Africa Online Injects over One Million Kshs. towards rehabilitation of Noigam Primary School in Kitale, Kenya.

Leading Pan-African ICT provider, Africa Online in partnership with Telkom South Africa on Friday 25^th September 2009 officially handed over Noigam Primary School in Kitale; Kenya to the local community in a ceremony commemorating the opening of the school's rehabilitated classrooms, fencing of the schools' compound and donation of new desks.

Like many other schools affected by the post election violence, the students of Noigam primary have been learning in temporary mud walled classrooms that were no longer fit for use. It was against this background that Africa Online Holdings stepped in and donated a total of over Kshs One million to the Catholic Diocese of Kitale to assist in the re-building of the School.

The Member of Parliament for Trans Nzoia East Hon Joshua Kutuny, officiated the ceremony. Also present at the ceremony was Africa Online's Acting CEO Shiletsi Makhofane, accompanied by some staff members and community elders.

Speaking about the initiative, Africa Online's Acting CEO Shiletsi Makhofane said, "Today, we are here to officially handover the school to the local community. We are glad that we as Africa Online have been able to positively touch another life and ensure that these children are able to continue with their education in a decent environment enabling them to realize their future goals."

He added, "Africa Online is committed to creating partnerships with the communities where we are present. Our goal is to match the needs of the community with specific interventions that will leave a lasting impact."

At Noigam Primary School, Africa Online contributed a total of over Kshs One million to facilitate the rebuilding of two class rooms for the students, the provision of new desks and fencing of the school compound.

The Member of Parliament for Cherangany' in Trans Nzoia East District Hon. Joshua Kutuny said, "We applaud Africa Online for embracing good corporate citizenship and urge other companies to support the government in building our country through private-public partnerships which ensure mutual benefit."

Mr. Shiletsi concluded the event by encouraging the school children to embrace the opportunities that the company was providing to make their lives meaningful. "The greatest gift we can give is to present you with the opportunity to make a difference tomorrow."

Africa Online participates in meaningful social development initiatives impacting on Education, health, the environment, and sports with the sole objective of transforming the lives of the people living in the communities where it operates.

About Africa Online

Africa Online continues to take the lead in customer driven innovation, community development as well as excellence in customer services all its operations in Africa. It is Africa Online's goal to provide revolutionary technologies that come from extensive research in the most appropriate solutions that meet the requirements of its various markets. Africa Online will continue to support initiatives that lead to the growth and development of Africa as a whole.

Introduction

Following the announcement of the results of the Kenya General Election on 30th December 2007, sporadic violence erupted countrywide between various communities resulting in loss of lives, injuries, looting, and destruction of property and displacement of thousands of people.

This escalated over the following days, concentrated in the Rift Valley, Nairobi, Nyanza, Coast, Central and Western provinces.

It is estimated that around 1,500 people lost their lives, with a number of particularly deadly arson attacks on churches.

The Photo on the left shows the makeshift shelters that were used after the violence by the Internally Displaced People.

Africa Online's Corporate Social Initiative Programme

On 18th April 2008, Africa Online supported the appeal to rebuild three schools that were vandalized as part of its Corporate Social Initiative Programme. The three schools were Ng'arua Primary School in North Rift, Eldoret, Toi Primary School in Nairobi and Noigam Primary School in Kitale.

Assessments were done immediately and discussions held with the respective head teachers for the three schools towards the support.

Toi Primary School

Toi Primary School, located in the slum areas of Kibera in Nairobi, was the first school identified for Africa Online's support. The school fence, food store and books were vandalized during the violence being in the centre of the slum area.

At the time of receiving the funds, the fencing of the school had been undertaken by a different donor, as well as the books and the food. The only tangible area that was a gap was the equipping of the staff room which Africa Online settled to support with the funding after getting approval from the donor as the funding was expected to benefit the students directly.

The support was directed to procurement of desks for the class 8B pupils. Foam desks with a capacity to sit a total of 69 pupils were purchased. The donation was officially handed over to the school on 5th October 2008 in a handover ceremony officiated by the late CEO of Africa Online Holdings Mr. John Joseph, members of the Kenya Red Cross, the school committee and pupils.

Impact on Completion of the Project

The donation increased the sitting capacity of the class. In addition to sitting capacity, information from the class teacher confirms that there is great improvement in the pupils handwriting as a result of writing on desks as opposed to writing on their knees which was the case before. The pupils also have space to store their bags and books.

