Ericsson sees room to optimise ICT

By Richard Annerquaye ABBEY

The world's largest maker of telecom equipment, Ericsson, says despite Ghana being the third-largest market in the sub-Saharan region, most small- and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) lag behind in ICT optimisation.

According to Ericsson’s Country Manager Andreas Karlsson, SMEs must embrace innovative ICT solutions such as Cloud Services, a service model in which data is maintained, managed and backed up remotely and made available to a user over a network – which eliminates cost of hardware.

Mr. Karlsson was speaking to the B&FT at the Swedish-Ghanaian ICT Conference aimed at improving the capacity of SMEs within the ICT sector.

The conference is part of a strategic partnership for a two-year ICT venture in sub-Saharan Africa by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Business Sweden, and Ericsson, a world-leading provider      of telecommunications equipment and services to mobile and fixed network operators.

The three-day ICT conference brought together high-level delegations, including representatives of Swedish companies, key government stakeholders and vertical players from trade, ICT, energy and infrastructure.

Pereric Högberg, Deputy Director-General, Head of Africa Department, Sweden’s Foreign Affairs, said “Sweden and Africa have a strong partnership and historical ties. We see the new modern Africa taking shape and growing. Sweden is, and will continue to be, a solid partner in African developments.”

Fredrik Jejdling, head of the company in sub-Saharan Africa, added that, “We are committed to our vision of a networked society in Africa, where technology enables new methods of learning and collaborating, innovative ways of doing business, and new approaches to old problems which result in a better quality of life. Over the past century, Ericsson has consistently explored ways in which we can deploy our technology and solutions to support development on the continent.”

Sweden is a strong partner to Africa through institutional corporations, and Swedish organisations have a large presence in Africa. ICT is one of Sweden’s key industries and has made Sweden top-ranked globally in terms of connectivity, e-governance and ICT innovations.

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