Ericsson, one of the key partners of the Cisco Connect event that took place from 5 to 8 March at Sun City Convention Centre in the North West province, shared some of their groundbreaking initiatives.
Michelle Davadoss, Acting Vice President, Marketing and Communication, Ericsson Sub-Saharan Africa, expressed optimism at the diverse and innovative projects that the company has undertaken not only in South Africa but the continent as a whole.
“The fact that 1.6 billion people in Africa and the Middle East are not connected is a disservice to the economy. We at Ericsson are involved in a project in Tanzania where we built the technology that enables three service providers to run off the same network in order to provide connectivity to people living in the rural areas”.
Speaking on the role of women in the ICT sector Davadoss said, “In continuing with empowering women, Ericsson together with the Earth Institute of Columbia University, Millennium Promise has started the Connect to Learn initiative. The aim is to scale up access to quality secondary education, in particular for girls, by providing scholarships and bringing ICT to schools in remote, resource-poor parts of the world, over mobile broadband”.
“We are more inclined as women to gravitate towards things that are feminine. Girls need to be influenced and steered in a direction of engineering and ICT from a young age. What Ericsson has done is build a living library of women’s stories that aim to encourage other females because as women we need to tell our story. Diversity brings to organisations a level of innovation,” she continued.
Ericsson views the Internet of Things evolution as a fundamental transformation agent across a wide spectrum of industries. Amongst other IoT projects, In 2015 the company introduced the connected mangroves in Malaysia, with this one of a kind project, mangroves are being monitored in real-time, enabling better management of new sapling growth by combining mobile, IoT and cloud technologies.
“Part of our commitment is a strategic position called the network society. It is our commitment to connect everything that can be connected. In our endeavour we have extended the initiative beyond just people. We are now doing connected cars, trucks, machines, mangroves and even cups”, said Davadoss.
Fundisiwe Maseko
