The award ceremony witnessed the provision of 30 schools with computer hardware and software accessories to support their learning, content production and digitisation. 

Developed to improve the learning capabilities of 200 low and middle-cost schools, the Tech Relevant Teacher (TRT) project was deployed through the training of school heads and teachers in virtual teaching technologies. The project also introduced virtual learning to schools that lacked relevant resources and requisite skills by supporting them with computer hardware and software. 

Following a rigorous assessment and selection process, 30 of the 200 Schools were selected and recognised for their stellar performance since the commencement of the project. Each beneficiary school was presented with a mini-content production suite to help teachers expand their sphere of influence through the acquisition of content digitisation skills. The production suite consisted of a computer, a PC external speaker, a headset, and a microphone. 

Speaking on the next phase of the TRT project, Femi Martins, Programme Director, Bunmi Adedayo Foundation said, “We appreciate The Coca-Cola Foundation for supporting this project. We are currently at the semi-final stage as the learning competition continues. Through this project, we are providing access to subject mentoring in Maths and English and we will also provide access to the latest equipment. The teachers will also be profiled and taught how to develop global courses to help students across Africa succeed”. 

Ifeyinwa Ejindu, Communications Manager, Coca-Cola Nigeria Limited, reiterated the company’s commitment to community building and education, saying,

“At Coca-Cola, we are passionate about the communities we serve. We remain committed to enabling the economic empowerment of the people who need it most. Through our philanthropic arm, The Coca-Cola Foundation, we are proud to partner with the Bunmi Adedayo Foundation on this transformational project as we hope to impact the lives of hundreds of teachers and children across the country. By investing in the education of our children, we are investing in the future of our country and as we navigate the new normal, we believe that technology is crucial to success just as the learnings from this project will help bolster the education sector in Nigeria”. 

Since its inception in 1984, The Coca-Cola Foundation has awarded over $1 billion in grants to support diverse sustainable community initiatives around the world. Driven by a need to create a better shared future for communities across the world, the foundation offers community support programs that have led to the improvement of the quality of life of these communities.

 Launched in the fall of 2020 to commercial partners, the powerful new partner program, built on a single, integrated structure provides the insights, capabilities and collaboration tools needed to drive digital transformation and growth as consumer buying behaviours continue to evolve. HP will begin to transition retail partners1 to the HP Amplify program beginning August 2, 2021 and continue through the calendar year.

Built on a simplified and easy-to-navigate structure with two distinct retail tracks (Synergy and Power including Power CDR Retail targeted at retail sub-distributors), HP Amplify is designed from the ground up to turn data analytics into insights that spark new strategies, steer innovation and reward partners for performance, collaboration and capabilities while accelerating digital transformation with insights, building a data driven culture and augmenting common knowledge with collaboration tools.

“For the IT industry overall, and the retail channel specifically, it is clear that business as usual is no longer an option. HP Amplify not only makes it easier for retail partners to do business with HP, it provides a clear path, built on a proven framework, to transform their business for today while enabling long-term sustained growth in the future,” said Bradley Pulford, Managing Director, HP Inc. Africa. “Together with our partner community we are reinventing how consumers experience our products and services, by investing in our shared capabilities while developing new areas of strength to remain competitive.”

Spurred by rising demand for work, learn and entertain at home products accelerated by the pandemic, the retail industry has experienced an accelerated pace of change. According to Pulford, capitalizing on the momentum of transformational experiences will be critical to building and maintaining the flexibility that is demanded of doing business today. For the foreseeable future, changes in consumer behaviour will have a greater impact on value in retail than any other single factor.

While in-store traffic decreased, e-commerce sales grew by more than 27 percent in 2020, and is expected to account for 40 percent of total sales for consumer-packaged goods by 2025. Trends such as hybrid work, the emergence of the prosumer and continued e-commerce growth are making collaborative partnerships in the retail industry more essential than ever. With the introduction of HP Amplify, HP is empowering retailers to capitalize on these shifts, arming partners to deliver superior customer experiences and drive future growth.

