Microsoft signs pacts with Ghana

ACCRA, GHANA - Ghana and Angola have become the most recent African signatories to agreements with Microsoft Corp.

Earlier this month the government of Ghana signed a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. software giant, aimed at creating a workforce that is literate in information and communications technology. Last month, Angola signed an agreement with Microsoft on financing Internet access for the government and training.

The agreement between the government of Ghana and Microsoft calls for a number of actions. These include Microsoft working out a National Educational Licensing Agreement with the government of Ghana for all schools using Microsoft desktop and server software.

Microsoft has also agreed to provide free upgrades to Windows XP Professional for all new PC's purchased with Windows Home Edition and (to be negotiated) deeply discounted Office XP Professional under the Schools Agreement package in the Partners in Learning Programme.

Microsoft will in addition provide Windows 98 or Windows 2000 for re-installation on pre-used donated PCs (up to Pentium II machines) under the Access-Fresh Start for Donated PCs program, at no charge.

The pact also calls for Microsoft IT Academies to be available to all educational institutions in Ghana. To help kickstart this, Microsoft will assist the government of Ghana in establishing Microsoft IT Academies at four institutions, including the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT the first year.

In addition, Microsoft proposes to establish a state of the art .Net Laboratory at Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

The agreement between Angola and Microsoft on the other hand, will allow the country's state-owned public television to broadcast courses by Microsoft technicians, and also calls for the financing of the installation of technology for government access to the Internet.

These agreements have been in the shadow of words of caution from open source software advocates on the continent. The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa, a foundation that advocates the development and use of open source software, has warned that such agreements between Microsoft and African countries will hurt their local software industries.

Although Frank Agyekum, a spokesman of the Ghanaian government acknowledges that such agreements are not free of risk, he said the benefits are worth taking.

"Do we stay put till we fully develop our software base? On the other hand we can learn from that experience," Agyekum said.