Arivia.kom Nigeria signs three contracts, grows steadily

Fledgling arivia.kom Nigeria has cemented three technology and services agreements, one with the Association for the Development of Africa (ADEA), another with software application vendor Industrial & Financial Systems (IFS) and the third with Video In Knowledge Out (VIKO).

The deals will see arivia.kom Nigeria, established in April, expanding its services and technology to include electronic education delivery and enterprise systems.

"We are committed to our African strategy and Nigeria is a country we are actively pursuing in terms of growing our business," says Bheki Nkomo, managing executive, Africa Division, arivia.kom South Africa. "These agreements channel diverse expertise into a single point that we can leverage and we look forward to a successful relationship for all parties, including the people of Nigeria who will benefit from the education facilitation. The partnership with IFS will help us to penetrate new markets and sectors in Nigeria and bring us closer to our intent of becoming a leading information and communications technology (ICT) provider to the continent."

IFS has an enterprise system that has been proven in Africa, with cellular services businesses MTN and Star Comms as two of the larger customers in Nigeria. In terms of the agreement, arivia.kom Nigeria is the sole distributor of IFS in Nigeria.

"There is much demand for industrial and financial control systems in Nigerian businesses," says Alistair McGlashan, CEO of arivia.kom Nigeria.

"The challenge we have found is opening up the large market for our product around the Nigerian business hub," says Paul Whalley, MD of IFS in SA. "We see the potential of this partnership to help us achieve that aim, taking our product into areas that we would not be able to reach on our own. In the course of the next year we will have a tremendous amount of extra feet on the ground due to this partnership."

ADEA is the sole distributor of EarthWalk in Africa. This wireless hardware product is aimed at disseminating knowledge via e-learning software products. Arivia.kom has sole value-added reseller rights for EarthWalk in Nigeria in terms of the agreement with ADEA.

"While we initially see the probable importation of components, in the longer term we envision units being partly manufactured and eventually assembled in Nigeria," says McGlashan.

"EarthWalk has been in business since 1996 and I signed an exclusive distributorship agreement for sub-Saharan Africa last year," says Dr Thomas Rush, MD of ADEA. "The Earthwalk product, a mobile wireless computer lab, will be very effective in penetrating Africa and meeting the needs in the African education market. The partnership gives us extended reach into Africa with a product that is ideally suited to the continent`s needs, and it gives us the flexibility to take the product into rural communities and support some of the NEPAD initiatives, while ensuring that the government of Nigeria is able to support its people`s education needs."

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VIKO, developed by Magnolia Wireless (in association with a consortium of international developers), is a suite of education and related software products, which can be productively applied via the EarthWalk products, as well as via broadband satellite services provided by arivia.kom Nigeria partner, Emperion.

"This will satisfy an education-related service at any place, at any time, to any education service provider in Nigeria," says McGlashan.

"We`ve been involved in education for over 15 years," says Rael Lissoos, director of Magnolia Wireless and VIKO. "With that experience we developed a three-pronged approach to managing education content distribution. That consists of a system at schools to maintain education local site appliances, an educational content distribution system and a learning management system. Combined with the partnerships that arivia.kom Nigeria brings to the table, and the reach of the business, the system becomes immensely powerful."

Arivia.kom Nigeria is 51% owned by arivia.kom in SA and 49% by its Nigerian principals.

McGlashan says that businesses have often been criticised for the manner in which they enter the country. That is why arivia.kom Nigeria has insisted on involving all necessary participants, from the governments of SA and Nigeria, to local Nigerian partners and industry players.

"We formulated, at the beginning of the process, a method of supplying technology to the Nigerian people, focusing on children, pensioners and businesspeople through public and private organisations," says McGlashan. "This is where we want to penetrate strongly, using local and other partners."

The business has established offices in Abuja and Lagos and has already signed and delivered on two contracts, while more employees are being trained.