₦airaland Forum

Listen to 6:55-7:02

For the Biomeds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl4L4M8m4d0

We just upgraded our website. Visit us today at http://www.librariesacrossafrica.org/

Interesting. I will be starting at Oxford in October. Despite the fact that Cambridge currently ranks higer, Oxford still holds a special place in my mind.

Wow!

9ijaMan:
Aloma u don go borrow Fashola's words abi? How madam and the kids?

Hmmn, and this is?

dayokanu:
Ronald Reagan ruled and brought America prosperity at over 70yrs Nelson Mandela ruled and brought prosperity to South Africa at over 70.

Young Idi Amin was 46yrs old and he led Uganda to ruins.

Age doesnt count

What counts is the 'age of your ideas'

Anyone currently in Oxford here?

Contrast Randle's opening statement of love and friendliness with his 'agbaya' action at the end!

Now on Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=CB8AF34310E9D59D

@DK- You still dey come Houston this weekend?

@All- Ese Adupe, Nagode, Xie Xie ; keep us in your prayers, and drop your pieces of advice here or on our Facebook Page.

Thanks for your support, we made it to the semi-finals!

http://www.dellsocialinnovationcompetition.com/ideaView?id=08780000000Dcx4AAC


Congratulations! You have been selected as a Semi-Finalist in the 2011 Dell Social Innovation Competition. Please review this email carefully because it contains updated information not available on the website. Contact us , with any questions.

Important Dates and Deadlines
April 1 – Venture Plans and videos due by 5:00pm CST
April 15 – Finalist teams announced
May 13-16 – Finalist Week-End and Final Event (Winners announced)

Voting
There will NOT be online voting for the Semi-Finalist round.

Venture Plan
Please read the Venture Plan Guidelines here for an outline of your plan: http://www.dellsocialinnovationcompetition.com/venturePlan

Your entry should be converted to PDF format and be no larger than 5MB. Title the file the same as the title of your entry.

Anyone knows if there is a recorded version online? I need to watch that thing again!

@Tunsbobo; these are the same OAU pics from decades ago? Are there no new buildings on that campus?

See how Fashola dealt with Randle's question!

Good point there on the absurdity of using Lagos money to fund elections in other states!

Impressed by Fashola so far!

Kobojunkie:
^^^ Like @Ileke-idi asked, if say she be Nigeria, no be claim una go claim am then? Why can't saharaReporters also post that this lady is infact a Nigerian?

She just made her life more difficult by this -- the way I see it . Probably won't be able to leave Nigeria if she is not careful.

Goes both ways, so this time, we dash them this one!

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7452300.html

The girl is as American as they come- even went to High school here in Houston!

To think that this guy's dad was in Houston Saturday talking about hope and opportunity in Africa. I was just wondering if he did not see the irony in the topic assigned to him!

http://www.wachouston.org/assnfe/ev.asp?ID=59&

Wennovation Hub is driven by the idea that high impact innovation is exactly what the most impoverished societies of West Africa need to break out from the cycle of poverty and economic despondency. Wennovation Hub is an implementation of a unique business incubation model that targets budding youth entrepreneurs in West Africa and incentivize them to collaborate while creating innovative solutions to unique environmental, healthcare, education and energy challenges of their immediate environment. If these youth entrepreneurs don’t tackle these problems, no one will.

Apply today at www.wennovationhub.com

Jarus:
By the grace of God, I belong to this category. My secret? God's help of course.

But from experience, the following could be useful:
1, NATURAL BRILLIANCE: Most First class grads are naturally brilliant,not strugglers. Sure you still have to read. Yes, you just have to read. But if you see student X and student Y read for 3 hours, subject to the same condition, and X scores 80%(or let's say graduates with with Firts Class) and Y scores 50%(or more generally, graduates with 2-2), what is at play there is natural brilliance. First Class materials don't struggle academically, they are naturally brilliant. In my class for example, the guy that read most was not among the Top 60 students in class. Likewise, I wasn't among among the Top 20 heaviest readers, if hours spent reading is anything to go by.

2, OPTIMISM & SELF BELIEF : Most First Class students have self-belief that they can make it, right from year 1. They don't get swayed by the common pessimistic ranting of majority of the students that YOU CAN'TMAKE FIRST CLASS;THEY WONT GIVE YOU. First Class materials dismiss such claims, and go ahead pursuing it.

