Draft:Uka John Ibe

Uka John Ibe

Uka John Ibe is a Nigerian renewable expert. He is one of few Nigerians who popularized solar energy in Nigeria, having left telecommunication work for the renewable energy sector at a time when national policy on renewable energy was just in theory as the national grid was unable to provide electricity for the teeming population of Nigeria at that time.

Ibe leveraging on Sustainable Development Goals, envisioned a Nigeria where communities, individuals and businesses are empowered to own their power generation and overcome the challenges lack of it has created.

He believes that it is critical to address the green energy deficit by providing auxiliary support for the high cost of power in developing nations. Driven by this, he  led an aspiring young multidisciplinary team in Nexgen Energy, a company he co-founded in 2014, to emerge as one of the finalists of All On USADF 2019 Energy Off Grid Challenge All On and USADF Announce Winners of the 2019 Nigeria Off-Grid Energy Challenge.

In February 2020, Nexgen Energy under Ibe's leadership was chosen to participate in the Clean Energy Mini-Grid (CEMG) Enterprises Regional capacity building training organized by the ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREE/GIZ) in Accra, Ghana.

Ibe has continued to push the frontier of knowledge in renewable energy in Nigeria by undertaking research to develop the best suited Inverter models and designs for Nigeria where public power utility is poor and most of the population remain unserved and also partner with academia in this regard.

Early Life and Education

Uka John Ibe born in Owutu Edda in Ebonyi State, South East Nigeria on 4th February, 1978 to his parents both of whom he lost at a tender age of 9, lived with his maternal uncle, Engr. Ezeogo Okoro.

He had his primary education at Nguzu Primary School, Nguzu Edda, Ebonyi State and his secondary education at St' Malachy's Grammar School, Ugbeyiyi Sapele, Delta State. He earned a second-class upper honour degree at Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO) in Electronics and Electrical Engineering in 2000.

He also obtained a master's degree in Business Administration at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State in 2010. At age 36, he bagged another master's degree in Telecommunications and finished with distinction at Birmingham City University, United Kingdom.

Career

Ibe has worked with various multinational organizations including SITA/EQUANT SITA and GS Telecom now Vodacom Business. He joined MTN Nigeria in 2006 and served for a decade.

Between 2001 and 2002, Uka had a brief stint as a Field Engineer with SITA/EQUANT SITA, Kano, Nigeria.  SITA/EQUANT SITA, (Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques) is an Information Technology and Services company formed as a partnership consortium among airlines to build a communication network for the European airline industry offering International Telecommunications Services (ITS) to provide network integration services to its member companies.  While there, Uka was responsible for the installation and maintenance of PCs, routers, concentrators, printers, switches, dumb terminals, structured cabling, and LAN installations. His skills and services were valuable in the aviation industry, where he supported the ticket reservation platforms of airlines such as Alitalia, KLM, British Airways, Ethiopian Airlines and Air France in Nigeria. While at SITA/EQUANT, he obtained foremost certification standards for ICT specialists - Cisco Certified Network Associate CCNA and Microsoft Certified Professional MCP. These helped his efficiency in improving Mean Time To Restore (MTTR), Trouble Tickets (TT) by airline companies using their services.  Due to his excellent performance, SITA/Equant retained his services as an Operations Engineer after the one year mandatory National Youth Service Corps scheme.

Between 2002 – 2006, Uka worked at GS Telecom at Abuja, Nigeria. As the Implementation/Maintenance Engineer at GS Telecom, he majored in providing internet connectivity for banks and multinational corporations using VSAT technology. It was a period when banks were migrating from manual banking processes to the internet and online/real-time services. Frame Relay was the transport technology for internet protocol at that time and his work took him round northern Nigeria States of Sokoto, Borno, Kaduna, and Kano. Due to his outstanding performance, the company nominated him for training in Frame Relay at Alcatel University, Paris.

Between 2006 - 2021, Ibe had a meritorious 15-year career in MTN Nigeria. He worked as a Telecommunication engineer, rising to become a Team Lead, Transmission Access Planning. He coordinated and supervised various projects, including regional transmission access planning, engineering, and design of transmission networks (Microwave, Fibre and Multiplexers). He exhibited strong skills in project and people management, systems design, from site survey to system commissioning for CDMA, W-CDMA networks, deployment and operations and performance management, remote delivery services, network planning and optimization, multi-vendor optimization, data services management.