Ethiopia will become the first country to be benefited from India’s dream project in Africa known as the Pan African e-Network which will dispense benefits of tele-education and tele-medicine to 53 African Union nations.



The Pan Africa e-Network is the brainchild of current scientist President of India Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam that aims at ‘bridging the digital divide and accelerate development throughout Africa’.



This includes setting up a VVIP network that will network the presidents of all the 53 African countries who will have a ready access to their counterparts through videoconferencing and VoIP facilities.



On this, India’s executing agency of the project - Telecommunications Consultants (India) Limited (TCIL) signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ethiopian Information and Communication Technology Development Agency (EICTDA) yesterday to implement the pilot project for tele-education and tele-medicine.



The pilot project which will be fully funded by the Indian government is estimated to cost USD 2.1 million.



A press release by the Indian embassy in Ethiopia said;

Ethiopia will be the first beneficiary of the Pan-African e-Network Project as it is the headquarters of African Union with the necessary infrastructure, and is keen for its early implementation.

The nodal centre for tele-education will be Addis Ababa, and for tele-medicine it will be Black Lion Hospital. These nodal centers will be initially connected to remote centers in Adama University and Adama Medical College in Nazareth respectively with the possibility to add other centers later on.



The TCIL is executing the project in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).



The total cost of the complete project is estimated to be 63.7 million US dollars. This will be funded by the Indian external affairs ministry under its Aid-to-Africa Budget program is likely to become operational by 2007.





Via: newKerala