Qualcomm Incorporated has officially set the stage for a new wave of industrial transformation across the continent with the selection of 10 high-impact startups for the fourth edition of the Qualcomm Make in Africa Mentorship Programme, reports ITREALMS.
As a standard prerequisite for Africa’s digital sovereignty, the initiative reinforces an irreducible commitment to empowering the deep-technology ecosystem through advanced connectivity and Edge AI integration.
Qualcomm Incorporated has shortlisted startups for its Make in Africa 2024, as well as the winner of the 2023 Wireless Reach Social Impact Fund, reports ITREALMS.
The Qualcomm Africa Innovation Platform, now in its second year, aims to work with and support the development of Africa's emerging technology ecosystem by providing mentorship, education, and training programs with a focus on 5G, Edge-AI/ML, Compute, and IoT.
This is coming as Qualcomm Incorporated announced the completion of the first year of the Africa Innovation Platform, a suite of mentorship, education, and training programs created to support the development of Africa’s emerging technology ecosystem.
Apple has sealed a deal with Qualcomm Technologies for the Fifth Generation (5G) modems to be used in iPhones released over the three years from 2024, reports ITREALMS.
The latest deal, ITREALMS gathered, will extend a supply relationship between the pair for Snapdragon 5G Modem Radio Frequency (RF) Systems and was announced the day before Apple was expected to unveil its latest batch of iPhones.
Qualcomm has joined
forces with five organizations for the improvement of maternal and child health
in Nigeria, tagged CliniPAK360 Mobile Health Application, reports ITRealms.
It was gathered
by ITRealms that the collaboration was on development and deploy wireless of electronic
medical record system to reduce the country's high maternal and infant
mortality rate.
Happening at the
ongoing Mobile World Congress, ITRealms learnt that Qualcomm Incorporated, through its Wireless Reach
initiative partnered Vecna Cares Charitable Trust, the nonprofit arm of Vecna
Technologies; InStrat Global Health Solutions, a turnkey health care solutions
provider; Etisalat Nigeria, a Nigerian telecommunications operator; Nigeria’s
National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), a part of the Federal
Ministry of Health; and Evidence for Action, a campaign to ensure Africa’s
mothers and babies survive pregnancy and childbirth, teamed up to develop and
deploy a wireless, Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system for clinics
throughout three states within the NPHCDA.
ITRealms reports that this brings about a paperless, mobile patient registry to midwives
throughout rural Nigeria.
The CliniPAK360
project, ITRealms gathered, is aimed at reducing the country’s high maternal and infant
mortality rates.
ITRealms recalls that Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and has maternal and
infant mortality rates that are among the world’s highest.
For instance, the
United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimates in The World Factbook that Nigeria experienced approximately 630 maternal deaths per
100,000 live births in 2010 and approximately 73 infant deaths per 1,000 live
births in 2013.
In comparison, the maternal death rate in
developed countries is approximately nine per 100,000.
Further, ITRealms reports that currently, NPHCDA midwives record patient data in paper notebooks
and Regional Health Officers travel to the clinics to review the reports for
accuracy.
According to
Country Manager, Qualcomm for West Africa, Mr. Alex Dadson this will lighten
the burden and increase accuracies and efficiencies, whereas the Wireless
Reach-funded project features a cloud-based electronic medical record system
based on Vecna Cares’ CliniPAK software and 3G-enabled tablets powered by
Qualcomm Snapdragon processors to streamline and automate the in-field data
capture and reporting process and help improve health outcomes.
He explained
that as part of the project, each midwife uses a tablet to record patient data
at the point of care.
“The data is transmitted
wirelessly via Etisalat’s 3G mobile network to the CliniPAK central server,
which aggregates and synchronizes the data with clinic-based CliniPAK units,”
he said.
Dadson of Qualcomm and Davies of Mobile Monday Nigeria @April session
Qualcomm, leader in telecom innovation, has given its support
to the monthly Mobile Monday, dangling the sum of $1000, about N150,000 for
developers exploits.
Business Development Director for Qualcomm Africa, Mr. Alex Dadson, made this disclosed this to ITRealms at the Mobile Monday held in Lagos for the month of April, 2013 in an exclusive
interview.
He also said that the platform afforded Qualcomm to showcase
a number of technologies that the company introduced to the application
developers community in Nigeria.
“We have various Software Development Kits (SDKs), which
these application developers can really use to improve the qualities of their
applications,” he declared, adding that Qualcomm is using the Mobile Monday
platform to increase awareness about its own SDK and then announce training
programmes for the community moving forward.
According to Dadson, this training for developers is open
for Andriod developers in Nigeria with the hope that by the end of the year Qualcomm
and partners should showcase a couple of applications that are using its SDKs.
Currently, he said, Qualcomm has good support for Andriod
and a very broad support across various SDKs for Andriod, just as it has supports
for Windows and iOS, but starting with Andriod as far as Mobile Monday is
concerned.
Qualcomm, he said, has experimented on this initiative in
South Africa and plans to extend it to Nigeria and Kenya.
“We have done this in South Africa. It was in South Africa
that we started out talking about SDKs and doing some training for the
developers communities and we decided to add Nigeria and Kenya next. So, there
are the two hotbeds activities that we hope to tackle over the next couple of
months this year,” Dadson said.
He reassured that Qualcomm’s strategy to various training
programmes for developers is meant to create apps using its SDKs, a milestone
he looks up to achieve before the end of this year.
The coordinator of the Mobile Monday Nigeria, Mr. Tom Davies
explained that Mobile Monday is an initiative that started in the year 2000 and
has grown to become a global organisation that facilitates business and fosters
business opportunities between members of the mobile eco-system, from Original
Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to software application providers and developers.
“Mobile Monday manifested in Nigeria in 2010. What we are
currently doing is to enter into partnership with Qualcomm to develop the
developers in the Nigerian eco-system,” Davies said, stressing that he expected
that as a global leader, Qualcomm will help Mobile Monday onto putting the
Nigerian developers into the global platform itself, beginning with Developers Challenge
announcement and for those who are members of Mobile Monday who gets Qualcomm
certification actually stand a chance of winning a $1000.
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