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The Magic of Rewardn Soil Water Trap on Agriculture and Erosion Control

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Rewardn is a leading soil water trap which works on different types of crops. It increases the water holding capacity of soils and generally enhances plant growth. With Rewardn, water and nutrients are available in the root zone for optimal absorption by plants. In agriculture, use cases include tree planting, nurseries, transplanting, landscaping, large scale farming, etc.

Also, Rewardn provides a buffer effect against climatic hazards with applications in erosion control, land reclamation, land embankment, among others.

How It Works

Rewardn has the property of absorbing up to four hundred times its weight in distilled water and it becomes gel. It is an easy to use, superb water absorber (can absorb water up to 600 times its volume) soil additive. It is a polymer manufactured especially for frequently irrigated and high water consumption locations, gardens, glasshouses and landscaping works. With this polymer which traps rain and irrigation waters in its body and absorb 600 times of its volume, the water is held before it drains off the soil and constitutes a natural and long term water tank base for plants and trees.

Composition & Properties

Rewardnis a superabsorbent anionic polyacrylamide polymer. It is a cross linked copolymers of acrylamide and potassium acrylate that is water insoluble.  Some major properties include:

  • 1 gr has the capacity to hold 600 times water.
  •  When water enters it expands and becomes a gel. – It stays in the soil actively for approximately  4 years.
  •  Water absorption rate is approximately 1 hour.
  •  Watering duration is up to 1 hour.
  •  It does not freeze until -60°C.
  •  Application depth is between 7cm-1 m.
  •  It decomposes in the soil at a rate of %10-15 per year. Once its job in the soil is done it returns to the nature.

Use Cases

There are many application areas for Rewardn soil water trap in the broad field of agriculture. Those areas include horticulture, forestry, hydro seeding and farming. Besides agriculture, Rewardn finds applications in erosion control and other areas like desertification control and land remediation.

 

To order Rewardn soil water trap, click here.

A Wonderful Engineering Month – Microchip Design Worked

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I spent a key part of this month in the lab testing a design we had engineered. A client had paid to develop the system. One of the reasons I enjoy microelectronics is that it includes most things, from physics to mathematics to software. Yes, the most challenging software anyone can create is the one that controls electronic signals. And you cannot make sense of many things without mathematics. In short, being a good microelectronics engineer requires that you are a solid guy on calculus.

All those Integration and differentiation you studied in undergrad would help you bias transistors at the right operating modes. Most electronic products in the world came out of calculus (yes, those equations they taught you in African universities have practical applications).

Before the typical software guys can code, hardware (software) writers have to write the extremely complex stuff which is esoteric to most traditional software coders. So, you must code very well to get the hardware to respond in the way it had been crafted in silicon. Think about it: if you connect a printer to a laptop, nothing happens. But if you install a device driver in the laptop, it recognizes the printer. Writing the code for that device driver requires you know every handshaking sequence between the laptop and printer. It is one of the most fascinating software engineering tasks in the world, used in nuclear reactors and aviation: one mistake, empires can collapse!

Read this summary of How to Design and Make Integrated Circuits which I originally wrote for Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) student magazine many years ago.

How to Design and Make Integrated Circuits

We would continue to design and make things. And hope one day all would be done right in Nigeria.

LinkedIn Comment on Feed

The full article is an engineering lecture on chip design and fabrication, and it brought many things to mind, offering greater clarity to many things we were forced to only read in books, while studying engineering; without much motivation anyway.

Of course, many people work all the time, across the globe, just to ensure that humans enjoy the finest things our imaginations can conceive; a true definition of what passion entails, before the financial rewards come in.

There is a reason why PhD is the only ‘authentic’ doctorate degree, because philosophy allows us to study the ultimate cause of things, learning the fundamentals in the process.

Yes, coding and building apps is on everyone’s lips, but before that, a more difficult work has been done, so that a lot of people can be brought into the party.

It offers another template for national development, the need to look at the fundamentals in economy growth and development, so that majority of the citizens can participate, not the skewed and undeveloped arrangements currently obtainable here.

Nice one, keep them coming.

Nigerian Banks’ Killer App – SANEF

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There is no debate: the most innovative sector in the Nigerian economy is banking. And the Bankers Committee is legendary for what it has achieved in our nation. Why this praise? From BVN (Bank Verification Number) to NIBSS (Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement Systems), the banks have continued to improve their sector, innovating at scale. Yes, if something is missing, they plan and fix that thing by pooling their resources together.

The latest one is a killer “app” designed to mute most fintech competitors while advancing financial inclusion in the nation: Shared Agent Network Expansion Facility (SANEF) is a big deal.

The nation’s banking sector is taking another big leap and responsibility with the Shared Agent Network Expansion Facility (SANEF), as it pursues the realisation of a plan that wholly reflects commitments to achieving the 80 per cent target on financial inclusion, in about 28 months from now.

SANEF, which difference lies with the fact that it is driven, wholly by banks, devoid of any government’s financial interventions, is a scheme that has already brought the lenders to another unanimous position and strong belief in mutually beneficial goal. But mostly, it is part of the industry’s contribution to the national project- Financial System Strategy 2020 (FSS 2020).

