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India’s dream project in Africa to turn real
Indias dream project in Africa - a satellite and fibre optic network that will connect 53 countries of the African Union - is set to turn real with the signing of a landmark pact on Thursday.
The brainchild of President APJ Abdul Kalam, this Pan African Network (PAN) dispensing tele-education and tele-medicine facilities will revolutionise communication and accelerate development throughout Africa.
The $50 million project, which will be funded by the Indian external affairs ministry under its Aid-to-Africa Budget programme, is being hailed as the modern face of the India-Africa ties and cements the growing synergy in developmental projects.
The proposed network, which is expected to take three years to become operational, would also help set up Internet and video conferencing services and support e-governance, e-commerce, infotainment, resource mapping and meteorological services connectivity.
Kalam first unveiled the idea of PAN during his visit to the Pan African Parliament in South Africa in September 2004.
More than a year later, and with the Commission of the African Union endorsing the project, the two sides will sign a memorandum on PAN in the presence of Minister of State for External Affairs Rao Inderjit Singh and African heads of mission at Hyderabad House here on Thursday.
Shashi Tripathi, Secretary (West) in the Indian external affairs ministry, and Bernard Zoba, the African Unions Commissioner for Infrastructure, will sign the treaty.
The network will connect five universities, 53 learning centers, 10 super speciality hospitals and 53 remote hospitals in the 53 African countries. There will be two universities from India and three universities from Africa; three super specialty hospitals from India; the rest seven of them will be from Africa, official sources revealed.
The Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd (TCIL) would implement the project in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), both based in New Delhi, and other organisations will support the network. TCIL will manage the network, which will have 169 terminals, for the initial period of three years.
The project includes setting up a VVIP network that will network the presidents of all the 53 Pan-African countries that will have a ready access to their counterparts through video conferencing and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) facilities.
The PAN will be VSAT based star network with 116 VSAT terminals equally distributed over all the countries and a hub located in one of the countries. India has already set up Telemedicine and Tele-education hubs at Bangalore and Ahmedabad respectively. It is proposed to link the hub of PAN with the Hubs of Telemedicine and Tele-education in India through under-sea cables.
The tele-medicine connectivity enables the 10 super specialty hospitals to provide specialty services to 53 remote hospitals that are fully equipped with the medical equipments such as EGC, ultra scan and echo machine in each location.
Besides establishing the communication infrastructure, the tele-education plan also includes setting up of the five tele-education studios with post production set up, non-linear editing facility at each of the universities and data centres.
This facility will help teachers to interact with select students in a sequence and also simultaneously collaborate with them in research