IBM Sharpens Local IT, Business Skills

An international team of consultants from IBM�s Corporate Service Corps (CSC) programme has assisted three institutions to improve efficiency and effectiveness through utilising the latest technologies and business processes. The 11-member team spent a month working on projects ranging from Information and Technology governance to website management and accounting solutions. The team was made up of IBM employees from around the world who were carefully selected to perform community-driven economic development, working at the intersection of business, technology and society. Beneficiary institutions were Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Tema Technical Institute, and Tema SOS Children�s Village. They worked with Tema SOS Children�s Village to develop a website to enable it interact better with current and prospective students, alumni, parents, teachers and members of the public. They also trained the SOS teaching and administrative staff on website management and development of an e-learning platform. Mr. Joe Mensah, Country General Manager, IBM Ghana, in an interview with B&FT in Tema at a ceremony to mark IBM�s 100-year anniversary, said: �The team�s activities were a demonstration of IBM's desire to offer expertise to the benefit of local communities. �IBM Ghana is proud to host the 100th team of the Corporate Service Corps initiative. IBM is committed to supporting the public sector in Ghana to leverage advanced technologies and processes to transform the delivery of services in the country.� Mr. Mensah added: �IBM�s inventions are the underpinnings of today�s technology industry. They illustrate how IBM has consistently adapted to remain relevant to the changing needs of the modern world while touching the lives of people in Ghana. �IBM has made substantial investments in Ghana over the past year in terms of skills development, and we see opportunities for further development as business and government leaders capture the potential of information technology to transform their enterprises and work smarter.� IBM has an active programme of citizenship in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa. One of the programmes is IBM�s Corporate Service Corps initiative � a corporate version of the Peace Corps, through which over the past two years IBM has deployed teams of IBM employees to Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and South Africa to work on projects key to increasing local and national competitiveness. Ghana became one of the first countries in the world to host IBM�s newly-created Corporate Services Corps in July 2008. Since then, IBM has deployed four Corporate Service Corps teams in Ghana, working in key areas such as Information and Communication Technology (ICT), business development, tourism, finance and academia. IBM has supplied products and solutions to the country since the 1970s, and already works closely with a number of business partners in the country including CFAO, Infotech, IPMC, Micro Warehouse and Sunnet. The CSC is a global IBM initiative designed to provide small businesses, educational institutions and non-profit organisations in growth markets with