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The Health Of Nations – Nigeria Is Still A Sick Nation, Yet To Revamp Its Healthcare

By
Tekedia Editors
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You must have heard the report created by Economist Intelligence Unit for GE in order to access how countries are positioned to meet the critical healthcare challenges facing them in the years ahead. The developed world will continue to access cost efficiency- that high cost does not mean good healthcare delivery; firms that take better care of their workers tend to outperform the market; healthcare is a long-term national strategy, etc.

 

But in mother Nigeria, we are still trying to solve problems that have since been removed in the dictionary of most modern world. TB, polio, malaria, etc are all problems. The following are summarizes of  the report:

 

  •  Total expenditure on healthcare in Nigeria was an estimated 2.6% of GDP in 2008, of which around 70% was spent in the private sector. At around US$28 per head, spending on healthcare in Nigeria was lower than in most other Sub-Saharan countries.
  •  The backlog of work that needs to be carried out on the healthcare system, coupled with the growing demands on it, will ensure that the state health sector remains seriously under-funded, with many hospitals and clinics in poor condition.
  •  Increased government spending has gone on providing new facilities, largely in primary healthcare. However, government facilities lack modern medical equipment, have poorly qualified staff and suffer shortages of drugs. Although government-funded primary healthcare centres account for the majority of medical facilities in Nigeria, the private sector provides the majority of secondary healthcare facilities.
  •  As with many African countries, Nigeria is facing a huge potential health crisis caused by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Nearly 3m people in Nigeria are living with HIV/AIDS, with a prevalence rate of 3.1%: after South Africa, Nigeria rivals India for the second-highest rate of infection in the world.

 

In June 2006 the government launched a five-year scheme to reduce malaria, including better use of insecticide-treated nets. Although the government says that it is making headway in tuberculosis treatment, a recent World Health Organisation report found that Nigeria had the fifth-largest number of tuberculosis cases in the world in 2006.

 

You can read more about this on the  GE Health of Nations

The Big Decay In Nigeria’s Telecom Sector – Service Quality Has Hit Rock Bottom

By
Tekedia Editors
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0

Tekedia will publish a report tomorrow about the decay in Nigeria’s telecommunication industry. From our industry data, the telecom sector in Nigeria is under a big threat. Service has gone from bad to worst that even some people in Owerri are switching from MTN to Multilinks (is that a good plan?).

 

Service is poor and the telecoms are not investing because the ARPU (average revenue per user) is going lower and lower. The reality is that the paying and profitable customers are gone and finding new areas of growth is becoming a huge problem. The business of prepaid card is a commodity one and Nigerians are not ready to pay for Value Added Services (VAS).

 

So, we see that the telecom industry is under severe stress.   The drop calls are unbearable and the signal strength is most areas is lower. No wonder, the House of Representative  has asked for assessment into what is causing this problem when the Committee on Communications reconvenes.

 

This is just the beginning. Tekedia thinks that most of the telecom players are not investing. They are watching their expenses because it has become tough in the nation. Airtel expected the magic in India to work, but is learning the hard way. The industry is under threat. Multilinks is gone, Starcomms trades as a junk in the Nigeria Stock Exchange. The big three are not pumping more money and service has gone down.

 

Mr Eddie Mbadiwe, a House member has summarized this when he said recently: ”The country needs efficient telecommunications in order to grow Nigeria’s IT and telecom sector.”. We hope someone can look at the problems and get them solved.

 

Mr. Idris Azizi, a telecom analyst that spoke with Tekedia from Kano noted that if the government does not save the nation from these telecom crises, the nation will reverse years of progress made in this sector. He also noted on the high cost of the service despite being sub-standard.

 

Tekedia will release the report tomorrow and we ask you to visit here for it.

 

Fasmicro Is Bringing Integrated Circuit Design To Nigerian Universities – Working With Global Leader, Cadence

By
Tekedia Editors
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0


Fasmicro will form a Cadence Academic Network in Nigeria very soon as it is done in other parts of the world.

 

This is the vision when we authored the national Microelectronics thematic area on Vision 2020 for Nigerian government. What this means is that the selected school will help us with primary data to push for a national program which we will author and send to the Senate.

