Oracle Consortium focuses on e-schools

Johannesburg, 09 Jun 2005

ICT skills and equipment will be provided to primary and secondary school students in over 20 countries across the African continent.

This follows the signing of a series of memoranda of understanding by the companies in the Oracle Consortium.

Forming part of the Nepad e-Schools Demonstration Project, the venture is intended as a learning exercise ahead of the roll-out of the broader Nepad e-Schools Initiative.

The consortium is led by Oracle and includes Mustek, Sentech, MultiChoice Africa, Intel, CompuTainer, Learnthings, Fujitsu-Siemens Computers and Cambridge-Hitachi.

The initiative aims to provide ICT equipment, skills and knowledge to students in order to enable them to function in a knowledge economy; to improve health education; to enable teachers to use ICT as tools to enhance teaching and learning; and to provide school managers with ICT skills.

The Oracle Consortium will begin its implementation at three schools in Ghana in July, after which it will focus on schools in Kenya, Lesotho, SA, Mali, Gabon and Egypt.

"The co-operation of governments, Nepad and the private sector has proved possible in this project, and this project can show the rest of the world how successful co-operation can work for the greater good," says Professor Peter Kinyanjui, co-ordinator of the initiative.

"The commitment of corporates to a Nepad initiative is an historic moment and Africa will be an example to the rest of the world in this regard."