TECHNOLOGY and Science Minister, Felix Mutati has encouraged President Hakainde Hichilema to continue with his presidential international trips noting that they bring great dividends to the nation
The minister said this yesterday with reference to the President’s recent travel to Qatar’s capital Doha last March when he attended the 5th United Nations Conference on Least Development Countries (LDC’s).
During the forum, the President went a further mile to consume a technology changing deal for the country after signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Chairman of Liquid Telecom International, a campany that has built Africa’s redundant fiber network currently stretching over 18, 000km across nine countries in the continent including Zambia.
Mutati alluded that the MoU has today resulted into Zambia benefiting with the digitalisation of all the 1, 291 Secondary schools in the country and connecting all rural health centers to the internet. A development that Zambia has never witnessed before.
“At the sidelines of the forum, president Hichilema tapped on the opportunity that could see Zambia being among the digitalised countries in the world. Demonstrating his commitment to developing the country in all areas,” said Mutati.
The Minister further revealed that the MoU will also see Liquid Telecom constructing the biggest 3 tier data center in the South Economic Zone of Lusaka and also create an innovation hub in the country.
A 3 tier data center is a concurrently maintainable facility with multiple distribution paths for power and cooling that will offer Lusaka a high level of uptime, which will ensures systems are always available.
“So some times when people question that the president is traveling, he is travelling to deliver dividends to the people of Zambia. Now imagine in one single trip to do so much, if it was up to me, I would say, keep traveling because he is bringing real value to the nation,” Mutati said.
He further alluded that theses digital developments that the country is attaining is a great demonstration of the private sector working with government committing that his ministry will equally double it’s works in delivering more towers than the intended number for the year, so as to successfully have a 96 percent digitalized Zambia by 2025 maximum.
And if successful, this will beat the country’s full intended 100 percent digitalisation by the year 2030.
By Buumba Mwitumwa in Shiwang’andu, Muchinga Province
Kalemba January 21, 2024
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