April 13th, 2016 – EON Reality Inc., in partnership with The City of Tshwane, South Africa, has announced the inauguration of EON Reality’s Tshwane Interactive Digital Center (IDC). This IDC is a central part of Tshwane’s long term plan, Tshwane Vision 2055, to “break the cycle of generational poverty, inequality, and underdevelopment” as well as to enhance the local business and investment climate in South Africa’s capital city.
Tshwane’s forward looking approach, Executive Mayor Ramokgopa’s strong commitment to bring an IDC to Tshwane, and EON Reality’s seventeen year relationship with local VR company, the Naledi3d Factory, made Tshwane a natural choice for EON Reality’s first IDC in Continental Africa. The new IDC will establish a local AR and VR ecosystem in Tshwane and its Entrepreneur School that will help to develop skilled local resources.
“We’re extremely excited to partner with the City of Tshwane and build an IDC in South Africa,” said Dan Lejerskar, Chairman of EON Reality. “We fervently believe that knowledge is a human right and this aligns perfectly with Tshwane’s goal for greater income equality, creating jobs, and improving educational opportunities.”
EON anticipates the IDC to enhance the local business climate and create jobs, with the content and applications created by the Tshwane IDC helping with vocational skills transfer and the improvement of local STEM education. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality applications aid education and help address the issues of illiteracy and language barriers by showing rather than telling.
“Virtual Reality based knowledge transfer will be crucial to the future of education in South Africa, particularly in Tshwane. As a Capital City, Tshwane is often confronted with difficult policy choices given the limited financial resources and competing service delivery needs. To this end, the City has taken a policy position to prioritize investments linked to education and development of young people. This explains our quest for state of the art technologies that assists the City to ignite excellence when delivering services. The Interactive Digital Center will propel vocational skills training and development to unprecedented levels in South Africa,” said Dumisani Otumile, Group Chief Information Officer for the City of Tshwane.
Image credit: EON Reality
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Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.