Digital Bridge Institute

FRIDAY

7 AM WAT – time for a Friday! Quick shower, some work in the room, then off to the pool

8:30 AM WAT – poolside, but no Internet access today. Looks like the access point is just fine, but the Internet uplink is toast. Bummer…go find the group and prepare for our 9:30 meeting.

9:30 AM WAT – Arrive at DBI (Digital Bridge Institute) for a meeting with the Director/CEO of the organization. We brief Dr. Olasupo Ogunfemi and his staff on our activities. He apparently has been in communication with Raymond Akuwle regarding our mission, but was waiting for us to arrive to actually discuss it with us. It would have been much better if he had communicated directly with us prior to our arrival in country as we likely could have arranged the logistics a bit better for an effective stay with them…

DBI has as its mission to build human capacity in the ICT sector, offering certificate courses and programs as well as a post-graduate degree program.

We get a tour of the facility, interrupt a class on CDMA and microwave propagation properties to introduce our research, a couple of questions, but mostly welcomes were extended by the students.

The institute has both a vocational and an academic track, the academic track being only 10 weeks old and still under development. They have several active courses going on during most weeks. They bring in industry experts, subject matter experts as it were. Sounds like they get some folk who know their stuff -- 10 plus years practical industry experience in the field they are teaching.

Mostly very centric around telco -- wireless, microwave, vsat, switching and all of the mobile technologies. I asked about the Internet side and he said they do some, but it really sounds almost exclusive on the telephony and very little on the data side. Seems to me a big gap.

They have very nice facilities and at least some of them are being put to good use. They have their own VSAT connectivity with some 1Mbps up and 5Mbps down, allowing them to do videoconferencing.

They have trained some 800 professionals to date and appear to be going strong. Many of the folk in the training have been sent by the operators, others are attempting to get the education/training to join the operators.

We will do a teleconference in mid-January to disseminate the results of our research to DBI and perhaps some of their students.

11:30 AM WAT – Back at hotel – go change into shorts and head to the pool – alas, still no network…very sad…