An IT education is vital for African school children in the modern world. IT skills are increasingly in demand by business and global economy and are paramount to securing good jobs and improving standards of living.

...thanks to the programme, most state secondary schools now have a computer lab and teachers in these schools have been trained...

Furthermore, with access to the internet, school children can widen their understanding of the world around them, and they can link up with other schools abroad improving cross-cultural communication. Todays IT software programmes are powerful teaching aids and are more inexpensive than text books; Aids and other health awareness programmes can also be installed on to computers, helping to reduce disease and improving the nations wellbeing.

However, the vast majority of African state schools lack the resources to offer training in IT skills and the ultimate result is that the continent remains poor due to the shortage skills in the job market. A skilled IT-trained workforce is a key factor in Africas ability to boost its productivity, attract investment and develop. Without IT skills, young people in Africa will remain locked in a cycle of poverty and will always remain dependent on aid.

Before the ITSA-CFAS programme, nearly all the secondary school students in the countries we work in were leaving school without computing experience. But thanks to the programme, most state secondary schools now have a computer lab and teachers in these schools have been trained to teach IT. Every PC donated is used by an average of 75 students over a three year period (average lifespan of PCs is three years), so hundreds of children can be helped with just a few computers.

Donating computers to Africa also helps to preserve the environment. In the UK, an estimated 3 million computers are decommissioned every year when companies upgrade IT systems and many of these are simply dumped on landfill sites. While used computers are of little value in the UK, they are a prized commodity in Africa, where their lifespan can be increased by several years. Under the EUs Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive, it is now illegal to discard of computers in landfill, so ITSA provides a responsible and benevolent means of disposing of your old IT equipment.

ITSA guarantees secure data wiping of all computers sent to Africa to US Department of Defence standard 5002-22, making recovery of data impossible.