‘Nigeria ready for satellite-enabled e-education’
Considering that Satellite communication has always been a major backbone to the development of most advanced societies, Managing Director, Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited Engr. Ahmed-Rufai, has said that his Nigcomsat 1R project was what Nigeria needed to achieve universal access, ICT development, backbone for social, political and economic re-engineering.For him,Nigeria should take advantage of the recently launched satellite to achieve the e-park project and other ICT instruments of revolution in the nation’s economy.
He said this was possible with the deployment of multimedia education services to all the 774 local government areas of the country through the satellite. Rufai was speaking while presenting a paper as a guest speaker at a one day ICT workshop organized by the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) in Abuja recently.
Rufai stated that the reality of the 21st century is the pervasiveness of information and communication technology (ICT) in all sphere of human life, explaining that modern technology has presented new and better operation strategies in all ramifications.
Comparing the usefulness of ICT amongst nations, Rufai said that India had leveraged on ICT opportunities by investing hugely on e- education, adding that with the satellite now in the orbit, Nigeria was fully ready for e-education.
According to him, revenue from IT sector in India for the years 2009 and 2010 stood at USD105.4 billion which is 82% higher than what Nigeria generates in non oil revenue for the same period (USD 86.14 billion).
He argued that interventions such as E- Park, which is aimed at serving as skill acquisition, Centre, ICT training centre, application development centre and subsidized cyber café will accelerate the level of learning.
He explained that the project targets creation of over 1,935,000 IT Professionals from the 774 local government areas in the country within the next five years and will save the country $5bn annually derivable from the penetration of indigenous software products services.
Among other projects he said would be gained from NigComSat-1R include the e-library project aimed at facilitating access to e-education through its e-library project.
Study materials will be made available to about 78 universities in the country via the e-library project, expected to take off in June 2012. The NigComSat-1R Secondary School net is another project for 10- selected secondary schools to be connected to a central point to enhance virtual campuses from remote locations of the country.
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