Top executives of the African Union (AU) were briefed Wednesday by a technical team from India on a Pan African satellite project the Indian government has offered to build at a cost of 50 million dollars for inter-governmental communications, telemedicine and distance education. The team had come to Addis Ababa with an Indian government delegation headed by Shashi U. Tripathi, Secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs. It met leading AU officials, including Alpha Oumar Konare, chairperson of the AU Commission, the AU said in a statement. Konare welcomed the Indian offer as "an important Indo-African collaborative partnership for mutual development", DPA reported. He said the project would be thoroughly considered by African technical experts to be established shortly to make recommendations for African decision-making organs, according to the statement. The satellite project was offered to the AU by Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam last September when addressing the second session of the Pan-African Parliament in Midrand, South Africa. the Indian technical team said the project's benefits included enabling African heads of state and government to communicate with each other and with the AU Commission. It would also provide telemedicine and distance education capabilities that would give the 53 AU member states connectivity with designated universities in India. This "would harness today's satellite-based technology in the spirit of South-South Cooperation to address education and healthcare challenges, particularly at the grassroots level".