3, LONG TERM TARGET Most First Class studenst don't use the Fire Brigade approach. It involves setting targets and being conscious of it. I started a conscious pursuit of it right from my year 1. I always targeted A in every course.


4, CALCULATIONS: Most First Class students always have their brains doing calculations and permutations on how to achieve their target.Don't be surprised if you see a First Class reading a purely theoretical course but having calculator by his side.He is using the calculator, not for the course he's reading, but for calcualting stuffs and assumptions like: 'If i had B in this course,what will my GP be?', 'What if I misfire in a 30 marks questions(i.e misinterprete) in this course and eventually score D, won't i drop from First Class'. He will simply take his calculator by his side and work out what his GP will be under these assumptions.I, for one,didn't look at A from the point of scoring 70% but from missing 30 marks. 30 marks is too big to miss in a course.So in any course I didn't miss up to 30, I scored 70% and above and that was A. Later, A became so easy for me. I scored A in 76.6% of all the courses I did from year 1 to 4.

5, COMPETITION: I have always hated playing the second fiddle in my life. I think many First Class students also share this. I can't stand not being among the 'frontliners' anywhere I find myself. So the desire to top my class motivated me to study hard. My class was especially very competitive, and I can't afford not to among the best, if not the best.

I hope that helps!!!

Co-signed.

The only thing I would add is that you need to have some friends who are smarter, and more diligent than you are. If you are like me, these are the folks you will spend time with the week before the exam, walking you through the courses that are difficult for you, and the assignments you do not understand. Don't forget to apologise to them when you score higher than them, and they then wonder if you were only fooling with them before the exam.

Cyborg2011:
I am highly impressed to see Nigerians like you out there, this will really reflect and bring a good name to the country, men Bravo !

Keep on, and don't stop please, you will have my vote all the times,

By the way, which presentation software you used for the video, I don't have a clue, or its Adobe After Effects ?

Thanks.

Primarily After Effects with some 3-D programs.

@Becomrich- any comments on Libya and Ghaddafi?

Becomrichn:
some of you laugh. you dont even know who i am, when i say, i will win. i know what i am saying. in a free and fair election. i will be president. you dont even know who i know. my network is over 80 million nigerian. and they would just tell them to vote for me. and you would shock it would be the highest turn out in nigeria history.

Your network is more than the number of registered votes?

By the way, I am coming to Canada on a trip, can I schedule an appointment with you?

dayokanu:
General Musiwa.

I would work with Loma, ekubear and other and lobby Texas into the federation of Benin.

Thus we have the 2 George Bush as citizens. Plus all the oil industry in Texas. EVen all the fine fine girls would be our citizen.

General Musiwa, Do you think we should allow beaf and oyb in our cuntry?

What are you bringing to the table for you to deserve Senate Presidency?

@DK- I see thats what you wanted to see me about  on Sunday?  Pay the egunje into my account first ( I don't want gift card from Benin republic o!)

The Agora- Space between the LAA Anchor and the e-Hub can be used to met the different needs of the host community.

Orikinla:
Great proactive initiative. I have the first Nigerian online news and history library on www.nigeriansreport.com. You should submit your project to the Knight News Challenge fund for digital media projects. If you can prove that it is going to be of immense benefit to Nigerians you can get funding to run it well.

Thanks for the comemnts,and the info about the Knight News Challenge. They are currently closed, but will check them back later in the year.

Orikinla:
On funding for your other projects, send me a PM or contact me via Nigerians Report.

Chairman! I go try holla you. Meanwhile check out this other project I am leading (www.wennovationhub.com) . I am looking for some sort of operational funding/corporate support, and media publicity to attract interested would-be entrepreneurs .

Cyborg2011:
? ?

Will try and get the answer for you from our video guy

Jarus:
loma, beg me before I reel out your own CV too

Haba Jarus, leave my small self for my corner wey I dey jeje o! Was supposed to see Dayokanu last night, but we couldnt get together as planned

Just got an expression of interest in the project from this great Nigerian.

