Ericsson’s VP of strategy, marketing and communications, Tumi Chamayou, told the AfricaCom audience that governments, industries and vendors need to really push efficiency gains to maximise technology resources in this emerging digital age.

Starting off with some startling statistics surrounding telecoms uptake in Africa, Chamayou highlighted that “Every second we gain another 20 users activate their SIM and their phone in this country,” she said. “By 2021, usage of LTE will increase by 28 times. As M2M and the internet of things takes over; our networks are going to be handling greater loads than ever before in this digital world.”

Chamayou moved on to look at specific cases of IT transformation in the name of harnessing efficiency gains.

“But how can we connect the IT world with the digital world? Let’s look at the automotive industry,” she said. “GM [General Motors] sends out a note to all of its users saying they need to bring their vehicles back to the factory and get it repaired. Tesla, meanwhile, called all of its customers individually, told them not to use their cars and that a software update will correct the problem. Shortly after, that update was downloaded, and the car was ready to drive again. One of those practises is extremely efficient.”

Chamayou then highlighted to the audience how important it is for businesses to learn their customers’ behaviour patterns and how they want to interact with their services.

“If a consumer can pick and choose what it is they want, then I as a business need to rethink how it is I want to produce and deliver content that meet their needs,” she said. “These learnings can all be transferred into other industries, like healthcare, like music, like education and many other industries. Governments only have finite resources, and it’s about utilising those resources more intelligently to help learnings, not education, but the learnings across industries. Once we harness these learnings, we can see a level of predictability on how that rate of change will take place across many, many industries.”

Chamayou closed by stressing the importance of ICT to the African technology landscape and for the growth of African businesses.

“ICT isn’t here for the sake of ICT,” she said. “ICT is the cornerstone of change in this industry. As said earlier, we are in the business of saving lives, we are in the business of changing lives, now let’s utilise innovation and harness the rate of change.”