Sean Maloney, chief sales and marketing officer of Intel, said the programme aimed to improve the quality of life, create talent and encourage digital literacy in developing countries that need a skilled workforce and a strong pipeline of talent in the future.

There are approximately 4.8 billion people in developing countries that do not have access to technology today.

Under the World Ahead programme, the company has invested US$1 billion (Bt34.5 billion) in 50 nations since 2000 though education, affordable hardware and connectivity and localised content. It has trained four million teachers and will add an additional nine million teachers by 2011. It will also support 1:1 learning pilots using 100,000 PCs in 30 nations. It set up 200 active programmes in 60 countries.