Mauritius CyberCity selected as venue for ACT 2004

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The sixth annual African Computing & Telecommunications Summit (ACT 2004) is to be held at the impressive new CyberTower being constructed in Mauritius as the key element of the island state’s drive to become an ICT development hub for Africa and the Indian Ocean.

AITEC has been invited by the Act ICT Industry Alliance of Mauritius to hold the next ACT Summit in Mauritius due to the attendance it will attract from ICT professionals and managers from throughout Africa, as well as other international participation, thus promoting the country’s position as a supplier of ICT services and expertise.

The theme of the Summit will be “Developing Partnerships to Mainstream Africa’s ICT Industry.”

Welcoming AITEC’s decision to hold the Summit in Mauritius, Viv Padayatchy, Chairman of the Association of Internet Service Providers (FAIR) and Secretary of the Mauritius ICT Alliance, called on industry counterparts across Africa to use the Summit as an opportunity to pool knowledge and experience to promote the continent on the international stage. “Although some of us may land up competing for the same outsourcing work, the potential market is huge and expanding. We will all benefit from increased skills levels across the region, as well as improved perceptions of the continent’s ICT capacity. I’m confident that companies attending ACT 2003 will find that co-operation and alliances, rather than competition, will be the order of the day.”

AITEC will hold the event in partnership with Publi-Promo, the leading exhibition company in Mauritius.

The following will be the key streams within the Summit:

Ø Business Process Outsourcing Forum
Ø Knowledge Sharing
Ø The African Open Source Forum, is associate with the Free & Open source Foundation for Africa
Ø eGovernment Forum in association with the UN Economic Commission for Africa
Ø ICT Policy & Telecoms Regulation
Ø Telecommunication Operators Forum
Ø ICT for Development

The ACT Summit has been held in the UK, South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria in previous years. Over 2,000 African ICT professionals, managers, resellers, innovators and policy-makers have benefited from the Summit’s intensive knowledge-sharing platform.

For further details of ACT 2004, contact:
IN MAURITIUS: Didier de Senneville, MD, Publi-Promo Tel 208-3873; Mobile: 255-7677 ppromo@intnet.mu

INTERNATIONAL: Sean Moroney, AITEC Africa, Tel: +44-1480-495595 sean@aitecafrica.com