Data centre provider Teraco has announced it will provide a support grant valued at R7.5-million to the South African Broadband Education Networks (Saben) through the Teraco Connect Foundation.
Teraco will partner with Saben to support the national drive to end bandwidth poverty in South African schools and public technical colleges.
“The grant will help to facilitate the changing landscape of education in South Africa. Digital infrastructure initiatives, including remote learning and educational streaming will become more efficient and easier to implement.
“The Teraco Connect Foundation sees the grant as an investment in the future of this country at a time when all sectors are facing significant challenges. We are proud to invest in education, one of the most important cornerstones to secure the future growth and development of South Africa,” notes Teraco CEO Jan Hnizdo.
Saben is a nonprofit company serving the public technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector in South Africa. It is purpose-built to solve the digital requirements of this sector.
Hnizdo says the Teraco Connect Foundation grant will not only enable these educational institutions to access content directly and grow their collective digital strategy, but will also assist in laying essential foundations for future digital remote learning strategies.
“To enable digital transformation, Saben’s need for direct access to a rich ecosystem of content and cloud providers can be realised, enabling efficient connections to education cloud services, streaming, and remote learning possibilities.”
Helga van Wyk, the project lead of the TVET Campus Connectivity Project, an initiative funded by the National Skills Fund, says the Teraco Connect Foundation grant enables Saben to solve its digital requirements.
“We are now better equipped to improve the transformative potential of each institution in this rapidly evolving digital age with Teraco’s generous support. The preparedness of all colleges is a top priority and Saben needs to be able to support this digital transformation adequately,” she adds.
Technically, the grant provides Saben a physical presence in Teraco data centres located in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg and gives colleges direct network access to Platform Teraco, where the institutions will benefit from highly secure and direct interconnection to Africa’s largest digital ecosystem.
Saben GM Garth Scholtz says South Africa’s skills shortage cannot be addressed unless the country's education system produces a labour force with the right skills to meet the industry’s demand.