The school envisages better performance as a result of a more friendly and conducive learning environment this year for the candidates.

Ng'arua Primary School

The above school was identified in July 2008. It was vandalized during the post election violence and the roofing including the wall structures of all the classrooms were extensively damaged. By the time Africa Online came in to assist, the children were schooling under tents.

With the support of their District Commissioner, assessment was done in the school including the Architectural Drawings and Designs, and the Project commenced immediately in August 2008 upon approval from Africa Online Management, following decline of the first school that had been identified for support. The project was completed in December 2008.

The construction involved 3 blocks which included the Administration Block, Upper Primary Block of class 4‐8 and the Lower Primary Block consisting of class 1-3.

The school was officially handed over to the beneficiary community in an official ceremony March 12, 2009 officiated by Mr. Shiletsi Makhofane, CEO of Africa Online and other Africa Online representatives, Kenya Red Cross representatives, Government of Kenya representatives, the school committee and the beneficiary community.

Impact of the Project

1. Peace Building and Reconciliation

The project has to a great extent enhanced Peace Building and Reconciliation among the Communities through the involvement of all the affected communities in reconstruction of the school working together, planning and executing the activities together for a common goal irrespective of ethnic background.

2. Increased Students Population

The primary school enrolment increased from 17 pupils at the start of the project to 450 to date. There are reports of transfers from other schools to Ng'arua Primary School. Demand for daily admissions range from 10‐15 pupils daily.

3. Increased Teaching Staff

The school has received more posting of teachers from the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) of the Ministry of Education as well as others from the Parents Teachers Association, to support the increased pupils' population.

4. Registration of Students in the National Exams

The school has this year registered as a KCPE centre registering 22 candidates (11 boys and 11 girls). The candidates for the previous year had to sit their exams in the IDP camps.

5. Improved Performance

The availability of a conducive learning environment for the pupils has resulted in the school ranking position 6 out of 22 in the Zonal Mock exams held this year and it is expected that their performance in the final exam will be further improved in light of the favorable learning environment.

The introduction of the InfiNet product as the first ‘real' broadband wireless service in the Kenyan market revolutionalised the ICT industry in the country. Popularly identified with the consumer market Africa Online reveals that there are plans underway to move into other market segments.

In the beginning of 2007 Africa Online Kenya had a total of four base stations in Nairobi and one base station in Mombasa, for their flagship broadband product InfiNet with plans for expansion within and out of these regions. The increased demand for the product and increasing competition catalyzed the introduction of Phase two of the expansion plan which kicked off end of 2007 and continued into early 2008. This included the introduction of four additional base stations in Nairobi School, Umoja, Garden Estate, Karen and an additional base station in Mombasa increasing the Nairobi coverage from 60% to 80%. This has resulted in a 100% increase in Africa Online's InfiNet client base as compared to the same time last year.

In Kenya other than Nairobi and Mombasa, the InfiNet service has more recently penetrated the largely affordable internet starved territories of Nakuru , Eldoret, Kisumu ,Thika and many others coming up where it is proving to be improving and enriching lives of residents.

This is being replicated across other operations. InfiNet currently has presence in Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania thus emphasizing the kind of cutting edge advanced technology Africa Online is ready to deploy for the betterment of society.

The organization also plans to address a large section of their client base, the SMEs, which currently make up 60% of its market. ‘By using our existing database we are in the process of developing customized solutions that are specific to this market segment and that can be adjusted to suit individual organizations' needs'.

According to George Gathu, Product Manager under whom the InfiNet product falls, "infiNet is the future of Mobile Broadband Wireless Access and with its convergence of a host of value added services, all in a single package will revolutionalize the Mobile Broadband Wireless Access concept"

InfiNet has been packaged in several packages that are affordable while not compromising of quality making it appealing to users across the social divide.

Currently the InfiNet product range is delivered using a technology approved by the IEEE Standards Association Standards Board as the 802.20 standard. In approving the standard in June, the IEEE SASB noted that this is "Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks - Standard Air Interface for Mobile Broadband Wireless Access Systems Supporting Vehicular Mobility - Physical and Media Access Control Layer Specification," will enable the worldwide deployment of cost-effective, spectrum-efficient, ubiquitous, always-on and interoperable multi-vendor mobile broadband wireless access networks. By operating on a standardized technology Africa Online will be able to bring its clientele greater value and quality made possible by technological advances.

Keep your eyes open for Africa Online's new product bouquet!