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Over the past 2 decades the Internet has evolved to become not only the ultimate information highway but also an asset that has facilitated the development and growth of a myriad of innovations.

From the Dot Com bubble of the early 90s, social media revolutions of the 21st century, cloud-based solutions that today determine the way we use our devices and store information, to on demand services all owe their success and demise to the internet.

A walk through any of the many innovation hunts that take place across the country, continent and world bears testament to the fact that the Internet is a key asset in the innovator’s tools of success.

Web-based and mobile applications on demand services are all solutions that are trending among young innovators, which owe their relevance to the Internet.

The term innovator in today’s context is associated with the Internet, and how its application is used to solve today’s and tomorrow’s problems.

In as much as this association maybe controversial, one cannot help but notice the number of commercialised innovations and conceptualisations that have come up in the last 15 years that are Internet-based.

Social media being the most obvious would not have existed if it was not for the Internet. This innovative concept owes its existence to the need of people to connect utilising an already existing technology, allowing seamless communication, sharing of moments and what we today know as social media marketing.

While citing social media as one of the greatest innovations whose best asset is the Internet, solutions to everyday problems are constantly being developed utilising the information superhighway to aid people and achieve great profit.

In Africa, education is a sphere in life we hold dear and dissemination of information is key and part and parcel to its effectiveness.

Innovative e-learning solutions have been and are continuously being developed to complement the brick and mortar establishments to educate the masses.

An example of an innovation that uses the Internet as an asset to deliver a product to the masses would be Zimbabwean Walter Chipangura and Mandla Lukaka’s Brainstorm website.

The website draws its inspiration from the growing demand from public examination students (Grade 7, O and A-Level) to be able to interactively prepare for their exams at a low cost.

Today, we find that examination revisions that are conducted by teachers outside normal school hours are usually at an added expense to parents, given that this service is what should be provided by already burdened institutions.

www.brainstorm.co.zw is a solution that addresses this problem by allowing students to subscribe for tutoring at a minimum cost over the Internet.

The greatest advantage is that all a student needs is an Internet connection to access the service.

Similar solutions will also be of benefit to the greater African community as majority of the population is located in remote areas were the ratio of students to teacher is great.

By using V-SAT or Facebook’s ambitious satellite/drone-based Internet provision solution, innovators can provide Internet-based education solutions to achieve 100 percent literacy on the continent.

At the recently held Innovation Barraza in Harare (July 2015), anyone in attendance would have been overwhelmed by the various Internet-based solutions that young “innovatorpreneurs” exhibited, bearing testament to the fact that the Internet is an important asset to innovators.

The majority of 3rd world countries’ economies are dependent on agriculture, and some of these innovations sought to tackle challenges faced by such economies.

These challenges include and are not limited to finding markets, knowledge, and forecasting weather and market patterns.

Solutions presented at this expo used a multitude of solutions which included mobile applications and web based applications that can also link other existing technologies such as USSD and SMS.

Young innovators have seen the potential of integration to and aggregation of the Internet to provide lasting solutions to the life blood of 3rd world economies.

The Internet has proved to be a vital tool in not only being a carrier of data and information between communicating individuals or groups, but also spawned cloud based solutions.

It might not be as obvious to many, but at its core the Internet was primarily a means to access remotely stored information, and today, many innovative cloud solutions have been developed around this concept.

A means which was once a reserve for the military is now accessible to the masses as long as an Internet connection is available.

Today we store our music, movies, and other information on cloud solutions, saving storage space on our machines or allowing us to share information with others. Businesses have found this innovative solution most useful as information stored on individual machines may be easily lost. One such innovative solution for businesses is CrashPlan solution.

CrashPlan gives organisations back control of enterprise data, data that is currently sitting on end-user devices.

CrashPlan continuously and automatically backs up every version of every file on every device forever.

It compresses, encrypts and then backs up the data – either in its secure Pan-African cloud or at the user’s site.

Every file

Every version

Every user

Every device

Backed up forever. Restored when you need it.

All users’ devices are added to the system. Remote workers, field workers, overseas workers — even workers who are travelling.

The data is stored centrally regardless of where they are. And the data can be restored to wherever they are working.

 ZOL Zimbabwe as an Internet Service Provider is dedicated to providing all aspiring innovators access the Internet, so that they are able to develop solutions that address the problems of Zimbabwe and Africa. Contact us on 08677 111 111 or visit our website (www.zol.co.zw) to find out how ZOL can bring out the best of the innovator in you. ZOL ON! You deserve to live like this.