The “TVET Colleges Connection Programme (TCCP)” is an ICT infrastructure initiative by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) funded through a National Skills Fund (NSF) grant to connect Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) College campuses to the South African National Research Network (SANReN). The purpose of this programme is to solve bandwidth poverty at South Africa’s TVET Colleges by connecting them to the SANReN, thereby enabling them to contribute to meeting the goals of the developmental state.

The DHET has appointed the South African Broadband Education Network (SABEN) to implement the programme. SABEN is a non-profit company that was formed as a collaboration between the Tertiary Education and Research Network of South Africa (TENET) and the SANReN Competency Area (SCA) at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), specifically to connect TVET colleges to SANReN. Initially, SABEN assisted colleges to self-fund their connections to the SANReN.