Uganda was on Wednesday evening elected to chair the African Advanced Level Telecommunications Institute (AFRALTI) governing council at a meeting held at Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala.
AFRALTI, an inter-governmental organisation headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya is mandated to provide human resources capacity building through high-level quality training, consultancy and advisory services to both management and the technical personnel in the Information and Communication and Technology sector in Africa.
The Institute also offers training workshops, certification programmes, Post Graduate Degrees, commercial programs and specialties in the ICT sector.
It is made up of 8 member countries of Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Swaziland and Mozambique although other countries including South Sudan have already showed interest in joining.
Uganda which was represented at the meeting by Uganda Communication Commission’s Fred Otunu, takes over the chairmanship from Swaziland and will head the council for the period running up to 2018. It will be deputized by Zimbabwe.
During the three day summit, representatives from the member states discussed strategies to build and boost the ICT sector on the continent.
Uganda’s Minister for ICT, Frank Tumwebaze who was the guest of honor at the opening of the summit highlighted the need for more investment in youths and innovation to enable sustainable growth if the sector.
“Institutes should put in more money so that young people get involved and actually form new innovations that can eventually solve the problems in our country,” he said.
“First we are proud that the ICT world is doing well and it has transformed businesses, markets and so on. For example people no longer want to work in an environment with no WiFi because they cannot do their work well”
“We should also not give up on our staff; let’s give funding for them in our financial budgets to go back to institutes like AFRALTI and be trained again and again.”
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