Mandriva - Angola's Partner in Creating an Information Society

Angola and Mandriva signed today a broad technical cooperation agreement, which should help Angola reach its aim: becoming an information society.

Angola recently celebrated 5 years of peace after a period of almost 30 years of internal conflicts. Its economy is growing at a fast pace thanks to a large quantity of natural resources, like diamonds and oil, and to an active agriculture. The government wants to take another step forward by transforming its society into an informational one.

Pedro Teta, Angolan Vice-Minister of Science and Technology considers that the use of Information Technologies will help the progress of Angola's society, in domains like justice and poverty reduction because it can bring up new ways of improving the life of the citizens.

Internet access is available in all 18 provinces of the country, but the lack of telecommunications infrastructure and training is still a problem that is on the agenda of the Angolan government. At this moment, fiber optics is installed across the country and training programs are starting first for the civil servants and then for all the students.

The National Commission for Information Technologies (CNTI) has the role to help reduce the digital division in Angola at the state level and in the general population. CNTI considers open source software a very important element in building an information society.

Mandriva will offer technology solutions, training and consulting services as stated in the agreement with CNTI. The French company will train the first core team of open source specialists, it will provide technology and products to ensure the maintenance of the first open source deployments created by CNTI.

A Brazilian team from Mandriva began its activity this summer with the aim of training 50 Angolan engineers. A local firm, Troy, will be in close collaboration with Mandriva during the entire period of the program.