Close the Gap Strategic Partners trip in Tanzania and Uganda
Posted on 01/06/2010
This year, Close the Gap’s “strategic partner trip” took place in Tanzania and Uganda. The trip was organised from May 26th till June 4th by Close the Gap in close collaboration with DNS BE.
The destinations, being Tanzania and Uganda have been chosen for a very good reason as
Close the Gap and DNS BE have developed a 3 to 5-year project that aims to support activities that close the digital gap in the East-African Community (Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi). In 2009, the main focus has been put on Uganda and Tanzania. The general goals of the Ugandan project are to continue reducing the digital divide, to support the integration of people in the knowledge society through access to information technologies and to sustain capacity building programs in the field of ICT for development. More specifically, DNS BE wants to support digital inclusion programs for education in Uganda. Supporting the ICT campaign for secondary schools from the Ministry of Education in Uganda is also a top priority for DNS BE, along with the sensitization of the importance for schools to train and maintain teachers and develop a full-chain product solution for computer equipment.
How is this all possible?
Close the Gap and DNS BE have selected partner organizations for ICT-capacity building in education in Uganda. Together, they will distribute computers to secondary schools throughout the 3-year partnership. A crucial aspect of this partnership is to make ICT-related training tools and content available to educational institutions. This includes training teachers on the ICT curriculum stressing the importance of information technologies when it comes to education. In 2009, 815 computers have been distributed to educational projects in Uganda, knowing that Close the Gap and DNS BE collaborate on a large scale ICT development project targeting the distribution of minimal 8.000 computers by the end of 2011.
On top of DNS BE projects, Close the Gap also has a number of projects in Tanzania and Uganda that are also supported by its network of strategic and supportive partners.
As every 2 years, the objective of this trip was to allow Close the Gap’s strategic partners to visit the projects they supported through Close the Gap.
On the one hand this visit to the projects in Tanzania and Uganda gave the possibility to evaluate the first results of the implementation of computers and on the other hand, this partner trip is always a fantastic opportunity to bring together people from our project and business communities in order to share experiences and discuss future partnerships. On top of this, the delegation wanted to inform local Belgian and Dutch authorities (embassies) on the Belgian and Dutch involvement from private partners in these projects.
This year the delegation was composed by several partners. Among others, DNS BE, Deloitte, Ricoh Netherlands and France, PKF International, SAS Institute, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Flection were part of the delegation and validated the results of the many projects.
The type of visited projects in Tanzania went from healthcare in St Elisabeth Hospital, to welfare in Mwereni School for Blind and Visually Impaired Children as well as educational in the St Joseph Vocational Training centre.
In Uganda, the delegation visited the International Health Science University (IHSU), the Mountains of the Moon University and also Kichwambe girl’s schools and Nyakasure Secondary School. H.E. Ambassador for Belgium in Kampala, Mr. Gedopt, also received the delegation for a cocktail at the residence of the Belgium embassy. The Embassy of the Netherlands and the United States of America were also present on this Close the Gap evening.
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