Mombasa Digital Hub

Camara recognises that the long term sustainability of its operations is going to depend on building what we are calling digital hubs in the developing world. These hubs will essentially emulate what we do in the Dublin refubishment centre but will also capacity built ICT epxertise on the ground out here through providing training and ICT services to the Camara equipped schools and local business. In time these centres will become digital hubs in the region taking computers from anywhere they want, refurbishing them and maintaining them around an 'Open Source' philosophy.

Mombasa is goin to be our first hub. To date we have located a marvellous premises on the grounds of the Sheikh Khalif school with the management of the school prepared to fully support the project and integrate its operations into their vocational training curriculum.

The Sheikh Khalif school is one of the top secondary schools in the area and has a great alumini association who we have agreed to partner with on this project. The Alumini group consists of local business men and women who were graduates of the school and who now want to give something back to their community.

The refurbishment centre will be housed in a couple of old disused vocational workship training areas on the campus. These workshops have fully 40 foot trailer access and are ideal for a refurbishment center. They are secure have a good supply of readily availible ICT expertise and have the space and operational capacity to run smoothly.

Basically the plan would be to ship pre-tested and data wiped computers to this centre where the full refurbishment, loading of the open source operating system and educational software and cleaning of the machines would take place. Serious training of personnel needs to be done in advance and Camara would commit to doing that in davcne of the centre becoming fully operational.

The final piece of the jigsaw is to get some local capital to fund the start-up and adminstrative costs of the project. We are working on that.