By Mark Kawalya
Zodsat, a Zimbabwe-founded internet service provider, has been contracted to provide the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology and National Guidance with the Internet of Things (IoT) that will be used for e-learning in schools.
IoT is a system that interrelates computing devices, objects, mechanical and digital machines, objects, or people by providing them with unique identifiers (UIDs) and enabling them to transfer data over a network without the need for human-to-computer or human-to-human interaction.
Brian Mukwedera, Zodsat’s technical director noted that learning institutions need reliable and stable internet connectivity, and it is their duty as the license operator to provide a service that meets those requirements.
“Our services reach out to remote locations and cities where bandwidth is expensive or saturated, and the solutions can be deployed, enabling access to content in a highly reliable manner.”
“With our partnership with Uganda’s Ministry of ICT, we will distribute and provide access to the content, whether with the MAPs that are deployed in remote areas, enabling users to access the content in an Internet-like manner, without the user actually being on the Internet,” Mukwedera added.
Arnold Chimambo, the CEO of Zodsat, said the company aims to enable African governments to accelerate their mandate to provide affordable internet to their citizens.
“We have always had a dream to provide services beyond our borders, as stated in our vision and mission statement (to provide internet services throughout Zimbabwe and Southern Africa).” When we got interested clients in Uganda, we realized that we should not limit ourselves to Southern Africa.” he said.
The Internet of All Things can be used in a number of sectors, such as agriculture, health, connected logistics, smart cities, etcetera.
The Ministry of ICT sent representatives to Zimbabwe last month, where they were shown a number of demonstration sites that are fully serviced by Zodsat. Currently, the firm has set up a satellite at Chikurubi Primary School, allowing the deployment of VSAT internet for educational purposes.
