WAGENINGEN, The Netherlands, November 29, 2009
- Twenty-four (24) representatives from fourteen (14) African countries
are scheduled for a 10-day CTA-led study visit to India, one of the
most powerful emerging economies, starting 29 November 2009.    
Supported by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), the ground-breaking initiative, whose theme is “Social and Economic Development using Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs)”,
is meant to enhance participants’ knowledge on how India has harnessed
ICT to promote its overall growth. Collaborators for the study visit in
India include Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Limited
(IL&FS), Kerala State IT Mission (KSITM) and SREI-Sahaj Corporate.

The
delegation will visit Calicut (Kerala State), Bengaluru (Karnataka
State), Kolkata (West Bengal State) and New Delhi to experience how
India addresses the diversity of challenges and positively enhances its
economic growth using ICTs.  

Senior officials in government,
industry and civil society organizations from these African countries
will maximize this opportunity to understand the success story and
replicate in their respective regions.

Taking its advantage in
IT skills, India has embarked upon some of the most ambitious plans for
welfare and governance. For instance, the National e-Governance Plan
(NeGP), which is currently being implemented, aims to set up more than
100,000 rural telecentres to deliver government services.   The African
delegation will mostly be interested in ICT application in areas such
as governance, agriculture, public health, education and rural
empowerment. Moreover, the delegation will analyze the concept of
Public Private Partnerships (PPP) that is being used as a key factor
for long-term sustainability of the telecentre movement in India.

The
participating countries in the study visit include Burkina Faso,
Burundi, Cameroon, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Niger,
Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Catch more updates from Telecentre Africa Website