From 7th to 12th of June 2006, more than thirty Alumni of the InWEnt advanced Training Programme "Business related IT Consultancy" from seven SADC countries gathered in Maputo for the one week hands-on Workshop. The seven countries were Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. All former participants of the InWEnt training programmes in Germany since 2002 have been invited to join the workshop designed to be a kick-off for sustained networking among all it@ab Alumni and to foster Free and Open Source Technology (FOSS) knowledge transfer and IT know-how exchange.

The workshop was financed by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development within the framework of InWEnts advanced Training Programme "Business related IT Consultancy".

After a very busy week in Maputo the IT-Specialists were able to establish some very important ground rules for their contribution to the it@ab network and to form an network of alumni @ IT-specialists named “it@ab IT-specialists”. This was a seen as a vital need for action by all alumni present in the workshop.

It was stressed that it would be every alumni responsibility to take part in keeping the network alive and also to find innovative ways to bring new partners. During the Workshop the main focus was to keep the wheel spinning, only faster, and that way it would be possible to for every individual to go home with some new objectives in their agenda.