Cisco Systems has announced it will be sponsoring South Africa’s State Information Technology Agency’s (SITA) GovTech 2012 next week.
This year’s SITA Govtech conference takes place in Durban from 25 – 28 September.
The company has committed to providing the core network infrastructure throughout the Durban International Convention Center as part of its sponsorship of the event. The infrastructure will include routers, switches, wireless access points as well as Identity and Management Services while Cisco’s engineering team will work with the organising committee to ensure all attendees remain connected throughout the event.
Alpheus Mangale, General Manager for Cisco South Africa said: “Cisco welcomes SITA’s theme choice for GovTech 2012 – ICT Collaboration: Across and Beyond Government – because it is synonymous with Cisco’s public sector strategy in South Africa. The public sector in South Africa is responsible for some of today’s most ambitious and far-reaching projects so investment in the latest technology will help to deliver many benefits that will help achieve their service goals and objectives across projects that will make a tangible difference for both employees and citizens,”
“Our Cisco and partner technologies integrated into advanced solutions are designed to meet the needs of education, as well as state, local, and federal government. Our public sector offering is comprehensive, ranging from technology solutions for Physical Security, Connected Real Estate to Secure IP Telephony, and School Safety as well as remote Health technology solutions,” said Mangale.
Cisco is working with the South African government utilising public-private partnerships across a number of learning based initiatives, to help cultivate ICT startups and entrepreneurs, which include the Cisco Networking Academy Program, Global Talent Acceleration Program (GTAP) Community Knowledge Centers and Cisco Entrepreneur Institutes:
- The Networking Academy uses a public-private partnership model where Cisco partners with educational institutions, non-profits and non-governmental organisations, governments and community centres that provide classroom space, computer lab equipment, and qualified instructors. Cisco provides online curricula, teacher training, and professional development for instructors.
- Now entering its fourth year in South Africa and growing from strength to strength, the Cisco GTAP program is part of a long-term initiative aimed at developing home-grown information technology and communications skills to contribute to South Africa’s economy, GDP growth and employment.
- The Cisco Entrepreneur Institute is a coaching and training program for entrepreneurs that includes content that will teach young entrepreneurs how to start a business, grow a business and IT enable a business.
Cisco also works through public-private partnerships to train managers for the centres to make them relevant, sustainable and viable for the local communities. 15 centres in South Africa offer the Cisco Networking Academy program in order to address the shortage of information and communications technology (ICT) skills in even in the remotest of communities.
“As part of its ‘Country Transformation’ agenda Cisco aims to work with South Africa’s local and national government to make optimal use of technology, our goal being to help drive economic growth and social inclusion in even in the most underserved areas of South Africa,”Mangale concluded by saying. “In order to be able to embrace and help sustain this growth, Cisco is supporting the government and organisations in South Africa who are already putting job creation at the forefront of their agendas.”
