New Delhi: India on Wednesday inked an agreement with Lesotho to provide online education to students of the southern African country, the government said in a statement.

The Rs.543-crore (about $110 million) project, funded by the external affairs ministry, will be implemented by the state-owned Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd (TCIL) on a turnkey basis.

"The signing of country agreement with Lesotho is an example of south-south cooperation," said Minister of State for Communications and IT Gurudas Kamat.

The pan-African network will provide online services such as tele-education, tele-medicine services and video-conferencing and voice over Internet protocol services for heads of states.

The basic objective of the project is to help Africa in capacity building by way of imparting quality education to students.

Also, tele-medicine services will be provided under the agreement by way of online medical consultation in the patient-end locations from Indian medical specialists in various disciplines selected by African Union for its member states, the statement added.

Under the pact, TCIL will design, procure and install equipment and provide operation and management services for five years after commissioning of the network in the respective countries.

TCIL is in an advanced stage of commissioning the project and network has already been commissioned in 20 countries.

It had commissioned the Ethiopia pilot project on tele-education and tele-medicine in February 2006. IANS