By State House Media and Communications Unit
Paris, France, Wednesday 13 November 2019 – His Excellency President Julius Maada Bio has visited The Orange Laboratory whilst in Paris attending the Paris Peace Forum and the 40th Session of the UNESCO General Conference.
The President, whose move was part of efforts to promote foreign investment in Sierra Leone, was received by the senior global management of Orange including the Chief Executive Officer of Orange Sierra Leone, Aminata Kane Ndiaye. This was followed by a brief welcome of his entourage by Ludovic Pech, Deputy CEO of Orange Middle East and Africa.
Director, Product Marketing and Design, Karine Dussert-Sarthe, gave an overview of Orange as a global brand and the global innovation themes of Orange which include Connectivity (5G and On-Demand Networks), Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Mobile Communication Services, Mobile Financial Services, eSIM and digital identity.
During a tour of the lab, the Orange executive also informed President Bio about four new innovations demo for Sierra Leone in the areas of E-education, Smart metering, Digital Identity and Big Data. On E-education, Thierry Coilhac told the President about the “Orange Campus” through which the company had used digital platforms to make quality education and training accessible to all.
According to the company, it had also collaborated with leaders of online training worldwide to provide content and services, using a dedicated low price mobile data offers.
Explaining the Smart-metering for utilities, Alain Tales said the smart-metering demo ensured that manual metering operation made automatic, billing accuracy and payment experience improve, adding that it also had ensured fraud identification and resolution, monitoring of the low voltage grid and avoided blackouts.
His Excellency the President and members of the delegation were also taken through two other sessions on digital identity and big data. Thierry Prignaud said digital identity had supported African states in establishing national digital identities which were important for payment, banking and customer data management, especially for a multi-service operator.
Nicolas De Cordes and Stefania Rubrichi demonstrated how big data could be used to achieve sustainable development goals. They also showed how “mobile data can be used for electrification planning, leveraging population statistics for mobility and transport and for providing new proxies of poverty index to national statistics offices”.
Throughout the laboratory sessions on the four new innovations demo, the Chief Executive Officer of Orange Sierra Leone, Madam Ndiaye, also explained what efforts Orange Sierra Leone was making to support the innovation ecosystem in the West African nation.