 

 

EUROPRACTICE is a European Commission initiative, funded by the EU Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7). The aim is to improve the competitiveness of European industry by the adoption of advanced electronics technologies.

EUROPRACTICE is a quality brand name for European service-type projects in the Microelectronics, Microsystems and Photonics fields. The EUROPRACTICE brand name covers a wide range of FP6 and FP7 projects.

 

Meanwhile, we invite schools that want to join the network in Nigeria to send an email via the Vice Chancellor to info@fasmicro.com. Every aspect of this program is free and we are not accepting anything in return.  As we build more schools, we will help standardize SDK, PDK,  techfiles and other process and technology parameters for Nigeria. That way you can design your chip and send to partner institutions for fabrication. Fasmicro has already initiated contacts with MOSIS and CMP France for prototype chip fabrication. We will formalize all aspects in coming weeks. We hope to design on AMI 0.5um  and TSMC 0.18um processes as a start,

 

As soon as the systems are ready, we will run a three month program on the Cadence design process. Our pivot university will most likely be Federal University of Technology Owerri, Nigeria with Babcock University Nigeria as the next one.

 

 

 

Cadence Design Systems, Inc is an electronic design automation (EDA) software and engineering services company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD, Inc. For years it had been the largest company in the EDA industry. The name is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable.

Multilinks Staff In Confusion Over Their Future – Layoffs Loom Without Compensations

By
Tekedia Editors
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0

The saga surrounding Visafone purchase and later cancellation of Multilinks. Then Telkom sale of the company to Helios Towers. And then, then; it is still evolving! But it seems that one group of people are losing badly – the workers of Multilinks.

Helios Towers rents out towers so that telecommunication operators can provide network coverage and build. They do this largely in Africa with Nigeria as one of its big markets. Helios Towers is a division of a private equity firm founded by a Nigerian UK based Harvard graduate who also invested in First City Monument Bank before the crash. This company has quite a war chest under management. Tekedia confirms that Helios Investment Partners holds rights in Helios Towers as our previous report confirmed.

Tekedia reports that Multilinks workers are troubled over what has happened in the last few months, if not weeks. They are not sure that the new management will need them or if they are to sack them will even compensate them.

The workers are visibly concerned that the Helios Towers driven by private equity firm in London will take the short pathway of firing and not paying any compensation. They are expecting the worst with some are not even expecting any kind of compensation. Everything now depends on the clause in the sale of the company by Telkom to Helios.

What is certain is that problems loom as even those that will be retained cannot be sure how long this Multilink metamorphosis will end. The new management will not remove competition from GSM players which continue to undermine any efforts from the CDMA small players, including Multilinks. Multilniks is a losing entity and its loses is expected to continue in the already saturating Nigeria telecom sector.

Tekedia has stated the only way out of the CDMA players is to merge. But for now, the workers of Multilinks will have to live the next few weeks.

HTC Desire S Review – The Handset That Got HTC To The Global Arena

By
Tekedia Editors
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1

The original Desire was the handset that really solidified HTC as one of the world´s leading smartphone manufacturers and was also one of the bestselling phones of 2010. Due to its phenomenal popularity HTC has now reissued the device with some more contemporary features. Although some areas of the new Desire S have been upgraded, including the HSPA and Wi-Fi connections and Android operating system, the newer version remains very faithful to the original.

 

If you have just bought the original Desire it might not be worthwhile rushing out to get the S version just yet, but if your beloved Desire has seen better days then this latest version with its tweaks and updates may be just what you need.

 

Screen and Physical Design

 

The original Desire was released with an AMOLED screen but, due to shortages from manufacturer Samsung, HTC later made a switch to Super LCD. The new Desire S is to ship with a Super LCD screen right from its launch providing a much sharper screen rendering than the very first Desire handsets. Measuring at 3.7″ and with the same WVGA resolution the screen is one area of the Desire S that has not really changed from the original phone.

 

Running on capacitive technology the Desire S provides users with full multitouch input and a very responsive touchscreen. This screen is made from Gorilla Glass which is much stronger than the glass or plastic that is traditionally used for mobile phone screens. It provides extra protection against the scratches that would otherwise be acquired as your phone jostles with your keys for a comfortable position in your pocket.

