Airtel Uganda, The Smartphone Network with the widest 4G coverage in Uganda, has today switched on 29 new masts in 12 districts as part of their commitment to deliver exceptional customer experience on the Airtel network that customers have been accustomed to.

The additional masts are part of the growing physical and virtual infrastructure of Airtel’s 100% 4G network that covers the country border to border. This is also part of Airtel’s commitment to build a robust smartphone network a platform on which they have been able to grow digital and financial inclusion in Uganda. The network supports delivery of affordable data, voice and financial services across the country.  

The 12 districts include Kampala, Hoima, Kabarole, Jinja, Bushenyi, Luwero, Gulu, Mbarara, Moroto, Wakiso, Rukungiri and Isingiro.

Airtel as a technology enabler, has supported the country’s digitization agenda as envisaged in the Uganda vision 2040. The telecom boosts of a growing network of over 2500 masts that are 5G ready, and an expanding fiber network across the country, especially in the Capital City.

The new sites improve lives of the customer and catalyze empowerment of small and medium sized enterprises to access affordable voice, data and financial services without differentiation.  

The new sites will enable the expansion, adoption, and usage of ICTs in the transformative sectors such as education, health, and agriculture across the country. Farmers can now access agricultural information to improve their farm productivity, teachers and students are able to use online platforms to teach and expand their learning experiences. Business owners can utilize the voice, airtel money and data options on Airtel to operate their businesses more efficiently.  While commissioning the latest towers the Networks Director, Mr Agarwal Rajesh, expressed gratitude to the Towers partners like ATC and Ubuntu involved in this project. “Under the Parish Development Model, the country is focused on transforming the parishes and creating opportunities for the people. Airtel Uganda is pleased to support these efforts by building and deploying a Smartphone Network that is complementary to these efforts” Rajesh concluded.

Technology Associates, a company which has been at the helm of building first-world technology infrastructure in East Africa won a highly coveted award at the just concluded Oracle Partner Executive (OPE) Forum in Dubai.
The ‘Oracle Excellence Awards for Specialized Partner of the Year’ recognizes partners for their outstanding work in driving customer success with Oracle Enterprise infrastructure solutions that can benefit customers in serving their business in modern and agile ways.

Mr Sitaram Patro, the head of Enterprise Technology Solutions at Technology Associates Uganda receives the award from Shane Fernandes, vice president Oracle Systems, Middle East & Africa

Oracle Partners accelerate innovation by enabling customers through their implementation cycle, from business planning and design to implementation, connectivity and execution, right through to providing the support and services needed to maximize the value from their Oracle solution investments for customers’ organisation.

Being a strong Regional Oracle partner and undoubtedly Uganda’s Oracle support partner, this award is a manifestation of long term vision, commitment to customer solutions, development of skills and the general the leadership of Technology Associates group.

It is also a reflection of the confidence reposed by their multiple customers in handling their mission-critical Enterprise IT Services which is the backbone of their business, using state of the art technologies. Oracle technologies are embedded in most major enterprises in Banking and Government sector.

One of the key government customers, a major tax and revenue authority in the region, faced frequent peak-time response challenges with their complex application, database, middleware environment. To resolve the overall system’s stability,

Technology Associates worked with Oracle to design and deploy a robust, scalable, converged data centre architecture to significantly optimize, compute, memory, storage, networking and virtualization resources in a factory-engineered appliance.

The entire complex application and database environment was then migrated to the new Oracle M8 Supercluster, together with Oracle Advanced Customer Services with zero disruption to the Customer’s operating environment.

The deployed solution ensures 99.9 per cent service uptime in their service delivery to their government clients and citizens in general, with service outages eliminated and system responsiveness during peak usage is no longer a cause for concern.

Technology Associates has the broadest array of Oracle database and infrastructure support skills in the East & Central Africa region and is a highly accomplished Oracle Premier Support Partner. This leadership is manifested in the fact that hundreds of organisations depend on the company to support their mission-critical environments.

Technology Associates’ is a leader in deploying e-Government solutions in the region.

Technology Associates have built retail banking technology solutions across more than 50 financial institutions in over 17 countries over the past 15 years.

“We support these customers through our offices in six countries and our exemplary team of 250 Associates”, said Girisch M. Nair, chairman of TA Group.

By Our Reporter

As governments across the globe continued responding to COVID-19’s devastation, the mobile sector is playing a crucial role in supporting efforts tackling the pandemic and enhancing health services respond to it, according to a newly released report from GSMA.

While the report found that the pandemic has upended people’s lives, health, and business sectors, people were using technological innovation to adapt to new ways of life during these uncertain times. “In this unprecedented situation, people are quickly adapting to innovative ways of connecting and doing business empowered by connectivity, and digital transformation is no longer just a question but an action for many industries,” the report said.

Mobile operators have played key parts in efforts to respond to the pandemic especially in ensuring smooth communication during health emergencies and improving the coverage of 4G/5G networks in China. The report mentioned that during the construction of two new hospitals in China to treat COVID-19 patients, mobile operators including China Telecom and China Mobile working with Huawei successfully deployed 4G/5G communication networks which resulted in inadequate mobile coverage in the hospitals.

The deployment of 4G/5G networks also assisted with remote consultation and telemedicine. Mobile operators were able to construct up to eight 4G/5G network sites in less than 30 hours following the construction of the hospitals. “The high-quality 4G/5G networks have ensured smooth and uninterrupted communication services in China and provided strong support for the mission-critical response efforts in China during COVID-19 pandemic.”

In African countries like Uganda, Nigeria, and South Africa, information and communication technologies have been at the forefront of ensuring that social and physical distancing measures are observed. South Africa’s health minister Dr. Zweli Mkhize recently spoke about the importance of technological innovation in tackling the virus while receiving Huawei Cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI) diagnostic systems, and four thermal scanning systems.

This Al-empowered diagnosis tool assists the medical worker to ascertain if someone has COVID – 19. The accuracy of this tool is over 98 percent with CT scan review times reduced by over 80%.

Ghana also found ICTs as a powerful weapon in the fight against COVID-19. Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia this month launched an app designed to help in tracing people who have come into contact with COVID-19 positive individuals and link them to health professionals for urgent action to be taken.

The pandemic has changed fundamentally the way people communicate, work, shop, learn, and entertain, as life moves from offline to online. In this unprecedented situation, people are quickly adapting to innovative ways of connecting and doing business empowered by connectivity. Thus, the report says, the digital transformation is no longer just a question but an action for many industries.

Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa has been significantly impacted by the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, according to World Bank. However, as combinations of ICTs and health, education and other services have gradually become a new norm, how to facilitate more effective use of these technologies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic can actually decide how strong Africa is going to return to its growth trajectory by adopting new business models and methodologies the emerged from this outbreak.

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