American university to boost East Africa ICT

US-based Carnegie Mellon University has announced the opening of a new regional centre for ICT in Rwanda, aimed at increasing science and technology development across East Africa.

Carnegie Mellon University director in Rwanda Bruce Krogh. (image: cms.dyn.bci.tu-dortmund.de)

“Research and development in technology is now a global enterprise and Carnegie Mellon realised that education also needed to be a global enterprise to meet the demands of highly skilled engineers and innovators,” university director in Rwanda Bruce Krogh said.

Krogh said the west was not the sole source of technological breakthroughs anymore, “nor was it the dominant growth market for information and communication technology (ICT)”.

The university said they see East Africa as a beacon for ICT transformation, praising the region’s recent jumps in telecoms and IT infrastructure. Carnegie hopes to assist in continuing this success by bolstering ICT education.

He added that “for the case of Rwanda, there is a business-friendly, pro-ICT development program (Vision 2020) under which nation-wide fiber-optic cables will be installed throughout the country.”

Joseph Mayton

March 23, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Cross Cutting, Economic Growth & Trade, Education, Humanitarian Assistance, Humanitarian Assistance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

NetHope Academy Haiti Internship Program

The NetHope Academy‘s ICT Skills Capacity Building Intern Program will give Haitian university students and recent graduates the opportunity to gain significant IT skills that will allow them to directly participate in the reconstruction of their communities and increase their economic opportunities.

During the course of this internship, candidates will work in the IT departments for participating humanitarian organizations and private sector companies. Program highlights include:

Six month internship program for Haitian computer science and engineering students/graduates that provides real world “on the job” training along with focused classroom and self-study learning opportunities
Internships will be geared towards desktop support, network administration, and telecommunications jobs
Participating organizations will increase capacity of their IT departments and contribute to the development of IT labor pool in Haiti

March 2, 2011/by actualize