Who is Ndubuisi Ekekwe?
Ndubuisi Ekekwe was born in Ovim, Abia state. He attended Secondary Technical School, Ovim where he passed the SSCE/WASC with 8 distinctions including A2 in Further Mathematics and set his school all-time best result in that examination. Ndubuisi was so gifted that while in SS1, he self-prepared himself for none-science subjects and passed them with distinctions in GCE. He continued in school because of his passion for sciences. He obtained bachelor in engineering degree from Federal University of Technology, Owerri as the best student in the department of electrical & computer engineering with specialization in electronics/computer engineering in 1998.

He holds four masters degrees: MBA (University of Calabar), MTech (Federal University of Technology, Akure), Ms (Tuskegee University, USA), MSE (Johns Hopkins University, USA) and two doctorates in management from St. Clements University and Electrical & Computer Engineering specializing in microelectronics & medical robotics engineering, at the Johns Hopkins University, USA in March 2009. His research involves making integrated circuits with applications on alternative energies, medical robotics, biomedical systems and neuromorphics-an area that involves creating artificial human organs like retinas, cochlea and brain.

Ndubuisi began his doctorate in the Johns Hopkins University, USA after completing his Ms at Tuskegee University, USA with a CGPA of 4/4 in electrical engineering. That academic brilliance gave him the prestigious United States ERC/National Science Foundation and Johns Hopkins University fellowships. During his masters, he received the United States EMCWA scholarship and worked on the NASA’s Jet Propulsion project that focused on distribution of high frequency in the space environment. He has received many awards including the United Kingdom Congress on Computer Assisted Surgery and nomination for the Johns Hopkins Institutions Diversity Recognition Award. In June 2007, the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering awarded him the SAMSTAG fellowship for ‘outstanding performance by a graduate student’.

Ndubuisi is certified in many key technologies and has published many technical papers in leading journals and conferences. His working experiences include NNPC and Diamond Bank. He holds two pending patents on microelectronics and has consulted for universities, World Bank, and firms. He also holds visiting appointments in two African universities and presently the principal investigator of emerging Africa’s first microelectronics institute. He is attending the African Union congress in Kenya this March and will join a leading US semiconductor firm as a team shaping the future of computing.

Ndubuisi is the Founder/President of African Institution of Technology. He is selected for inclusion in the Marquis Who’s Who in America (2010 edition) and Strathmore’s Who’s Who Worldwide (2009). His first book, Nanotechnology and Microelectronics: Global Diffusion, Economics and Policy, by IGI Global, USA will be ready early next year.

What is www.afrit.org?
Afrit stands for African Institution of Technology. Our mission is to provide practical educational support, enable technology policies, and facilitate bottom-up creative technology diffusion in African economies. My vision on this organization is simply to provide support to tertiary institutions interested in introducing cutting edge programs in their curricula. We understand that many African schools do not have the human skills to properly educate their students on these areas. What we do is to work with these institutions to develop the courses, lab manuals and necessary experiments that will facilitate practical academic experiences for the students. We do not charge for our services; they are free and open to all institutions in Africa. We focus mainly on microelectronics, semiconductors, computing (hardware), and robotics. We also source for textbooks from Western publishers and donate to schools. These books are usually technical textbooks. We have members across Europe, Canada and USA.

Another important area of our work is provision of computer aided design (CAD) tools. CAD tools are software programs created to facilitate design and automation in science and engineering. They are very expensive to acquire and license and certainly beyond the reach of our schools. However, even in the United States, schools do not buy some of them from their vendors or manufacturers. The companies simply donate them as part of their strategies to ensure that students get used to their products. Afrit has written many of these companies and they are simply ready to help our schools. For the really cheap CAD, they give us the permission to use them in teaching. These are the activities of Afrit. When a school needs a CAD, we can help them get free license for some of them for their educational and research needs.

Afrit has also worked with foreign partners to enable us fabricate integrated circuits designed by students in Africa. For instance, if a student designs integrated circuits (or chips) for camera, brain interface, cell phone, calculator, etc, we have the capacities to fabricate those chips and send back to the student for testing. The goal is to help our students experience the complete design cycle: from design to testing.

