Microsoft intros training programmes

Microsoft and the Ghana Ministry of Communication have agreed to partner a project that will deliver high-quality ICT policy training to public sector workers, reports Ghana Business News.

The centre will, among other activities, develop and host training workshops for senior government officials and civil servants on e-government programmes and best practices.

These workshops will focus on issues such as ICT for community and economic development, policy requirements for effective governance, and computer awareness training.

India has ordered 250 000 laptops from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organisation, while a human rights organisation will supply 5 000 OLPC machines to Sierra Leone, states PC World.

News of the laptop project in Sierra Leone comes as research teams in Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe release findings that the Asus Eee PC netbook is a better choice for African nations than the XO laptop. Asus is better suited to individual owners and users in rural Africa who need low-power PCs, researchers found.

They ranked the Asus Eee first for the needs of Africa, followed by Intel's Classmate, OLPC's XO, the Inveno Computing Station and Ncomputing's X300.

African banks have been urged to take advantage of the global recession to leapfrog their technology base, to enable them compete in the global financial space, says This Day Online.

Banking analyst Joe DiVanna is billed to chair this year's Banking and Payment Technologies Conference West Africa, taking place at the Muson Centre in Lagos in May. He says the biggest challenge for African banks would be to lower the cost of distribution between the bank and the customer.

"Africa is on the move and African banks need to strengthen their technological infrastructure to meet new demands for financing from businesses, consumers and investors,” he says.