Telecommunications group Ericsson has connected more than 55 000 people in Koraro, a remote village in northern Ethiopia, with third-generation (3G) services.
The group, as part of its Millennium Villages project, has provided 3G connectivity to two schools – the Masho and Megab secondary schools – giving 4 000 students and their teachers access to Ericsson’s ‘Connect to Learn’ programme.
The ‘Connect to Learn’ project enabled people in rural regions to remotely access modern educational learning and teaching resources, as well as information and communication technology (ICT) skills training for teachers, on the Internet, through Ericsson’s cloud-computing solution.
Laptops and netbooks were donated to the schools.
“Education is key to ending poverty and ensuring a better life for people. ICT can play a vital role in providing access to quality classroom resources for both teacher and student, and fostering social awareness and global understanding, which has become a necessity nowadays in secondary education,” said Ericsson VP and head of sustainability and corporate responsibility Elaine Weidman-Grunewald.
Further, community health workers in the Koraro village would now have access to the Internet through mobile phones provided by Sony Mobile, and broadband access provided by Ericsson for improved healthcare supervision, monitoring and guidance.
“Connecting the health clinic in Koraro is one part of a new joint continent-wide campaign that aims to train, equip and deploy one-million community health workers throughout rural sub-Saharan Africa by the end of 2015, reaching millions of underserved people,” explained Weidman-Grunewald.
The 3G connectivity could be accessed by surrounding communities, which comprised in excess of 55 000 citizens.
To date, Ericsson has provided connectivity to Millennium Villages in 11 countries, namely Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Liberia.