The extension of the SWAY4EDU project (Satellite Way for Education ) was signed today between the Head of the ESA telecommunications department, Mr. M. Vaissière and the CEO of Openet, Mr. V. Gaudiano. The 1.5 million euro contract is a result of the promising achievements obtained with the implementation of the project SWAY4EDU that Openet proposed in 2012 and was co-funded by the European Space Agency under the ARTES ( Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems ) program.

The project, part of the innovative services offered by Openet for the market on the African continent, is divided into three areas of action. The first foresees the creation of a group of radio in rural areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that will be able to access the e-learning contents through the eLearning platform and the cloud services, which serve to increase the types of programs available through the Webradio Platform; the second refers to the provision of training modules to a group of schools in South Africa, focusing on environmental education and information and communication technology, through the use of satellite technology; the third, finally, is aimed at establishing a “process of evaluation of the results” based on a centralized monitoring system .

Recipients of the new project phase are 20 rural radio in the Democratic Republic of Congo and 12 schools in the rural area of Mpumalanga in South Africa in partnership with a school in the region of Basilicata, an Italian region which for many years has been investing in education, using innovative methods.

The realization of the project will be implemented in collaboration with the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization; with SINGITA (a company committed to supporting the development programs of local communities in South Africa through the promotion of tourism) and the Basilicata region.