3. Background

Projekt El-studenter is a 3 years joint venture project between MicroSupport in Sweden and Grupo Chicomo in Mocambique, with a limited financial support from the Swedish governmental organization for business development, Nutek. The cooperating companies get a part of their expenses for development of training material, tools, staff training and business development refunded if they reach the project goals indicated in the project plan.

The project started 2006-12-01 and will close 2009-12-31. Some months before closing, a final report has to be written by the involved companies. The result of the project will be followed up in Mocambique by a representative from Nutek. After that a decision will be taken by Nutek about a final refund of maximum 24% of the total costs.

The project goals described in the project plan are to organize assembling of training equipment and production of written training material for students in the area electricity/electronics. Initially the products will be sold at an already established European market, but in the long run the market is planned to be local as well as regional and international.

The project activities are to plan localities and organize tools and material flow, employ staff, develop production instructions in Portuguese, start up the production, handle the quality control, deliver assembled units to Sweden, receive payment at delivery and pay staff for work. The responible for this activities in Mocambique is Edgar Baloi at Grupo Chicomo.

1 person will organize the activities and the business cooperation. 5 persons will work with assemling. In this group, someone will be responsible for work routines and development of production methods and new products as well as personal staff training and local user support. This person, an experienced technician, might get some training at the MicroSupport factory in Sweden.

1 person will develop production instructions and instruction methods for the assembling work and course material in Portuguese, try out methods for Internet supported distance learning by doing and quality control online.

The project focuses much on knowledge development and it has taken place as experience in practical work with the business introduction. A pilot project shows that it is possible to produce training material as planned and that there are some administrative and practical problems that has to and could be resolved.

The project activities are supposed to end up in an ordinary production organization within half a year and it is time to plan for the business after the end of the project. In order to do that and in order to prepare the material for the final report, staff from Grupo Chicomo and MicroSupport met a couple of weeks in April/May 2009.

The main purpose is to unify the the future visions for business communication, to meet local people and authorities important for the business development, to map out the recent business situation and to find possible new markets. Of course it is very important in this situation to decide exactly who is going to do what and when and which results that are required to go into a sucessfull business.