It is to be recalled that in my previous article entitled ‘Feeling at home in China’, I have explained the whole lot in black and white pertaining to the friendly reception and treatment of the people of China. If truth be told, they spared no effort to make the Ethiopian journalists’ team happy and had a wonderful time in there. Everybody was feeling at home.
Their treatment had made us forget about everything at that specific point. All the Ethiopian journalists drawn from print and electronic media were ecstatic about their hospitality and humbleness. They had won the hearts and minds of the Ethiopian journalists’ team in a fraction of a second. I would say, we were stupefied with happiness.
Our next move was visiting the ZTE’s exhibition hall. We arrived at the building of the corporation around 9:00 AM. As a matter of fact, as we all were taken by surprise considering the development activities of the country positioned all over the country and the hospitality of the people, we did not give a fig about weariness.
When we entered the lobby, the manager of the corporation exchanged warm greetings with us. Then, we were taken to the exhibition hall. At the beginning, the interpreter, in black and white, gave us an introduction about the company’s history and status.
After that, the interpreter showed us the latest technology of 5G in ZTE. It was an amazing one. I realized that the company is leading the world’s globalization and is ahead of most innovations on wireless networks. The whole thing in the exhibition hall was lauding the success story of the company since its establishment in 1985 in Shenzhen, China.
Later, I learnt that the company has 18 years of cooperation in Ethiopia with telecom in ICT and electricity. Given this,facts on the ground are promising towards the sustenance of the cooperation in these fields. ZTE Ethiopia branch has also handled various CSR activities and has given back to the society in different forms.
The corporation in Ethiopia has provided scholarship worth of 20 million USD and cooperated with different schools to give Technical, innovations, cultural, schools, libraries, meeting halls, auditoriums and sport programs reaching more than 20,000 students. It also has donated phones and money to some charitable Organizations.
According to Lin Yibo, PR Manager of the Ethiopian ZTE branch, the corporation has made great contributions to the digitization of Ethiopia. A case in point, it has cooperated with various industries and government agencies in the fields of education, electricity, industrial parks, Digital Government and Transportation, to mention a few. Currently, with the support of the company the telecommunication infrastructure of Ethiopia has greatly improved. To be honest, in 2017, the corporation managed to achieve broadband network connection in 565 government branch offices, 36 higher educational institutions and 1110 schools.
By the same token, during the last ten years, through the Ethiopian Education Research Network project, ZTE assisted the Ethiopian Ministry of Education in establishing the Ethiopian educational research network linking 36 higher learning institutions across the country. Above and beyond, the corporation had established 120 secondary school projects. It had also implemented remote learning, E-learning and E-library projects. Besides, the corporation has setup remote education platform for hundreds of primary and secondary schools that could greatly upgrade the education and scientific research level of Ethiopia.
She continued: “ZTE takes the responsibility of ICT network construction in the Capital IT Park and Regional IT Parks. Moreover, Mekele Industrial Park, Awassa Industrial Park and Kombocha Industrial Park” strive to build ICT Intelligent Park to promote the escalation of the Ethiopian industry. The corporation had constructed 13(12+1) Ministries projects, MCIT Data Center, Oromia Government Project, African Union building projects accomplished successfully to improve the government connectivity and digitization for the provisioning of public services efficiently.
Apart from telecom project scope, the corporation has been getting itself involved in the social responsibility of innovation distribution and technological support as a key priority point. The corporation, in collaboration with local ICT enterprises, had trained more than 6000 local ICT engineers and 3,500 ICT engineers for Ethiopia.
Also, ZTE contributes its share with Ethiopia by contributing in projects like Smart home health care center, clean energy training center and Joint Telecom/Technical Labs. Besides, the corporation contributes in a wide spectrum of sectors from orphans to elderly in terms of grants, food, clothes, sponsoring sports activities, Technical education and infrastructure development and even eliminating gaps by bringing distance families together.
From 2006-2012 the corporation as the sole equipment provider for the telecommunications Network of Ethiopia has achieved exclusive construction of wireless mobile network throughout the country. In the just mentioned years, mobile subscribers had increased from 900,000 to 18 million. In addition to laying down 10,000 kilometers Optical Cable to deploy the fiber-optic broadband network links in the 75 cities nationwide, 1924 fixed sites throughout the country had been created.
Similarly, exclusive construction of the national IP backbone network and the IP core backbone transformation had been achieved aside from constructing the Ethiopian Education Research Network with the intention of achieving interconnection of 36 higher learning institutions of Ethiopia and the Global Education Research Network.
From 2013-2017, ZTE as one of the major telecommunications equipment provider has completed the expansion of wireless from 20 million to 59 million lines (with other vendors). Apart from constructing the first 100G backbone optical transmission broadband network in East Africa, the corporation had partaken in provisioning of Operations Support (OSS), Fraud Management (FMS), Integrated network Management (UNMS), Security Operations Center (SOC) and Unified Access Center (UAC) system deployment to 63.7 million users nationwide.
While we are on the subject, the corporation entered the Ethiopian market in 2000 and completed cooperation and delivery of projects. It has in-depth cooperation in the wireless, fixed network, bearing, business and other fields.
The company is one of the few leading comprehensive telecommunications and ICT solutions providers in the world. It is the first that took advantage of the potential of the private network department in Ethiopia. ZTE has been a trusted partner of government projects, including the establishment on expanding mobile phone network and the increase of 3G internet access across the country. It has been praised that ZTE is a strategically partner of Ethio-Telecom and hopes to enhance the cooperation further in the future as it stand by its side.
Herald December 9/2018
BY ADDISALEM MULAT
