The Regional Bureau of Dakar (Breda) inaugurated its new multimedia centre, following the workshop on the impact and the contribution of New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT) on distance education, under the chairmanship of Mr. Mamadou Diop Decroix, Minister of Information and Pan-African Co-operation for new technologies in Senegal.

Under the patronage of the Ministers of Information, Education and Vocational Training, the opening ceremony of the new multimedia centre has at last registered the participation of only one Minister, the Minister of Information to be specific. In his introduction note, Mr. Diop Decroix has mentioned "the digital revolution is one of the last chances given to Africa to work its way up to the emerging nations."

The Minister, who participated to prepcom meeting for the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, has noted that the challenges were tremendous and that Africa has to " fight strongly in order to have its place in the turning point of history, where only intelligence and brain will be determinant." To illustrate his speech, he also mentioned the case of the American computer scientist Bill Gates, who has become according to him " the richest man in the world, thanks to his intelligences invested in software."
Moreover, Mr. Armoogum Parsuramen, Director of BREDA has stressed on the UNESCO willingness to support the initiatives in order for Africa to win a place of choice in this new information society. With such infrastructures, BREDA will hold a larger action in the service of distance training in order to harmonise the concept of the right to education through new technologies. According to the Director of BREDA, the multimedia centre is meant to be a plate-form to promote the right to " a quality education in a world of inequality." Therefore, he added: " more of a hundred of people from all backgrounds and from all social stratum have already been trained in the centre."

The community multimedia centre follows the breakthrough of the community radios and suggests four parts of training on the spot. It is question among others of the information unit for a training on didactic software, to Internet and to computers graphics software. The video unit, equipped with a large screen, digital and analogical reader, suggest film projection realised by different UN agencies in order to sensitise and initiate the specialisation of the media professional and pupils to the UN various fields of action.

The training to radio writing, realisation and editing techniques is also provided to the media professional for education and cultural vocation programmes.
The fourth part of the training is constituted by a documentation centre on information technologies and on media, as well as of local and foreign newspapers for a consultation on the spot. Finally, all the plat-form of infrastructure will contribute to set the basis of a training strategy on the spot or at a distance, in order to have all the opportunities given by the new information and communication technologies.