CWG can operate research network efficiently — Agada

Group Chief Executive Officer, Computer Warehouse, Austin Okere
| credits: financialtechnologyafrica.com

The Chief Technology Officer of Computer Warehouse Group, Mr. James Agada, said that the company, being an Information Technology service provider in Africa, had the capacity to operate the Nigerian Research and Education Network so as to enable it to offer the appropriate shared IT infrastructure in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions.

He stated this while speaking on the topic, ‘Using PPP to advance ICT in tertiary education’ at the 2015 education conference.

The Nigerian Universities Commission, the American University of Nigeria and the Digital Promise Foundation, in Abuja, organised the conference.

Agada said, “The CWG can operate the NgREN and provide a high performance computing facility that will provide world-class tools such as virtual laboratories, simulators and academic and research tools to users at affordable cost. This can be done at a fixed subscription fee per student, per semester, or on a pay per use basis for both students and the faculty of schools. We are already working on this model and look forward to the support of the NUC and the universities to make it a success.”

He told the audience that the ability of tertiary institutions to generate useful knowledge depended on access to other repositories, access to tools, laboratories and an ability to work in an enabling ecosystem which technology had made accessible and affordable.

The CWG chief technical officer explained that “tools like Google, Cousera and Authorea, which are available today, have made it possible to democratise access to an almost infinite pool of knowledge, tools, laboratories and collaborators without hindrances of time and distance.”

However, he said, “The cost of acquisition, operating, maintaining and upgrading Information and Communications Technology will make it difficult for Nigerian universities acting individually to achieve much, as they do not have the budget for anything beyond a modest investment in ICT. This is because most universities are by nature and law not profit-making organizations. So it is difficult for them to make these investments and hope to recoup.

“This is compounded by the fact that government funding of the universities is going to be continually hampered by the fast dwindling revenue.”

Agada said that the Public-Private Partnership option remained the only viable option for funding higher utilisation of ICT for research and learning in tertiary institutions.

He said that the PPP could be made attractive for private organisations if they were allowed to build and maintain the infrastructure and services while the university community utilised the ICT infrastructure for research and learning within an established social and legal contexts.

Earlier in his address, the Executive Secretary of the NUC, Prof Julius Okojie, said that finance and the absence of visionary leadership had been the bane of the adoption of technology in the education sector for development.

“The prime objective of the conference organisers is a better and more effective teaching, learning, and research through ICT. So far, we have been able to decide on some key resolutions and one of them is to strengthen our collaboration with technology service providers to provide quality IT services to universities at affordable rates. That is the greatest take-away from this conference for me,” he said.

A consortium of indigenous technology companies, led by the CWG, built the NgREN, the first of its kind in West and Central Africa. The project was implemented under the Science and Technology Education Post-Basic initiative. It covers 27 premier federal universities in Nigeria and their over one million students and staff.