Malawi’s pioneer mobile network and ICT services provider, TNM Plc, has donated servers to the country’s four major public universities and two technical colleges.
The beneficiary universities are Malawi University of Sciences and Technology (MUST), Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences (MUBAS), University of Malawi (UNIMA), Mzuzu University (MZUNI). Beneficiary technical colleges are National College of Information Technology and Soche Technical College.
TNM Head of Infrastructure and Cloud Services Macdonald Chamba said the donation aims to assist the public universities improve their technology infrastructure and enhance delivery of academic programs in ICT and telecommunications.
The multipurpose servers are designed to cater for various technological functions suitable for tertiary education.
“As TNM, we would like to underscore our commitment to contribute towards ICT development in the country. By boosting capacity of universities and students, we are creating capacity create for them to be able to test the deployment of enterprise architecture comprising of database servers, application servers and presentation layers, among other functions,” said Chamba.
He said that the servers will enable institutions to implement robust test virtualization which is the foundation of cloud computing infrastructure.
“Test virtualization have proven to be very beneficial in tertiary education sector ranging from easy management of data to provision of security for students and the institutions,” he added.
TNM has reaffirmed of continued investment in tertiary education which plays an integral role towards the economic growth.
“Social economic development of our nation hinges on tertiary education, therefore, it is significant to support the sector. Our contribution will align our local colleges and universities to the world’s technology trends including quality cloud services,” he said.
The company believes that the donation will address ICT infrastructure gaps in high institutions of learning.
“At TNM we understand that distribution of ICT resources is inadequate in our universities and government alone cannot afford to satisfy that need. We believe that the donation will support government’s efforts in ensuring easy access to ICT and telecommunication services in colleges and universities,” added the infrastructure head.
Centre Manager at Mzuzu University who represented the universities and colleges, Donnex Chilonga admitted the mismatch of practical knowledge and theory being fueled by shortage of ICT equipment in public institutions.
“There is a huge gap between theoretical part and practical aspect due to inadequate IT resources in our universities and colleges. We have practical knowledge; however, we don’t have equipment to apply the skills. The development, therefore, creates a mismatch which is affecting the ICT industry in the country,” said Chilonga.
Chilonga expressed gratitude to TNM saying the multifaceted gesture will improve ICT in public institutions for both learning and usage.
“We are institutions that depend on government subventions that are not enough to cater for our needs more especially in technology. We are very happy to receive these servers from TNM, this means that we are moving forward in terms of technology,” said Chilonga.
Through the donation, TNM has distributed 25 working servers to the six institutions and other decommissioned servers that could be used for learning more especially those doing hardware engineering programs.