What are the aims and objectives of www.afrit.org?
Our major objective is to help African nations, especially Nigeria, to transfer and diffuse cutting edge technologies like microelectronics and nanotechnology. We believe so much that the hope of Africa will be by creating knowledge and training armies of knowledge workers towards diversifying our mineral- or hydrocarbon-based economies. Based on this motivation, we work to create awareness on the need to focus on these technologies and not just information technology (IT). Many African governments have IT policy and no technology policy; in short across African many people think that IT is synonymous with technology. For us, we want to push the notion that IT, though a great technology, is not the only technology. Without microelectronics, there will be no IT as the computers must be designed before we can experience the IT. Fortunately, the wealth comes from microelectronics and IT design and not the consumption as we presently have in Nigeria. We consume IT as we do not create it. By consuming IT, we waste lots of resources that would have been saved if we can develop some of the IT infrastructures. Microelectronics is the bedrock to making routers, switches, computers , etc as it is the engine of modern commerce that continues to revolutionize all aspects of our lives. We have developed what we call Afrit-model to diffuse microelectronics in Africa.

To realize these goals, we focus on three constituents: governments, schools and small and medium enterprises (SME). We help schools improve their programs. For governments, we provide experience to help them develop policies on technology transfer for these technologies. For SME, we help them identify areas where they can contribute towards facilitating the diffusion of microelectronics. For instance, we note that the computer business center model was very successful in advancing IT in Nigeria. We can create a program that can help graduates to start programming microprocessors and FPGA instead of wasting time on computers composing 419 emails.

As we do these, we connect Nigerian students to scholarship opportunities; give our schools information on grants, provide collaboration linkages with foreign schools.

What are Afrit challenges and success?
Our major challenge is simply reaching our audience: schools, small and medium enterprises, and governments. For the schools, we have made attempts in the past to send CDs containing the CAD tools, but without our presence, we noticed that some of the schools were unable to properly use them. The challenge is having the time to train at least the teachers on the software as they apply to IC or chip design. For governments, Afrit is truly committed to assist them develop infrastructures like semiconductor institutes that will become the bedrock to diffuse this technology. Also, being students, it is natural that we do not have enough funding for travel we make. However, since our organization does not distribute hardware, rather, ideas, we try to cope. When we ask a firm to send us their tools to help schools educate, it does not cost us anything, except time. One area we would have made more impacts if we have money is buying development boards and donating to schools. Some of these boards cost less than $20 in US and can add values to education. The same goes with biomorphic robots, which go for $36 and can help students understand how to design systems that mimic nature and push human towards immortality.

We have had successes across the continent. We are working on projects with African Union, World Bank, Nigerian universities, and other African schools. I hold visiting appointments in some of these schools. We have attended conferences in Hungary, Canada, many cities in the US and have CAD licenses to train with. I will be going to one in Kenya next month organized by African Union. Our publication is also extensive. We are working on two books right now. One is focusing on how technology will be used to turn brain drain into brain gain. In other words, I do not need to live in Nigeria to make contributions in Nigeria. While in the US, I can continue to advance my skills and using the right mix of technology, can help my nation. Afrit is also working on a project that will offer the blueprint on how Telepresence can be deployed in Africa. Yes, having the capacity to teach at Bayero University from my house in the United States. We want to see that schools have these facilities for collaborations. We have helped universities in Nigeria prepared international grants to foreign agencies to meet the best standards. While it may not be wise to give names of schools, we have developed microelectronics curricula for many universities across Africa.

How do you intend to overcome those challenges?
Simply, by reaching schools, small businesses and governments and telling them what we can offer to them. That is why we appreciate this exposure Triumph newspaper is giving us. Thank you very much. We want to see relationships from schools in the Northern part of Nigeria. We are yet to have a project from this region. We missed an opportunity to work with one of the schools in the North few years ago. The period we planned to arrive, lecturers started strike and it was cancelled.

http://www.triumphnewspapers.com/ho1122009.html
http://afrit.org/si.aspx
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate, ng_ted_22.html
http://etienne.ece.jhu.edu/people/nekekwe/index.html
http://naijatechtalk./2, ubuisi-ekekwe/


PC named after his home town Ovim, Abia state
Ovim- Nigeria’s Tablet PC- Ready for Electronic Medical Records Systems
http://goafrit./2010/11, cords-systems/