As
a continent with very high potential for growing economies, how can African
countries accelerate their digital adoption and leapfrog into a new era of
socio-economic prosperity?
This
could be achieved by leveraging new technologies that make it easier to conduct
business, raise productivity and efficiency while encouraging an inclusive
society. Embracing new ways of enabling positive change will boost livelihoods,
promote financial inclusion and improve access to health, education, government
services and more.
With
the ambition of supporting the acceleration of Africa’s digitalisation journey,
we are working jointly with our customers – the service providers – and other
stakeholders across the continent to enable #AfricaInMotion.
Digitisation
boosting economies
We
believe that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is the catalyst
for digital transformation, with mobile networks being the crucial ingredient
in increasing Africa’s economic competitiveness in the global arena. While we
have witnessed impressive market developments in recent years, Africa’s ICT
sector still has growth potential compared to leading economies.
As
digital infrastructure and transaction become increasingly impactful to the
development of the African societies and economies, affordable broadband access
will need to be extended to over a billion individuals to bridge the “digital
divide” and enable them to reap the benefits of the digital economy.
The
Ericsson Mobility Report shows us that, by 2025, 77% of subscriptions in the
Middle East and North Africa are expected to be for mobile broadband, while in
Sub-Saharan Africa mobile broadband subscriptions will increase to reach around
72% of mobile subscriptions. Mobile broadband connectivity not only offers
great potential to transform cities and industries, but it enables connectivity
as a basic human right; fostering inclusion and making a positive, sustainable
economic impact. With our commitment to innovation and long history of engaging
in Africa’s telecom industry, we at Ericsson are driven to deliver the
next-generation technology solutions to Africa. These can enable sweeping
changes to industrial production, allow seamless access to societal services
and provide people with ways of living harmoniously with their environment.
Sustainability
through connectivity
Bridging
the “digital divide” is a demanding journey both for the public sector and the
telecoms industry. This carries significant potential to contribute to the
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Africa. In order to
achieve that, we have a continuous ongoing journey serving several parameters.
And
the story just begins here. We strongly believe in the importance of education
for the economic development of Africa by building the right foundation to
propel a steady eco-system. Our efforts to support education in Africa is a
continuous determination and for that we are proud to launch our three-year
global partnership with UNICEF that will help map school connectivity in 35
countries by the end of 2023. Our partnership will support the UN’s Giga initiative,
a global program led by UNICEF and the International Telecommunications Union
(ITU) that aims to connect every school to the Internet.
Another
key example in supporting education is our “Connect to Learn” program, an
initiative that implements Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in
schools often in resource-poor settings to enhance the quality and access to
teaching and learning resources in a safe, cost effective, and user-friendly
way. The program uses the power of mobility, broadband and cloud solutions.
Since 2008, we have helped to connect over 500,000 people, students and
teachers at remote villages across 10 sub-Saharan countries with technology
tools, digital learning resources and new interactive forms of teaching
pedagogies.
Furthermore,
another testimony that reiterates our efforts in supporting education, is our
recently announced “Ericsson Educate” initiative with UNESCO. In response
to how the global COVID-19 Pandemic, UNESCO and Ericsson have launched a new
portal for teaching Artificial Intelligence (AI) to children. Teaching AI is a
learning program, which includes a free, multi-lingual artificial intelligence
(AI) skills portal that can be accessed globally by parents and teachers,
enabling them to support children and students in home learning environments to
learn about AI.
Additionally,
we have also launched recently our Digital Lab program in South Africa. The
program represents Ericsson’s commitment to supporting the UN Sustainable
Development Goals – especially Goal #4, with the aim of ensuring inclusive and
equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for
all. The Ericsson Digital Lab program is an innovative education program
targeted towards older children to support them in their first encounters with
the world of programming and new technologies. The program started in
Gothenburg, Sweden, as a collaboration with Universeum, a public science centre
based in Gothenburg. During 2019-20 the program was expanded to South Africa.
We partnered with “Wot-If? Trust”
to bring this innovative digital skills program to the youth in Diepsloot,
Johannesburg, South Africa and our ambition is to expand this initiative to
more young students across Africa.
On
the other hand, we also focus on another fundamental goal and that is financial
inclusion through the use of digital technology which is an essential element
in furthering the economic development of Africa. Mobile money services have
become an essential, life-changing tool across the continent, providing access
to safe and secure financial services but also to energy, health, education and
employment opportunities. One key example to showcase our efforts in that area
is our Ericsson Wallet Platform that allows users to store, transfer and
withdraw money; pay merchants and utility providers; and use financial services
such as savings and loans.
With
connectivity acting as a critical enabler of social and economic change,
sustainable technologies that support the SDGs are the need of the hour.
According to Ericsson research, ICT solutions could help to reduce greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions by up to 15% by 2030, amounting to around ten gigatons of
CO2e—more than the current carbon footprint of the EU and US combined. Examples
of areas where the savings can be enabled by ICT solutions are transportation,
energy, industries and agriculture. This is reflected in our initiatives such
as Ericsson
Weather Data and Mixed Reality for Urban Design.
