In Nigeria, CCI collaborated with the Schlumberger Excellence in Education Development (SEED) foundation to implement a new program to improve the quality of teaching and enhance student learning of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects in selected secondary schools. Nearly 30 teachers representing 11 secondary schools in 8 states, primarily in the Niger Delta, participated in the program, and over 1,000 students received instruction.

After training, ICT centers see revenue

Access to ICT based services in rural and semi-rural Ethiopia is very limited. Both the technological know-how and the means to deliver products and services to these communities is a major hurdle and is behind the average African country’s ICT sectors. The main areas of knowledge gaps were mostly in hardware and maintenance such as computer and windows repair, computer networking, office machine repair, and mobile phone repair. Through a training of trainers of ICT technicians from rural areas, a focus on entrepreneurship and leadership training and exchanges of best practices, CCI has developed the capacity of these rural ICT centers to be a hub of knowledge and training in ICT issues. For the 90 ICT centers who now have trained professionals, people in those towns no longer have to travel, in some cases up to 500 miles, to distant major towns or cities to have computer and office machine repairs made. This brings down repair costs and keeps money in the local community.