KIGALI - The Rwanda Development Board in charge of Information Communication Technology (RDB-IT) has scooped a partnership award in recognition of its outstanding capacity building efforts in collaboration with Cisco IT initiatives in Rwanda.

RDB–IT which was awarded for being Cisco’s Partner of the Year in East Africa, got the regional award during the just concluded East African Cisco conference organized by Cisco Systems Networking Academy Programme in Mombasa, Kenya.

"We strongly recognize the importance of empowering our human resources as a critical approach in fulfilling our mandate of transforming our economy into a knowledge-based one,” said Nkubito Bakuramutsa, the deputy CEO of RDB-IT in a statement released by the Board yesterday.

The RDB –IT, is a government Information, Communication and Technology implementation agency.

"We are therefore honoured to have got such recognition at this stage when we are building a robust ICT infrastructure.”

He added that in the past, RDB-IT had been providing technical support to government ministries and public institutions but has now embarked on providing training programmes for ICT professionals to the level of Cisco Certified Network Engineers and Microsoft Certified System Engineers.

In partnership with the Korea Telecoms Corporation to provide world class training programmes for Rwandans, and 20 people from RDB-IT and other government institutions have so far benefited in a space of a year.

"We have made arrangements to send more Rwandans to Korea for intensive world class training programmes in technology,” he said. 

The triumph was attributed to its commitment to human capacity building in the ICT sector across the country, particularly in the underserved areas in the countryside.

According to the statement, RDB-IT, through its rural and community access programme, has laid a comprehensive plan to deploy Cisco training to the community tele-centres across the country. 

In addition to the award, Cisco has earmarked a $2m budget for IT projects in Rwanda, and also invited RDB-IT to advice on the interventions where the money could be used in the development of the sector.

According to Nadine Mulindahabi, the Human and Institutional Capacity Building Director at RDB-IT, 500 public servants have trained in Cisco, Microsoft, and Linux product and basic user-end training that lead to ICT professional certification since last year. 

"The target is to train 80 percent of all public servants in basic computing and internet usage by 2010,” she says.

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