The National Institute for Information Technology (NIIT), a leading Indian IT firm, has expressed interest in extending affordable training to more African countries as a way of transforming their economies from agricultural to information-based economies.

Vijay K. Thadani, the NIIT CEO, has said that the company is willing to invest in Rwanda among other African countries.

"The only requirement is to have a reliable partner, interested in the Information Technology (IT) business-someone who is fully committed to the development of skills and financial ability,” Thadani said recently during an interview.

Thadani also remarked that Rwanda has a come up strongly as fertile ground for IT skills development and the existing infrastructure will facilitate the opening of a new outlet in Rwanda given the conducive atmosphere here for investment, and is rapidly growing in IT.

He revealed that NIIT is now charges One Dollar an hour and plans to lower its costs to as far as 10 cents an hour to make it affordable for everyone, especially in African countries, compared to the United States where a student pays 100 dollars per hour.

"IT is vital to Africa’s development and our goal is to extend affordable and quality education for all. There is need for an increased skills development, ICT talent and entrepreneurship in Africa and Asia, so as to enable them to face the various economic challenges” he stated
NIIT has a larger presence in Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, Ghana and Zambia.

The institute also offers scholarships to students and has developed and utilized the enormous human resource to make India a global IT hub and a stages a lead in exporting IT services and software as well as outsourcing especially to the US.

The Institute also offers scholarships to students and earlier this year it offered over 30,000 scholarships to Nigerian students after more than 200,000 applied.

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