Cisco is reinforcing its commitment to help reducing the Digital Divide :

Addis Ababa, 31st May 2007 – Cisco- the worldwide leader in Networking solutions on the Internet has announced today the arrival of Tae Yoo, Vice President for Corporate Affairs in Addis on Tuesday 6th June. Ethiopia will be the first country on the list of an intensive African tour where she will meet up with high representatives of the African Governments, NGOs and Cisco Networking Academies. Tae Yoo will leave Ethiopia to fly to Kenya, Rwanda, Cameroon and South Africa.

Cisco Corporate Affairs focus is on creating partnerships with local and global organizations to create positive, sustainable change in areas of education/capacity development, basic needs, and economic development.  Cisco is committed to the idea that true sustainable change is achieved through collaborative partnerships between the Public, Private and NGO sectors.

Cisco has been committed to create strong links with African Governments in which great emphasis is placed on capacity development through Networking Academies as a tool. The Networking Academy Program was founded in 1997 as a philanthropic training initiative. It provides great opportunities to students, teachers and employers and it helps build economies.  Over the past 6 years, more than 300 Networking Academies in 46 countries across Africa have trained and graduated more than 100,000 students in different areas like IT Fundamentals, Networking, Security and Wireless. This number is expected to grow by 100% over the next 2-3 years as demand for ICT skills is by far surpassing the supply by the market.

One of its main missions is to increase access to the knowledge economy for individuals and underserved communities by enabling network-centric expertise and skills.

In each of the countries Tae will visit, she will have meetings with Government Ministers and NGOs on expanding the Network Academy Program further and establishing additional CSR initiatives, hence helping transform the local economies.

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