Portugal is going to make a contribution of 500 thousand dollars (around 314 thousand euros) towards the creation, in partnership with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), of a Centre of Excellence in Africa for Portuguese and Spanish speaking countries. Besides this financial contribution, Portugal will also bear the cost of the participation of Portuguese trainers/experts for some of training activities of this Centre.
For ANACOM, this action takes on a particular importance in the context of its programme of cooperation with its counterparts of the Portuguese speaking countries as well as in the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Portuguese Government and the ITU on 8 December 2007.
The main objective of this project is to provide training programmes in high priority areas, contributing to greater autonomy of the communications sector in beneficiary countries, in areas such as: telecommunications regulation and policies; new services and technologies; business management; universal service, and the development of information and communication technologies (ICT) in rural zones.
The Centre is directed at African countries with Portuguese (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe) or Spanish (Equatorial Guinea) as their language, with plans for the creation of an e-learning platform which will allow the training to be extended to other destinations such as East Timor.
The Centre will be inaugurated in 2008, with training planned for the year in the areas of regulation radio spectrum management and telecommunications marketing.
The new Centre of Excellence is the seventh of this type to be set up by the ITU, and will form part of a network of centres, which, since 2003, have been providing sector related training to over 15 thousand professionals.
Related information on ANACOM's website:
- ITU - International Telecommunication Union https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?categoryId=66695
