Orange opens Digital Center in Sierra Leone

Pan-African operator Orange and the German Development Cooperation have announced the opening of an Orange Digital Center (ODC) in Sierra Leone's capital city Freetown.

This is Orange's 14th ODC in the Middle East and Africa – which will serve as an ecosystem entirely dedicated to the development of digital skills and innovation – and comes two months after the telecoms operator launched both 5G and its 13th Digital Center in Botswana.

Orange has built similar Digital Centers in places like Tunisia, Senegal, Ethiopia, Mali, Egypt, Jordan, Madagascar, Morocco, Liberia, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire and Cameroon.

The Paris-headquartered operator plans to open a network of 32 Orange Digital Centers that will be deployed not only in Africa and the Middle East, but also in Europe by the end of 2023.

Orange has opened a 14th digital center, this time in Sierra Leone. (Source: Image by wirestock on Freepik.)

The 500-square-meter Freetown facility will include a coding school, a solidarity FabLab – one of the Orange Foundation's digital manufacturing workshops – and an Orange Fab startup accelerator, supported by investment fund Orange Ventures Africa.

Open to all

All the Digital Center programs are free of charge and open to everyone. They range from practical digital training for young people to guidance for project bearers, start-up acceleration and investment.

"The Orange Digital Center will provide state-of-the-art facilities with free access for all, reinforcing our strong ambition to democratize digital access for young people, especially women, with or without diplomas, to encourage them to pursue their venture into digital entrepreneurship and prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow," said Orange Sierra Leone CEO Sekou Amadou Bah in a statement.

He said that the center has already been running training programs for the past year and more than 1,600 young people were already trained, 52% of which were women.

"Our aim is to empower every woman, every girl, every man, and every boy no matter what background, to take advantage of the opportunities of digitalization, to get better jobs and eventually a better life for them and their families. Therefore, I am glad that our cooperation with Orange works to this end," added German Ambassador to Sierra Leone, Jens Kraus-Massé.

Orange is present in 18 countries in Africa and the Middle East and has 139 million customers in the region.

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*Top image source: Image by DCStudio on Freepik.

— Matshepo Sehloho, Associate Editor, Connecting Africa