Middle East and Africa

Ericsson’s Middle East offices comprise 22 countries in the region with over 3,800 employees. Sales growth has been excellent in this region, driven by mobile broadband investments in both advanced and developing markets.

Rafiah Ibrahim, Ericsson's Head of Market Area Middle East & Africa, continues to stand out in the ICT industry, this time by being named the Female CEO of the Year at the CEO Middle East Awards! Hosted by the ITP group, these presegious awards recognize the most innovative CEOs in the region. Read more about this tremendous accomplishment here!

We couldn’t be prouder of Rafiah Ibrahim, who’s just been named the Global Women In Leadership ‘Woman Game Changer’ of the year! Rafiah, Head of Region Middle East and East Africa, has done outstanding work as an Ericsson business leader, and in her advocacy of supporting and developing women of talent within the business world. She is a true role model and change maker, and proof that the positive power of people can transform people, businesses and society.

The 18th Global WIL Economic Forum gathered around 500 global male and female business leaders, policy makers, as well as young female professionals and entrepreneurs, to dissect the challenge of diversity, share experiences and produce actionable strategies to strive for women’s economic empowerment.

We’re proud to announce that Ericsson has been awarded the ‘GCC Best Employer Brand Award 2017’ during a celebration in Dubai, UAE! Congratulations to the Human Resources and Marketing & Communications team on this outstanding accomplishment.

“Being awarded the GCC Best Employer Brand Award 2017 is an honor for Team Ericsson. In times of extreme change, it is a proof point of the continued strength of the Ericsson brand, as a company and as an employer. Every member of the Ericsson family must feel proud of this honor. This award is also a reflection of strong collaboration across functions and in this specific instance, with Marketing and Communications, as One Ericsson.”

           - Girish Johar, Head of Human Resources,
             Ericsson Middle East and Africa

RMEA celebrated International Women’s Day during the month of March 2015. More than 40 events were planned in different CUs around the region, reinforcing our commitment to achieve a goal of having women in 30 percent of Ericsson Global positions by 2020.

We are proud to announce that Ericsson has been selected as part of a consortium led by Zain Kuwait for one of the largest utilities digital transformation projects in the Middle East. The project will further develop the capabilities of Kuwaiti utilities and will deploy a smart metering solution, including an Enterprise and Cloud Billing solution and Multiservice Delivery Platform. Ericsson will also provide a range of Managed Services for improved network operations and security, and for Internet of Things applications. Read the full press release here!

Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the fastest growing regions for mobile usage, and Ericsson is poised to help bring this technology to even more regions of the African continent.

As the telecommunications infrastructure across the region continues to evolve, our 2,442 employees will be bringing more advances in connectivity to Africa, particularly in regard to mobile banking. The projected mobile subscriptions for 2014 in Sub-Saharan Africa are 635 million, and that number is predicted to rise to 930 million by the end of 2019. The opportunity for Ericsson technology to grow in this emerging market is immense, and we are prepared to make those connections happen.

Find out how smartphones are poised to revolutionize the way Africa connects and how Ericsson is making it happen.

We’re committed to supporting the Technology For Good Program and we have a number of ongoing projects. Ericsson has made a long-term commitment to ‘connect the unconnected’ through the Millennium Villages Project.

In Ghana, we’ve installed eight 3G sites providing coverage for more than 30,000 rural people under Millennium Villages Project, while we’ve done the same for 50,000 more people in Liberia. We’ve also donated more than 200 laptops and routers to schools in Rwanda and Burkina Faso, through a project called Connect To Learn.

The Ekocentre Connected Hub is a modularly designed kiosk transformed into a hub of community activity. It’s a place where isolated people in remote communities can gather and use free and fee-based services. The kiosk also offers clean, safe drinking water, wireless communication and power generation technologies.

We’re deploying the pilot program in Rwanda, working in close partnership with Coca Cola & Tigo. The Ekocentre Hub gives women in particular women a place to access education, healthcare, finance, information and entertainment, as well as make the most of the entrepreneurial skills. Many of these services cannot be delivered without Ericsson connectivity.

The Refugees United web and mobile platform empowers separated family members to take the search for missing relatives into their own hands. The database currently contains more than 400,000 users on the platform. Ericsson is the main technology partner and provides technical expertise, technology support, and operational advice to Refugees United and manages the partnership agreement with mobile operators.

Broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE) is a government policy to advance economic transformation and enhance the economic participation of black people (African, Colored and Indian people who are South African citizens) in the South African economy. Ericsson has now achieved Level 3 status, which is an exceptional achievement for our organization. It’s proof that our commitment to diversity is making a difference.