1. Who are we?
APSC, the Africa Products & Software Development Center, established by the cooperation between Samsung Electronics South Africa Ltd. (Samsung A-RHQ) and Addis Ababa Institute of Technology (AAiT) of Addis Ababa University based on the contract made on March 1st, 2015.
2. Vision
APSC hopes to be a center for nurturing software startup ventures by cooperating Samsung A-RHQ as an entrepreneurship program practicing center of AAiT for the extension of Samsung A-RHQ market toward Sub-Sahara African countries and to make AAiT as a superior software engineering college in East Africa.
3. Mission
The missions of APSC to accomplish the vision are,
To practice the anticipated role for the extension of Samsung A-RHQ market toward Sub-Sahara African countries
To nurture AAiT as a superior software engineering college in Africa through the performing of industry-academy cooperation projects
To contribute the development of local products for the society in Ethiopia and various Sub-Saharan Africa countries.
4. Activities
To accomplish the vision and mission stated above APSC is now doing various activities such as;
- Market research and analysis projects - Start the cooperation projects by investigating the Ethiopian market to find out research items including mobile(HHP, Tablet), IT(Color Monitor, Note PC), CE products (CTV, washing machine, refrigerator, air-conditioner etc.) that are suitable for AAiT capability.
- Product planning or concept design projects for the items agreed by both Parties through the market investigation and analysis projects – Focusing on African culture, appropriate technology for the local society, and mid-low price suitable for the local economy.
- Application development and cultural contents building projects that are applicable to sub-Sahara Africa countries, specially Ethiopia as a succession of the product planning or concept design projects to support the new model implementation of the product that are selected to localize by both Parties. Using TIZEN platform and any other Samsung platform for developing application would be recommended. Detailed project plans are required to be agreed upon by Samsung A-RHQ in advance.
- Alpha and/or Beta testing projects for the localized products that are selected by both Parties as results of local development through the aforementioned phases of product planning and application development.
- Educating on Samsung A-RHQ software service platform (TIZEN), system architecture, and application frameworks applicable for the localization of products or services expecting to secure the dominating power on the market of emerging sub-Sahara, especially Ethiopian market, through which the capability of AAiTcommunityis enhanced on research and development of Samsung A-RHQ products or service.
- Collaboration program with SEA (Samsung Engineering Academy) for the enhancement of the SEA education program to the level of academy enough to be included as a regular course of AAiT and to the level at which SEA will serve as the spring framework to start manufacturing Samsung products locally.
- Software and application development for local market of Ethiopia and East Africa by involving students and AAiT community to exploit local market in the field and to make import substitute of foreign currency in the area software and related products.