kenya, perhaps Ghana, Angola maybe. 'Tier two' means we are running programmes there, but not necessarily supported in-country, and 'tier three', the majority, are not ready.
"We've looked at each country's infrastructure, broadband penetration and the like to see it is feasible to talk about ICT. Or do we have to start talking to them about expanding broadband penetration and how they can do that as we have the means to do that."
He says the knowledge centre, which will be soft-launched next month, will allow the company to engage countries where it doesn't have a presence. "The idea is that we can invite delegates from a country like Tanzania that we expect to move to tier two or one in the near future here to talk about broadband, skills development or ICT in education or healthcare.
"We can bring them to SA, spend two weeks with them and share best practices from around the world on how to best deploy in the shortest time frame. I'm really excited about this," Naidoo adds.
He says the centre will fit in well with the climate of opportunity in Africa. "Africa is now in the most favourable environment possible in terms of gross domestic product, inflation and foreign debt relief... Suddenly countries have money to invest in their own communities and we want to make sure this gets spent on education and healthcare."
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