In order to strengthen the scaling-up of its activities and partnerships in Zambia, Connect Africa recently has launched a public and private sector stakeholder engagement programme with financial support of the TelecentresAfrica Programme of CTA, through which a number of workshops are implemented.

The workshops are designed to stimulate participation and involvement of the government and private sector agencies and identify critical challenges facing delivery of services to deep rural areas through ICTs and suggest possible solutions to improve communications and access to resource information services by rural communities. This is in line with key workshop outputs in which the Connect Africa Service Network infrastructure could effectively facilitate the delivery of multiple government and private sector services to rural communities

The first Connect Africa Engagement Workshop for government officials was held at Ridgeway Sun Hotel in Lusaka on 24th September and involved 17 senior government representatives from 9 government ministries and agencies, notably Agriculture and Cooperatives, Communications and Transport, Health, Education, Community Development and Communication Authority of Zambia (CAZ).