By Ibrahim Olukotun
Lagos. Feburary 19, 2013: Zinox says it has developed a cost effective power solution that will support tertiary institutions’ critical ICT infrastructure and enable students to charge up to 2500 laptops every hour on campus for free.
The company says the power system was developed by its subsidiary, Zinox Innovation Centre, as an intervention initiative in erratic power supply in tertiary institutions in the country.
Leo Stan Ekeh, Chairman Zinox Group, disclosed this while speaking to some postgraduate students from different Nigerian universities who paid him a courtesy visit at his company’s corporate Headquarters in Lagos recently.
Ekeh says that his management developed the new product in response to the slow pace of improvement in the power sector and the need to enable students with access to global resources that are cheap and easy to source online.
Ekeh notes that the development of the product is more apt now that no institution can operate on generators for 24 hours because of energy costs while wondering if students will wait until the nation achieve constant power supply before tapping to the enormous resources on the internet.
“There may not be light on campus, but at least students can stay online real time as there are facilities to charge their laptops when their batteries are low and most importantly their internet infrastructure is also powered and live every minute of the day”, he says.
Lack of power in tertiary institutions of learning largely contributes to vices rampant among students and dearth in creativity, the Zinox boss says.
“The lack of power in the educational institutions is leading to a new culture of procrastination among the youth. Exuberance, razor sharpness and spontaneity characteristics of youth are being undermined by the fact of waiting for power – whether it is from the national grid or the school’s generator. Students have to wait for light to solve their assignments, charge their phones and laptops, respond to the school authorities and these can turn to disasters in a knowledge era where even reflexes are tied to the ICT equipment”, Ekeh says.
While lamenting the dearth of funding in education sector, Ekeh urges corporate institutions to assist government in solving the problem by commissioning research into problems facing the sector.
The Zinox Innovative Center is the umbrella body of the Zinox Research and Development and has been responsible for many product and marketing innovations including the Naira sign on the Zinox international keyboard, the Zinox Card, the largest single e-books platform in Africa, and the innovative marketing that has brought the IT experience to the underserved, the company says.
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