Latest leg of Orange CI’s development journey
The Orange Côte d’Ivoire Group (Orange CI) and Vanu are to develop infrastructure and services for rural areas in Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Liberia. The partners will develop digital projects, primarily in health, agriculture, education and financial services. The pact’s joint expertise will smooth the rollout of sites in uncovered areas of the three west African nations. The project will begin with 1,070 sites, of which 700 will be in Côte d’Ivoire, 170 in Burkina Faso, and 200 in Liberia. The partnership between Orange and Vanu will provide technology upgrades and will be based on the network-as-a-service model.
The Orange Cote d’Ivoire Group is a regional cluster of subsidiaries in Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Liberia with a collective 27 million customers. US-based Vanu’s supplies equipment, tools and services to mobile network operators. It invented new software radio at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998 and developed the Anywave Base Station, the first commercial Radio Access Network (RAN) product to simultaneously support multiple cellular radio standards on the same platform. Vanu has offices in India and in Kigali, Rwanda.
“Orange will expand its network coverage so that no one will be left behind, [aiming for] free and unfettered access to digital services everywhere across Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Liberia,” said Nafy Coulibaly, the Deputy Director General in charge of operations in Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Liberia. The project is part of Orange’s IDEAL programme to extend coverage to 20 million rural inhabitants through the construction of 5000 sites within four years, while meeting environmental standards.
“Extended connectivity will have an enormous and immediate impact for the uncovered population,” said Andrew Beard, CEO of Vanu “our team looks forward to rolling out network sites across the regions.”