The government of Cross River State, Nigeria is launching two initiatives in order to provide healthcare and other social services to its poor and rurally located citizens.
The two initiatives will be launched in collaboration with IBM. Government officials said IBM’s responsibility will be to provide technology assistance and consulting services for the two programs, which were announced in August of 2009:
- Project Hope: a free healthcare system for pregnant women and children under the age of five. The project's main goal is to eliminate financial barriers to healthcare for pregnant women and reduce the child and maternal mortality rates.
- Project Comfort: a program to provide income assistance to people living in poverty in order to support them in sending children to school.
"Through its Corporate Service Corps program, IBM has played a key role in the conception and design of these important projects," said Senator Liyel Imoke, governor of Cross River State. "We are now asking IBM back to Cross River State to help with the implementation of this work and to ensure that we benefit from the latest technologies and best practices from elsewhere."
Government officials said the agreement between IBM and the Cross River State government, which was signed this week, will see IBM supporting and facilitating collaboration between the different government ministries involved in the projects, as well as providing outside and objective counsel on management and implementation. IBM will work with local Nigerian systems integrator Quanteq to design and implement the IT infrastructure on which the initiatives will run and to ensure efficient linkage between the project databases.
The IBM Corporate Services Corps is an initiative designed to provide non-governmental organization and other institutions with business consulting to help improve conditions and job creation, said IBM officials. The Services Corps provides pro bono IT, research, marketing, finance and business development to emerging markets.