 

 

Below the screen of the original Desire there was an optical trackpad which could be used to navigate around the HTC Sense interface. This was an interface that was quite often implemented on BlackBerry devices and it seems that HTC now considers it to be rather burmo in today´s touch savvy mobile phone world as it has been completely removed for the new Desire S.

 

Additionally the Desire S no longer features the same physical buttons as the original on its exterior. The home, menu, back and search buttons are now more discretely blended into the phone´s screen bezel. A simple change yet it does dramatically improve the look and feel of the device. One other result of this alteration is that the Desire S is now slightly smaller than the original in terms of height. It also slimmer and not quite as wide and although the physical changes may only seem slight they do produce a more comfortable to hold phone.

 

Android Gingerbread

 

The original Desire shipped with Android Éclair and was later updated to Android Froyo, although the Desire S features the even newer Android Gingerbread. This includes an improved onscreen keyboard, better copy/paste functionality and a whole host of new tweaks and features. Although Google had introduced support for Near Field Communications (NFC) with Android Gingerbread this is not a feature that is supported on the Desire S as it lacks the relevant NXP NFC chip to operate it.

 

Even so users of the Desire S will get to enjoy the many enhancements of the new Android OS and combined with HTC´s Sense interface it offers up some excellent entertainment and messaging features. HTC Sense in particular is a great interface for social networking with social networks like Twitter and Facebook integrated into many areas of the phone.

 

Messaging and Photography

 

The Desire S also has other messaging features including threaded SMS, email and instant messaging. One of the hardware improvements from the original is that the new Desire S comes with 3D data connections at twice the speed allowing you to enjoy faster online communications.

 

This is good news for general web browsing as well and certainly for making use of bandwidth hogging activities like YouTube. The Desire S also features improved Wi-Fi as it now comes with support for Wi-Fi 802.11 n and DLNA. The added DLNA support now allows you to stream YouTube videos and other contents through a larger television.

 

You can also record your own videos with the Desire S´s 5 megapixel camera. The original Desire came with support for WVGA video and this was upgraded to 720p with the Android Froyo update. The Desire S features 720p recording out of the box however, so no software update is required before having some HD video fun. The Desire S now features a front facing camera as well, with the VGA device being something that was not found on the original. With this you can enjoy the latest craze of video calling.

 

Entertainment

 

The Desire S comes with a great many entertainment features on board. This includes support for a wide range of music and video formats that can be enjoyed on the phone´s media player. With access to Android Market you can also download many alternative media players as well as thousands of apps and games to enjoy.

 

As already mentioned the Desire S comes with support for YouTube so that you can enjoy online video content and you can also enjoy this from other websites too with support for Adobe Flash. The Desire S also comes with an FM radio that you can use to enjoy the latest music on release. The Desire S comes with support for 32GB microSD cards so that you are afforded a great deal of room for music and video.

 

The Desire S is ideal for enjoying all of the great games available from Android Market as its Super LCD screen and Adreno graphics acceleration provide some impressive visual quality. The Desire S also has a speedy 1GHz Snapdragon processor and 768MB RAM under its wing to provide some effective processing power.

 

While the CPU of the original Desire has not had an upgrade to dual core as many had hoped would be the case with this new iteration, the phone has had a boost in terms of its physical memory and graphical acceleration so there will be noticeable improvements for people who had used the original handset.

 

 

Summary

 

The original Desire was highly popular with critics and the general public alike and has been one of the biggest success stories for HTC so far. The new Desire S does not offer all the bells and whistles of HTC´s next flagship the Sensation but it does make an otherwise great phone even better. The updated Android OS and 3G connections will give this Desire a new lease of life and by sticking to the same winning design HTC is hoping that they will not upset too many people who have become loyal admirers of the HTC Desire smartphone.

 

However, although this is still a fantastic smartphone it is not quite as cutting edge as the original Desire was when it was released back in 2010 and will most likely not make as big of a splash. It is for this reason and this reason alone that the Desire S has been awarded 4 stars instead of 5, as in and of itself it is as much of a flawless handset as the original.

 

You can buy this handset from our partner, UK Best Mobile Contracts

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