“Customers are requesting a closer and more personalized relationship with brands,” Pulford said. “We will increase our common knowledge of the consumption patterns using data analytics in order to redesign the customer journey, improving experiences online and in-store through HP’s Amplify for Retail program.”

HP Amplify offers a common platform designed to enable progressive go-to-market strategies focused on three core pillars: performance, capabilities, and collaboration. Building on the success of the HP Amplify framework while addressing unique needs of retailers, the new program rewards partners for a variety of performance indicators tied to portfolio sell through and revenue. A structured compensation framework, sales boosters, and other tools help retail partners to assess performance and actions providing clear indicators of success.

Beyond sales revenue alone, HP Amplify measures rewards based on new capabilities such as driving data insights, service models, consistent online and in-store experiences. Strengthening and developing of new capabilities are supported by online digital assessments and recommendations based on core capabilities, consumer trends, benchmarking, and best practices. HP Amplify rewards partners who invest in the capabilities to compete – and win – in a world dominated by e-commerce and digital-led customer journeys.

Transformational change requires collaborative partnerships. Companies that regularly collaborate with suppliers can demonstrate higher growth, lower operating costs, and greater profitability than their industry peers6. Partners that report data will be able to anticipate and enable more positive customer outcomes, ultimately driving sales conversions and maximizing average baskets. HP will collaborate closely with partners to optimize sales through store level assortment tools and cross category recommendations to unlock opportunity diversification.

Nokia today said it is enhancing its industry leadership in open solutions by rapidly ramping up the adoption of Open RAN (O-RAN) interfaces in its AirScale portfolio.

This enhancement to its radio access network (RAN) portfolio aims to enable an open ecosystem of innovation and a robust telecom supply chain, while ensuring world-class network performance and security.  

These new O-RAN capabilities, which include open interfaces, will be built on top of Nokia’s existing AirScale software, providing the same high-level performance, expansive functionalities and robust security standards of Nokia’s current radio products.

By taking the approach of building the open interfaces on top of its existing solutions, Nokia is helping to prepare for the network architecture of the future, regardless if CSPs choose to pursue an O-RAN path or not. An initial set of O-RAN functionalities will become available this year, while the full suite of O-RAN-defined interfaces is expected to be available in 2021.  

As the only global RAN provider to commit to O-RAN, Nokia’s accelerated investment in and firm commitment to O-RAN provides CSPs as well as regulators and political decision-makers with greater assurance that they can embrace openness to secure their telecom supply chain, without concerns about the competitiveness and/or security of their 5G infrastructure.

Nokia has already made significant investments in O-RAN by leading the early deployment of the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) and the open fronthaul. Nokia also recently announced the next generation of its AirScale Cloud RAN portfolio.

As Nokia’s solutions utilize the same software trunk across RAN, Cloud RAN and O-RAN, Nokia customers will benefit from the ultimate flexibility to define their network architecture without sacrificing network features, performance, or security.

 Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia, said: “Nokia is committed to leading the open mobile future by investing in Open RAN and Cloud RAN solutions with the aim of enabling a robust telecom ecosystem with strong network performance and security. Nokia’s Cloud RAN solution leads the market and is continuing to evolve to a cloud-native architecture. We have the scale and capabilities to address the increased customer demand for this technology, underpinned by the world-class network performance and security that only Nokia can deliver.”   

Joe Madden, Principal Analyst at Mobile Experts, said:”Several operators have now committed to Open RAN, due to the enhanced flexibility that O-RAN can bring. New operators are fully committing to Open RAN and alternative hardware vendors throughout their networks, and legacy operators are using O-RAN to create opportunities for innovative new products to fit into their complex networks.

This overall trend strengthens the ecosystem and allows for specialty radios to address the infinite variety of real-world applications. Nokia is the only major vendor that has fully committed to actively developing the O-RAN interfaces, ensuring that its 5G RAN solutions will support the future open ecosystem the operators are seeking.”