This is coming after the bankers, under the aegis of the Bankers Committee, in December 2015, agreed to pool together, five per cent of their respective profit after tax to pursue equity participation in small businesses and lending at single interest rate.SANEF is a project ratified by the Central Bank of Nigeria, owned by Deposit Money Banks, supported by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement Systems (NIBSS), licensed Mobile Money Operators (MMOs) and the Shared Agents, with the primary objective of accelerating financial inclusion in Nigeria, through a renewed agent network arrangement

This is my prediction: Nigerian banks would seek for a mobile license and do mobile money in their own terms. South African banks have been getting the (virtual) mobile operating licenses; Nigerian banks would join the party as one bloc. When that happens, using any bank web service will come at zero mobile browsing credit. As always, they would not do this directly – they would hold equity in a new entity and with that overcome all regulatory issues from NCC (Nigerian Communications Commission), the telecom regulator.

The green kiosk is not the great stuff here; the innovation is the fact that one agent can serve for all banks. The kiosks will fade but the vision of shared agent would move into an app. That is why I have tilled this piece “Killer App” because SANEF App would be valuable.

LinkedIn Comment Feed

Winning the battle is always different from winning the war, especially in the age of disruptions; because you can still be disrupted, after disrupting someone. And for some of us who understand these battles, there’s nothing like a victory lap, just start readying for the next battle once you finish one.

Obviously the banking sector is a cut above the rest, a case in point is the success of BVN, when compared with the mess we called SIM card registration. Till today, many active phone lines cannot be traced to the identities therein. Let’s not even mention NIN and all our money sucking undertakings.

Until we realise that government cannot successfully drive any policy, except private players take over, then we can moderate our expectations from anything being implemented by government; always ineffective and inefficient.

With SANEF, the banks have essentially democratised financial services, and at the same time – becoming the super aggregators, welcoming others to just come in and have a small cut. Dogs can be giving births here and there, but when an elephant decides to give one, everyone stands still and watch.

It’s a big party, more jobs for the boys and girls all over the country.
After the reggae, play the blues

Ndubuisi Ekekwe To Receive “Sustainability Inventor of the Year” Award During IN-CSR Africa

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I am happy to announce that the International Network for Corporate Social Responsibility (IN-CSR) (Africa Chapter) would honour me with “Sustainability Inventor of the Year”. The Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, would address the event which is scheduled as follows:

Venue: Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry,Ikeja-Lagos
Date:    28th – 29th November 2018
Time:- 09:00 AM daily

This recognition comes as a result of our works in agriculture (via Zenvus) and efforts to help universities in improving their capabilities in electronics through our business’s non-profit arm, African Institution of Technology, which has run workshops in 82 Nigerian universities. One of my colleagues would attend to receive the award on our behalf.

You can make this event (attend the workshop, paper sections, etc) by registering here. Learn about the speakers here. [Yes, I got a photo of the plaque which they sent as they were informing us, making it clear the only option is to accept the award].

This year’s conference will be laser focused on providing practical skills, pragmatic frameworks and strategies that will help organisations and policy makers become more competitive, more efficient and more successful. With stakeholders’ increasing emphasis on social responsibility, sustainability, SDG Impact and Reporting, the forum will focus on the following sub themes -:

1. The Imperatives of Sustainable Stock Exchange for Economic Growth in Africa

2. The Intersection between CSR, SDGs and Sustainability Strategies

3. Sustainable Banking – Assessing Social and Environmental Risks

4. Affordable Renewable Energy: A Solution to Climate Change and Catalyst for National Development

Zenvus Boundary Partners Wanted

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We have received many inquiries from businesses and people on the requirements of joining Zenvus Boundary partnership. Actually, it was included in the Zenvus Boundary launch announcement today.

To become a partner, these are the requirements:

  1. Email zenvus@fasmicro.com informing our team that you would like to become one. As a partner, your focus is acquiring customers in bulk. Think of government initiatives, cooperatives, etc, covering land, farms, etc.
  2. Team will ask you to pay a one-time partnership fee [contact for details]. We support US dollars and Nigerian Naira via bank transfer or Paypal.
  3. Team will create an Enterprise account and send you a code. You can survey properties all day and transfer data to our server once. You need a code tied to your account to ensure the transfer is connected to your dashboard.  From the dashboard, you would print the survey reports of these your customers.
  4. Simultaneously, team will send you an Agreement Letter. In that letter, we define the benefits. For every property surveyed with Zenvus Boundary technology, we charge $20 (N7,000) to maximum of 5 acres. So, 6 acres will attract $40.
  5. From this fee, partners keep 70% of the gross leaving 30% for Zenvus.
  6. Once a farmland or farm is mapped by Zenvus Boundary, it would be ready for precision agriculture powered by Zenvus sensors where applicable.
  7. We would be expecting your email at Zenvus@fasmicro.com

Meanwhile, download Zenvus Boundary now at Google Play.

Cost of Service

We have set the price of using this solution to map a farm, land, or house perimeter with the survey printed on Zenvus portal at $20 (N7,000 Nigerian naira) per property to maximum of 5 acres [for example, 6 acres would be captured as two farms, for $40]. You would have the opportunity to include your name, LGA, National Identity Number, BVN, etc. Most of those entries are optional.

Franchise/Agent Opportunity

We have franchising opportunities across Africa for those interested in helping farmers, landlords, etc to digitize their property perimeters and locations at bulk. Here, you could have a contract to map farms in a whole village tied to each farmer.

Zenvus Boundary Partnership