The Department of Foreign Affairs is backing the efforts of a charity called Camara, which works to recycle old computers and send them to children in Africa.
In addition to donating 400 old department PCs to the programme, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern is encouraging other businesses to do the same.
The computers are reused in schools and colleges in Africa.
A group of Camara volunteers clean the hard drives at a facility at North Wall in Dublin and then install educational programmes.
The NGO sent more than 1,000 computers to Africa in 2005 and 2006 and plans to expand with a €225,000 grant from Irish Aid.
