IBM partner CAL-Rwanda rebrands

CAL-Rwanda is set to operate under the Symphony brand, Business Times has learnt. CAL Rwanda General Manager, Navin Ganatra, said the IT firm which has been an affiliate of Symphony group since 1982 will now have full access to Symphony resources. “We believe that by re-branding, we shall have a closer working association with our parent company in Nairobi and hope to use this to bring renewed energy into our efforts of availing absolute cutting edge technologies to IT users in Rwanda,” Ganatra said. Symphony is a large and well-established IT company in East Africa, with a corporate history that spans back over 30 years. It is headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, with operations in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Ethiopia. The company offers IT solutions in areas of consultancy, training and education, business solutions, infrastructure and maintenance services. Representing one of the world’s premier IT infrastructure and solution providers like IBM, Lenovo, Sun Microsystems, GE Digital Energy, Cisco Systems, LEXMARK, Microsoft and Sage among others, Symphony has positioned itself to deliver core technologies. With Rwanda well on the super highway of being a regional ICT hub, Symphony’s presence can only be good news, Patrick Nyirishema, the head of IT department at Rwanda Development Board (RDB) says. “It is good and contributes to the 2020 Vision of turning the country into the region’s ICT hub,” Nyirishema said. Rwanda has been steadfast in its goal of becoming a regional ICT hub and there was little surprise when the Secretary General of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Hamadoun Toure recently acknowledged President Paul Kagame for his role in ICT development. The government has made investment, through various programmes, digitally connecting all Rwandans, be it in the urban areas or rural, as spelt out in the country’s Vision 2020. After being recently named East Africa’s number one ICT nation by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Rwanda has also benefited from ICT-based investments by lucrative international players such as Microsoft and Nokia. Currently, Rwanda’s sector budget is said to be on par with nations of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of 30 rich nations, at 1.6 percent, far above the African average. Ends

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IBM partner CAL-Rwanda rebrands