Photo Courtesy of Microsoft Bill Gates

The founder of Microsoft Corporation and President Alvaro Uribe met with national leaders last March in Cartagena. Agreements and compromises in education, competitiveness and access to technology in Colombia were confirmed.

Gates declared education to be the most important aspect of social development and economic growth. He announced the installation of 15,000 new PCs with Windows in the public schools; free Windows upgrades for another 30,000 school computers, and further investment in the “Computers to Educate” program.

The Computers to Educate program collects and refurbishes discarded PCs and redistributes them to public schools, along with the appropriate training. With the government’s collaboration, a plan that utilizes innovative software packages to educate teachers was also agreed upon. The goals are to improve the quality of education by transforming the methods of teaching and using computers, and to increase the ratio of computers to students to 20, from the current 48, by the year 2010.

Digital access for those outside of schools also remains an important objective. In Colombia today, 42 IT centers, in alliance with strategic private and public institutions, provide access to information technology and run related training programs. Nearly one million persons from underserved rural and urban communities have been given the opportunity to acquire the necessary knowledge to improve their work opportunities, create businesses and raise their quality of life. Currently, the focus is on children, handicapped persons, former members of illegal armed groups, and people affected by violence in rural and urban zones.

Innovation was another concern, and objectives in that area were upgraded as well. The initiative “Academies for Technology,” in cooperation with the National Training Service (SENA), intends to instruct 7,000 people in technical and technological disciplines and to improve their competitiveness by the end of 2007.

“We have 13 academies working and we wish to have twenty more,” says Pedro Julio Uribe, Manager of Microsoft Colombia. “We see that SENA has a big potential to generate work and entrepreneurship in the technology industry,” he added. “Especially for people at the base of the pyramid, whom we wish to target.”

The third focus was on innovation for competitiveness in government and private businesses. The result was a signed agreement for the first South American e-government project with “Gateway” technology for efficient government services to citizens and vice versa.

“During Bill Gates’ visit we committed $10 million, and in ‘Computers to Educate’ we exceeded $3 million,” says Orlando Ayala, Microsoft’s senior vice-president, Small and Mid-market Solutions & Partner Group.

Microsoft’s branch has been in Colombia for over 15 years. More than 8,000 Colombian company partners create about 30,000 direct and indirect jobs, and every software license leaves an average of 9 dollars in the country. The multinational corporation keeps growing side by side with the small and medium companies, which have a high participation in Colombia’s economy. The impact on social development is also rising.