Avnet Technology Solutions has announced that its services business unit has formed a strategic agreement with leading training provider Tricon Academy, Tri-Continental Limited, to deliver a complete range of IBM-certified courses across Africa.


As an IBM Global Training Provider, Avnet’s new partnership enables Tricon Academy to continue to deliver IBM’s award-winning technical training on technologies and products to customers across the African continent. This comprehensive portfolio of technical training helps individuals, companies and public organisations optimise their IT skills to get more from their IT investments to meet the dynamic challenges of today’s business environment.

Avnet and Tricon Academy now provide more than 1 500 courses from IBM’s extensive training portfolio to 18 African countries: Angola, Botswana, Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Students learn to successfully design, deploy, manage and support IBM solutions. The training on offer includes both software and hardware topics such as: Power Systems, System Storage, Lotus, Websphere, Tivoli, Rational, XML, Service Orientated Architecture, z/OS, Linux, z/VM, IBM System x and Storage. Training can be delivered in flexible ways to suit the student’s way of learning, be it in the classroom or virtually, teacher-led or self-paced.

Christian Magirus, vice-president Avnet Services EMEA comments, “As a local provider, Tricon Academy understands the region’s market dynamics and is well placed to quickly begin assisting African organisations with training requirements on IBM products and technologies. The speed of technology innovation creates more choice and complexity for businesses’ IT needs, and customers need guidance to simplify options while securing the best business outcomes. By partnering with Tricon Academy, we’re now able to offer this award-winning training to a new market and drive growth for our partners in the region.”

Tricon Academy Training director, Joy Lwanga, says, “This new partnership between Tricon Academy and Avnet will help strengthen the African IT industry, whereby skills development is the key ingredient to growth and success to businesses in Africa.”