Sentech key player in Africa's educational needs

South Africa's goals for growth and development are matched by an equally ambitious African continent striving for widespread education and global competence.

Sentech, as a major ICT player in South Africa and Africa, is poised to meet these aspirations, by providing the ICT technology that will help deliver educational capacity across the continent.

In South Africa some of Sentech's pioneering work is its long-term investment in Mindset Network, a television channel that has been instrumental in addressing South Africa's key educational challenges.

The company's initial involvement with Mindset was as a founding member of the Mindset Learn Channel, for which it provides wireless connectivity. This allows Mindset to deliver a broadcast signal, through which it constantly beams educational content to classrooms across the country via its various transmission partners.

The Mindset Health Channel, broadcasting in five languages, connects over 7 000 rural clinics and public hospitals to essential medical training and support material.

Using VSAT in school projects such as the GautengOnline project, Sentech provides Internet access to over 1 200 schools in Gauteng. In addition, Sentech sponsors the VSAT solution and server at the Myeka High School in the remote village Maphephetheni in the Ndwedwe, KwaZulu-Natal. Myeka has no electricity supply relying on current, generated with biogas technology from human and animal waste, to power the generator at the high school. Siyabonga Multi Centre in Orange Farm is a recent addition to the communities benefiting from Sentech's VSAT technology.

In the broader African context, Sentech, part of the Oracle Consortium, has partnered with the NEPAD e-Schools Initiative. Co-ordinated by the NEPAD e-Africa Commission, Lesotho, Kenya, Ghana, Egypt, Gabon and Mali have already begun to enjoy the benefits.

This initiative aims to ICT-enable every school in Africa within 10 years. Sentech forms a crucial component of the partnership by providing equipment, skills and knowledge that will drive the development of Africa's knowledge economy. These tools will also improve teaching methods and give schools more effective management and administrative skills.

"Empowering previously disadvantaged communities is at the core of Sentech's CSI vision and policy is implemented in accordance with organisational best practice. Sentech is committed to social upliftment in all of its operating areas. Our commercial objectives in South Africa and Africa are therefore matched by social investment initiatives across our country and the African continent," says Pranill Ramchander, Sentech's Portfolio Manager: Corporate Communications.