Nonprofit bolsters IT program for low-tech nations

Inveneo helps local IT professionals add to their skills and train new IT staff

By John Cox, Network World, 04/11/07

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A nonprofit group bringing sustainable IT and networking solutions to small communities in the developing world is expanding a program to develop, train and support local networking and IT specialists.

The program is the brainchild of San Francisco-based Inveneo. The idea is to recruit and then partner with in-country IT professionals, helping them to add skills and hire, train and certify new IT staff. The program focuses on Inveneo’s solar-powered wireless computing and telephony system, which has been deployed so far in 20 sites in six Africa countries.

The pilot training program was launched last year in Uganda, with two local partners, Linux Solutions and Keyskills. So far, the pilot has five projects completed or underway. Based on that experience, Inveneo won expansion funding from the 50x15 Initiative, a project launched by chipmaker AMD in 2004. The initiative’s goal is to enable 50% of the world’s population to have affordable Internet access by 2015. AMD declined to say how much money it was investing in the Inveneo project.

With the additional funding, the Inveneo Certified Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Partners program is being expanded in East Africa over the next six months, focusing on Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania.

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