Company Donates Cloud-Based GIS Solutions to More Than 30 Schools

REDLANDS, Calif.—November 4, 2016 — Smart mapping leader Esri announced an agreement between Esri Eastern Africa Limited and the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia to install free Esri geospatial software at more than 30 Ethiopian public universities.

Under the terms of the agreement, the universities will enjoy high-speed fiber-optic Internet access to Esri's award-winning geospatial platform ArcGIS, including mobile and web applications, online training courses, global datasets, and teaching resources.

The implementation will be overseen by the Ethiopian Education and Research Network (EthERNet) with the assistance of Addis Ababa University and Esri partner PanAfrica Geoinformation Services. EthERNet will serve as a central hub for providing support and training to all universities. In future phases, all major Ethiopian public universities will be connected to EthERNet.

"This advanced university GIS hub will allow Ethiopia to leapfrog other African nations in terms of access to the latest GIS technology," said Jack Dangermond, Esri founder and president. "Moving from purely desktop GIS functionality to distributed Web GIS will help Ethiopia facilitate faster collaboration among researchers and learners across the country."

Dr. Kaba Urgessa, Ethiopia state minister of education, spoke at the fourth annual on September 27, 2016 In his presentation, Urgessa underscored the importance of this donation and of geoinformation to his country's alignment with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

"This is a great step that the Ethiopian government has made," said Judah arap Bett, managing director, Esri Eastern Africa. "The initiative will create a geoenabled community in the near future. We echo our support and partnership with EthERNet and the universities in Ethiopia to make this vision come alive."

For more information about Esri education initiatives, please visit  esri.com/industries/education.

About Esri

Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, Esri software is used in more than 350,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at  www.esri.com.

Contact:

Karen Richardson, Esri
Tel.: 909-793-2853, extension 1-3491
E-mail (press only):  Email Contact
General Information:  Email Contact