New partners link up to improve training of government officials

CESAG is an institution specialising in the delivery of government-related training and leadership capacity building across French-speaking Africa.

Microsoft, together with partners including the African Capacity Building Foundation, will be assisting CESAG to build their capabilities to provide a comprehensive IT policy-based program.

This means that CESAG is now able to offer meaningful and relevant training to government officials that will enable them to make more informed decisions about ICT Policy - improving the success rate of ICT project rollouts in Africa.

“According to the World Bank, nearly 50% of all ICT projects worldwide fail and over 30% never even make it off the ground,” says Dr. Cheick Diarra, Africa chairman for Microsoft.

“Because technology has the potential to be such an empowering tool for the African continent, it is vitally important that governments be given the necessary knowledge and capacity to make informed decisions about their technology rollout strategies.”

In terms of the agreement, the company has developed a curriculum comprising modules such as privacy and identity management, innovation, intellectual property rights, search and digital archiving.

This will be delivered to CESAG trainers, who will then be certified to deliver the training to government officials.

The program will be based in Senegal, but will be provided to government officials from throughout the West and Central Africa region.

The company has signed a memorandum of understanding with the African Capacity Building Foundation to jointly support the initiative.

ACBF will undertake an extensive capacity assessment of CESAG to help improve its ability to run the program, which Microsoft will provide an infrastructure optimisation assessment. ACBF has indicated that it will take a project to their board to support the costs of funding government officials who wish to attend the programme but cannot for financial reasons.

“This eliminates the number one barrier to entry,” Dr. Diarra says.

Along with a number of other citizenship programmes that are operated across Africa, we believe that this initiative addresses a huge challenge with regard to the reasons that ICT projects very rarely work in Africa.

“The steps to economic prosperity in Africa could almost be considered pieces of a grand puzzle; and effective ICT policy implementation training is one piece of this entire puzzle,” Dr. Diarra says.

“It cannot work on its own, and requires a number of other pieces in order to complete our vision of how it would like to help the people of Africa meet the economic and social demands of the 21st century.

“Other pieces of the puzzle will fall into place over time as initiatives including our Leadership Lecture Series in Mali and the ICT Best Practices Forum in Burkina Faso gain momentum and begin attracting more interest from other African countries.

“Can we as Microsoft solve all the problems in Africa? Probably not, but we can assist the continent to develop a framework to help itself,” Dr. Diarra concludes.