MTN Tours Lagos Streets, Sensitises on Wellness

As part of activities lined up for this year’s ‘21 Days of Y’ello Care’ initiative, a telecommunication company, MTN Nigeria has taken to Lagos streets to enlighten Nigerians on rhesus factor as well as situations leading to child mortality.

The staff of the company in their yellow T-shirt, walked in droves along the streets of Lagos Island as they engaged motorists, passersby, hawkers and others in a faceto-face health interaction. Fliers were also distributed as others entertained onlookers with their elegant dancing steps to drive home their messages.

According to the company, its health focus this year was prompted by high child mortality rate and the need to promote awareness on rhesus incompatibility.

Medics say that rhesus factor is a protein that can be found on the surface of red blood cells; the presence of this protein means one is RH positive, the absence means RH negative, and consequently rhesus incompatibility raises problems during pregnancy.

The Y’ello Walk began at the company’s Nigeria headquarters in Ikoyi, through Obalende and culminated at the headquarters with the very spirited employees spread awareness on gene deficiency.

The MTN ‘21 days of Y’ello Care’ initiative completes the company’s social investment policy embodied by its Foundation. The initiative is supported by staff efforts where employees define the social actions they want to execute, which they personally and materially invest in to execute.

This year’s programme is themed: ‘Creating a Brighter Future’ and the company would be focusing its effort on ensuring a better quality of life for Nigerians between June 1st and 21st.

With investments in the Nigeria’s Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector, put at $70 billion, according to Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, telecommunication company, VDT Communication is creating room for more transactions in the industry by aligning with various initiatives targeting growth in the industry.

One of such is the Digital Africa Conference and Exhibition, an annual technology show that focuses on landmark achievements in science and technology by ancient Africa, inspiring technology transformation among current players and charting the course for future technology ecosystem in Africa.

This year’s event which held at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre in Abuja, had the Nigeria’s Minister of Communication, Mr. Adebayo Shittu, as special guest of honour, with VDT Communications as the official telecom partner. Themed ‘Africa’s Tech Renaissance’, organisers of the programme noted that Africa has the world’s oldest record of human technological achievement while only a few are aware of these accomplishments, as the history of Africa, beyond ancient Egypt, is rarely publicised.

According to the organisers, “the vast majority of discussions on the origins of science include only the Greeks, Romans and other whites. But in fact, most of their discoveries came thousands of years after African developments. While the remarkable black civilisation in Egypt remains alluring, there was sophistication and impressive inventions throughout ancient sub-Saharan Africa as well.

For instance, many treatments we use today were employed by several ancient peoples throughout Africa. Before the European invasion of Africa, medicine in what is now Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa, to name just a few places, was more advanced than medicine in Europe, hence this year’s theme to shift concentration to African ingenuity.”

This year’s edition of the conference featured over 36 international speakers and about 1000 participants from Nigeria, Africa and other parts of the world where participants also enjoyed networking opportunities and access to strategic partners, investors and potential buyers.

The conference, since inception had so far yielded economic gains to the sector, which was what informed VDT’s partnership with the organisers in the last six years.

In addition to sponsoring the event, the firm also provided free Wifi for use by all the participants in the conference and exhibited its traditional and newly developed services including, Digital Leased Circuit, Corporate Internet, Metro Wireless, Metro Fiber, ATM Solutions, Wi-Fi Hotspot and 4G LTE Advanced Retail Internet service.