The over 600 business and political leaders that gathered together engaged in collaborative sessions to draw up a road map for individual businesses as well as national policy makers.
Senior executives from Airtel Africa held discussions with the president Ali Bongo during the forum to discuss possible areas of synergy with the Gabon Emergent program and reinforce the company's long term commitment to Gabon. Present at the meeting were Manoj Kohli, MD and CEO International and Tiemoko Coulibaly, CEO for the Africa Francophone region.
Kohli said, "Airtel is committed to Gabon and ready to work with the government towards achieving their ICT goals. We are in Gabon for the long haul and will support both commercial and social programs. These include the deployment of a 3G and 4G network, when made available, to help businesses and the youth access world class data services. In addition, continued support in youth driven activity like soccer and the support of a young Gabonese ICT entrepreneurship program to provide ICT training to 10,000 youth over the next three years. We plan to develop training programs on ICT business in collaboration with local training schools."
To underline the urgent need for integration of youth into the African growth strategy, it was reiterated that some 150 million young people were unemployed across the entire continent. Gabon aims to have a countrywide digital infrastructure by 2016, thus enabling the development of a wide range of e-services, which will give rise to a major qualitative improvement in social services and create the foundations for Gabon.
Coulibaly added, "The interactions at the forum were fruitful and we would like to extend our thanks to the organisers of the Forum and H.E. the president for the very informative, interactive and progressive sessions throughout the forum. We do look forward to realizing our commitments."