Clearly,
the SDGs provide a unique opportunity for interesting discussions that will
lead to more multi-sectoral partnerships and opportunities that will help spur
progress towards meeting the goals.
Partnerships
and Collaborations for Societal Impact
What
is now needed is a framework that facilitates harnessing the power of ICTs to
foster inclusive socioeconomic development across Africa. However, this
bridging of the digital divide – which promises to level the global playing
field so Africa can achieve its full potential – requires a well-planned policy
and regulatory environment.
A
conducive, enabling policy environment that generates regulatory certainty is
key to encouraging market development through partnerships, entrepreneurship,
job creation and knowledge sharing. Factors like:
- Timely availability of ample, cost-effective and harmonised spectral resources
- Support of long-term stable network regulations that uphold the principle of technology neutrality, stimulate investments and foster infrastructure competition
- Provision of free flow of data, while ensuring data protection, privacy and security regulation
We
at Ericsson Middle East and Africa are constantly looking for opportunities to
collaborate and engage with partners across the board to facilitate such policy
development to fast tracking digitisation across the African continent and our
recent collaboration with the African Telecommunications Union is one clear
example.
Fostering
and Empowering Local Talents
At
Ericsson, we strongly believe in the great competencies of the local talents in
each market where we operate and for that we continue to offer our employees
opportunities that guide and supports them from a knowledge, competence,
and skill development perspective — to foster an innovative, high-impact
learning culture focused on continuous development.
Additionally,
coaching and mentoring are critical elements of career development at Ericsson.
We have best-in-class mentors who guide our people in Africa through every
stage of their career, empowering them to seek more learning and growth
opportunities.
One
of the initiatives we launched in-light of our efforts to supporting young
talents is our “Ericsson Graduates Program “, a program that will offer fresh
graduates a chance to join experienced Ericsson staff for on-the-job, online
and classroom learning followed by recruitment to join the Ericsson world. The
program also engages with young talents from Africa -the Change makers-to
explore and identify innovative ideas, that reflect and capture the needs of
the continent with an ambition to accelerate the African markets’
digitalisation journey.
The
Change makers attend multidisciplinary sessions with Ericsson specialists
spanning across technology, business and entrepreneur to empower and enable
them to ideate and work on their ideas in a well-rounded approach. Our ambition
is to continue with this program and train and hire more fresh graduates in the
coming period.
When
it comes to empowering young talents and innovation, we can proudly mention the
Ericsson Innovation Awards (EIA), a global competition that gives university
students the opportunity to turn their ideas into reality by collaborating with
EIA mentors. In 2018, a team from Senegal has been selected as the overall winner
of the Ericsson Innovation Awards winning an amount of 25,000 Euros for their
idea that addresses lack of school labs in Africa. This year we are excited to
launch the same competition very soon and we look forward to receiving ideas
from young students from Africa and across the world.
Accelerating
the future
As
we look ahead, it’s clear that Africa shows significant promise for economic,
technological and infrastructure growth over the coming years. Yet, there are
still many challenges we must overcome if we are to deliver real sustainable
change for all.
While
there are parts of the continent trialling 5G services, majority of countries
remain focusing on 3G and 4G as smartphone affordability improves year on year.
The development of advanced wireless digital infrastructure is an integral part
of Africa’s growing economy. Mobile broadband access has proved to be an
essential driver of an inclusive information society that integrates digitisation
in all critical aspects of life, such as education, transport, health, energy
and even homeland security. Never has this been more evident than during the
current COVID 19 pandemic.
Ericsson
focuses on assuring best performing networks in Africa, while also offering the
best digital services and solutions to our customers. Our aim is to create a
unique customer experience evolving from networks adopting automation,
artificial intelligence and analytics. One of our focus areas also is reducing
time-to-market and flexibility in launching services for our customers towards
their subscribers. From an operations perspective, we emphasis driving service
delivery efficiency through adoption of advanced tools. We will continue our
purposeful growth of mobile broadband, fixed wireless access and fintech
services so that our service provider partners reach out to further communities
across the continent.
Our
promise to Africa
Tackling
the digital divide, continuing to build a robust ICT infrastructure, promoting
sustainability, innovation, education and entrepreneurship will be critical for
maximising the role of technology in boosting resilience and inclusive growth
in Africa. By achieving that, Africa will experience a paradigm shift on all
levels with new game-changers as e-health, e-government and e-education; the
African society will accelerate into a much economically advanced nation.
However, collaboration between the different stakeholders in the ecosystem
becomes even more important than ever to achieve this vision.
Our
promise and commitment towards Africa are to always support a world where
digitalisation is transforming the eco-system; enabling sustainable growth,
economic development and opening up opportunities for all.
To
accelerate our promise to Africa and achieve a true impact, we are looking
forward to supporting our customers in their quest, bringing our latest
innovation, leveraging our global skill and scale to the benefit of Africa’s
digital development.
