Partner Content – What are the success factors for Ethio Telecom’s rapid digital transformation?

Even by the fast-paced standards of digital transformation, Ethio Telecom and its mobile money service, TeleBirr, have grown exceptionally fast.

The company is the second-largest operator in Ethiopia with nearly 75 million customers, and the 21^st-largest operator in the world. Meanwhile, TeleBirr also processes several billion $US each month, less than three years after its initial rollout.

But TeleBirr is more than just a payment service. It has become a vital cog – along with Ethio Telecom’s cloud technologies and other solutions – to digital transformation across industries in Ethiopia.

Those were among the key takeaways shared by Ethio Telecom’s Chief Marketing Officer Said Aragaw Ahmed, who recently joined by Mesay Woubshet, Chief Communication Officer at Ethio Telecom, and Chris Meng, President of Northern Africa ICT Marketing & Solution Sales at Huawei, for a WinWin Live discussion moderated by Light Reading contributing editor Greg McIvor.

Mobile Payments Enable Wider Digital Transformation

Just two years and eight months after its launch, TeleBirr now boasts some 42 million customers in Ethiopia, and is now processing around $US 3 billion in transactions per month. Other milestones include more than five million financial services users and six million application users.

As a result, Ahmed said TeleBirr is now a gateway to the larger “intelligentization” or digital transformation of Ethiopia as a whole. Large enterprise and government projects are using the service to transact for needs such as tax payments and fuel payments. And there’s much more to come.

TeleBirr actually grew out of the Ethiopian government’s “Digital Ethiopia” strategy, which has set various targets the country aims to realize by 2025. Financial inclusion for all citizens is a key part of that strategy, and TeleBirr’s rapid growth – again, 42 million users in less than three years – is playing a major role in fulfilling that requirement.

Indeed, financial inclusion is one of several important ways in which Ethio Telecom and TeleBirr are enabling Ethiopia emerging digital economy, Woubshet explained.

“We have seen that it's a real proof that it ensures that digital inclusion or financial inclusion aspect of this strategy,” Woubshet said.

“It was a game changer once it was launched,” Woubshet said. “And I can tell that through the support from the government and thanks to the Huawei technical team as well, they have been very supportive to make it happen. And to be honest, it's a main tool to realize Digital Ethiopia.”

Cloud Forms Strong Foundation for Ongoing Digital Transformation

If TeleBirr is a gateway to Ethiopia’s broader digital transformation, it’s also a gateway to Ethio Telecom’s other services, and especially its cloud platform, which powers Ethio Telecom’s own digital transformation and ensures continuous service innovation as the operator continues to drive Ethiopia’s digital economy.

Woubshet noted that the TeleBirr app has enabled the company to learn more about virtually every industry in the country, from agriculture to education to healthcare and more.

“From payments to when they have some shortage of digital technology, we introduce them to use our cloud,” Woubshet said. “So we are pushing literally all the sectors in our country to become the digital gate for the digital transformation of our country together with our partner [Huawei].”.

Cloud allows for cascading innovation and benefits, as Ethio Telecom’s enterprise customers leverage it and integrate with it to develop exciting new digital services for their own customers.

“They are coming into our Super App [via the cloud],” Aragaw Ahmed said. “They are integrating and trying to provide service to their own customers.”

Huawei is a key strategic partner for Ethio Telecom, including a joint innovation center. Huawei began studying the Ethiopian market a decade ago, according to Meng, and the company sees massive opportunities for operators in other North African countries to replicate Ethio Telecom’s success.

In addition to its core mobile and cloud technologies, Huawei’s SmartCare solution was vital to helping Ethio Telecom to develop and optimize how it markets services like TeleBirr to customers – which Woubshet called “precision marketing.”

“We have been able to give information whenever they are near to shops and cafes and restaurants, so that they can be able to go inside and transact with TeleBirr with a discounted offer,” Woubshet said, adding that they are now better able to deliver personalized offers to customers when they are using social platforms like TikTok, YouTube, or Facebook.

Takeaway: Ethio Telecom as Case Study For Digital Transformation

Meng from Huawei sees Ethio Telecom as a model for the broader industry trend of transforming for a traditional network carrier into a multi-dimensional digital service provider – and the unique role operators play in empowering digital economies and digital transformation in their global markets.

“We can see that network cloud intelligence is a development trend of global carriers,” Meng said. “Ethio Telecom actually provides a very good example of the successful practice of the network cloud intelligence in the developing African market.”

Operators – as well as other enterprises – can replicate Ethio Telecom’s success with what Huawei refers to the “4D” approach to digital transformation, according to Meng: digital infrastructure, digital cloud, digital operation and maintenance, and digital services – all of which pave the way for operators to embrace network cloud intelligence and become robust digital service providers.

“In the North Africa region, we would like to copy the experience in Ethiopia to more and more countries to support [their] digital transformation and the economic development,” Meng said.