Kigali January 30, 2019: Smart Africa and AFRALTI (The African Advanced Level Telecommunications Institute) have entered into a partnership to build human and institutional capacity by supporting the development and implementation of human and institutional capacity building programs and activities in ICTs for the benefit of the African region, with focus in the Eastern and Southern African region.

Smart Africa has identified the need of partnering with AFRALTI in activities focused on supporting the development of capacity building, training, consultancy in ICT. The key areas of focus are: Telecommunications (Radio Access Networks, Wireless Transmission and Fibre Optics), Networking infrastructure (Data Communications, Distributed Computing, Network Security, amongst others), Emerging technologies (5G, Big Data, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Cyber Security and Forensics). Regulatory training in spectrum management and postal and courier services. Another area of partnership is the support in establishment of innovation hubs that will address gaps in aligning technological requirements by governments in Africa to the innovations pioneered by the private sector through provision of workspaces, tools and training of budding innovators.

About AFRALTI

Since its establishment over 30 years ago, AFRALTI has been the place to go for cutting edge telecommunications and technology training for many of the professionals across Africa. “Most of the current and previous leaders in technology and telecommunications have been trained at AFRALTI.”   Mr. William Baraza, AFRALTI’s Director, said. “AFRALTI is, therefore, extremely excited to partner with Smart Africa in achieving its objective of creating a single digital African economy through capacity building, research and innovations in ICTs. This collaboration will ensure Africa remains the leading cog in the wheel of the 4th Industrial Revolution that is unavoidable and here with us”.

About Smart Africa

Smart Africa is a bold and innovative commitment from African Heads of State and government to accelerate sustainable socio-economic development on the continent, ushering Africa into a knowledge economy through affordable access to Broadband and usage of Information and Communications Technologies.

“Smart Africa strategic vision is to transform Africa into a single digital market. In doing so, our major pillars are underlined by capacity building, innovation, communications and advocacy, and resource mobilization. It is clear that AFRALTI will complement the work that Smart Africa has undertaken, especially in the area of capacity building in Southern and Eastern Africa. We are very delighted to have them on board and look forward to working with them.”   Dr Hamadoun Touré, Executive Director at Smart Africa.

Launched in 2013 by seven (7) African Heads of State, the Alliance has grown to 24 Member Countries and dozens of Private Sector and Academia members including Inmarsat, Ericsson, Econet Liquid, Huawei, CIB, MTN, Tata Communications Transformation Services, Microsoft, Orange, Facebook, Carnegie Mellon University Africa to name a few. Its founding members include the African Union Commission (AUC), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), World Bank, African Development Bank (AfDB), UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), African Telecommunications Union (ATU), New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the GSM Association (GSMA) and ICANN.

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