Intel Corporation has reiterated its commitment to its teachers Information and Communications Technology (ICT) empowerment scheme known as Teacher Assisted Personal Computer (PC) Purchase (TAPP) in the country.
African country manager at Intel Corporation, Mr. Devan Naidoo, reaffirmed this commitment while briefing newsmen in Lagos, during his recent official working visit to Nigeria.
“We look forward to getting over 100,000 (teachers) in TAPP by 2012,” he declared.
Naidoo said that based on what has been achieved already that it shows Nigeria is more receptive to the TAPP initiative.
He pointed out that due to this factor, any one who visits any of the benefiting schools in the next five years, “would see we have created a new market.”
According to him, Intel is trying to build on what technology could do for education and the economy, as such, Intel has expanded its horizon from South Africa to Nigeria, Kenya among other African countries and currently looking at Angola, where it has set up an innovative centre as a starting step.
“What we really want to achieve is to let the government know the essence of technology to the economy,” Naidoo said.
In Nigeria, he said, Intel was able to get government talking, but in South Africa, funding was set aside for teachers’ empowerment.
“We cannot talk about ICT in education without the teachers,” he asserted, noting that Internet for instance is no longer only a tool for entertainment but also for learning.
Responding to questions, Naidoo said that Intel’s Centrino 2 enhances Central Processing Unit (CPU) of any PC where it is installed and comes with new graphics quality and chipset that offers the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), also known as the IEEE 802.16 group of standards, which defines a packet-based wireless technology that provides high-throughput broadband connections via the new technology.
He listed some of the benefits of Centrino 2 to include offering of a processor technology that blazes fast video encoding, clear, stutter-free blu-ray among others.
The country manager for Intel, Mr. David Ibawoh, accompanied by the Corporate Affairs Manager for West Africa Region, Mr. Ekundare Olubunmi and Marketing Development manager, Mr. Babajide Olufemi all of Intel Nigeria, said that they are concerned with how the people especially could adopt to technology.
He said the challenging facing the TAPP initiative presently in the country is how to provide .5 million teachers with computers in the next three years.
The challenge of infrastructure, he said, is not helping matters, ‘because we have to look at the problems holistically.”
He expressed optimism that by end of 2008, about 500 government owned-schools must have benefited from the scheme.
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