Fraunhofer Center for Assistive Information and Communication Solutions – AICOSUnder the auspices of the Global Research Alliance (GRA), Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS together with several partners from Europe, Africa and Australia has launched a new project: the GRA ICT4D for rural Zambia.
In this project the Global Research Alliance (GRA) has initiated cooperation between major research institutes worldwide with the objective of challenging the lack of access to the world-wide communication infrastructure in rural areas of developing countries.
The GRA ICT4D project joins the efforts of VTT (Finland), CSIRO (Australia), the Meraka Institute (South Africa) and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft in Germany and Portugal, to take advantage of each institute’s individual expertise to jointly develop a communication infrastructure suitable to provide Internet access in rural Sub-Sahara-Africa. The organization MachaWorks supports the initiative as a local anchor-point in rural Zambia.
Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS will contribute with the software solutions for mobile devices which will address local demands and will be piloted in Zambia on top of the developed communication infrastructure.
Source: 24.02.2012, Fraunhofer Portugal