Mokgosi-Mwantembe continues, “HP South Africa’s wish is for our country to become a fully fledged knowledge-based economy where everyone, not just corporate South Africa, has access to ICT and are sufficiently skilled to make themselves more productive members of the economy.
More importantly these days is the developing and nurturing from a young age and HP is involved with a number of initiatives that support South African and African education. One of its boldest CSR initiatives is the NEPAD e-schools initiative which, upon completion will provide approximately 600 000 schools across the continent with the benefits of ICT and connectivity to the NEPAD e-School network and the Internet. The NEPAD e-Schools Project was first publicly announced at the 2003 Africa Economic Summit in Durban, South Africa. The scope of the project focuses on providing an end-to-end education solution that will utilise Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to connect schools to the NEPAD eschools network and the Internet. In addition to connectivity, solutions will provide content and learning material, as well as establish health points at schools in support of the NEPAD e- Health Programme. To date, HP has launched three e-schools, the first of which was in Uganda – the South African e-schools launch was the third launch – and was extremely well received by education bodies, Government and all relevant stakeholders, when it was launched at Maripe Secondary in Limpopo in April 2007.
Then in August 2007 HP announced the HP Business Institute (HPBI). The HPBI forms a significant part of HP’s overall Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) programmes and is aimed at accelerating enterprise and skills development in South Africa’s small to medium enterprise ICT sector.
HPBI is an enterprise and skills development programme aimed at graduates in the SME ICT sector, focusing on developing scarce and critical skills in high growth areas of the IT Industry. These skills will be delivered through and into existing B-BBEE SME IT companies, thus enabling these companies to break through into the more sustainable high-end of the IT industry.
Furthermore, there is the HP Business Academy which fast tracks HP’S BBBEE resellers empowering them with the skills they need to compete successfully in the business environment. Mokgosi-Mwantembe concludes “If all businesses, learning institutions and Government work together we can make a real difference to education and economic productivity across South Africa. HP South Africa also believes that creating projects that are sustainable, producing more than they consume, is an active form of empowerment.”
