Capacity Building projects related to ICT in developing countries

The Millennium Development Goals, together with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS ) have paved the way to a number of Capacity Building (CB) projects related to ICT in developing countries. Satcom technology and knowledge can contribute to achieving education worldwide, especially in area or regions that have no or a bad infrastructure. For ESA, the CBICT study had the underlying goal to identify how to federate and catalyse a major line of actions to be undertaken with the participation of 3rd party institutions in line with the action plan proposed by the UN. The goal of this project was to define and validate a reference model for CB projects using satellite communications (Satcom). Satcom technology and knowledge can contribute to achieving education worldwide, especially in area or regions that have no or a bad infrastructure. With regard to the MDGs, Capacity Building (CB) is primarily about the empowerment of organizations and people. CB entails the strengthening of individual, organisational and institutional competencies of the local partners. It is a broad definition and in its essence, capacitating people and organisations is a component of the core strategy of empowerment of people and partner organisations. Empowering people and organisations relates to the strengthening of knowledge, skills and attitudes so that people and organisations are capable of taking their development in their own hands. In practical terms it means that at every stage of a project, people have to acquire different skills and knowledge.