The Colombian government pledged to invest almost $1billion in two programmes to develop smart cities and construct educational centres, in a bid to spur the country’s digital transformation.
BN Americas reported, Jorge Barrera ICT ministry’s communications industry head announced at GSMA Thrive, the government will pump $342 million into 63 locations to be transformed into smart cities, with professional services company EY (Ernst & Young) to survey possible locations.
A second project called Proyecto 10k with a budget of $575 million, will involve creating 10,000 digital centres from 2021 to 2022, in mostly rural educational institutions to benefit over a million students. Medina said this will be “largest project in the ministry’s history,”
The government also planned to set-up 16 digital transformation centres to support 2,000 companies in their digital transformations.
Telecompaper reported the fresh initiatives were annonced months after the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications unveiled a programme to train 100,000 citizens in IT skills, software development and programming by 2022.