Airtel Appoints Iguendha Chair for Gabon Operations

Bharti Airtel, a leading telecommunications services provider with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa, on Friday announced the appointment of Mr. Claude Ayo Iguendha as board chairman for Airtel’s operations in Gabon.

Speaking on the appointment, Tiemoko Coulibaly,Airtel’s CEO for the Francophone region in Africa, said: “I am delighted with Mr. Ayo Iguendha’s appointment. Claude has worked in the financial sector for the past38 years and has an exceptional track record of accomplishments. I am confident that with his vast experience, he will guide our organization in the right direction.”

Iguendha started his career as an accountant and rose through the ranks thanks to its irreproachable work ethic.

For the past 11 years, he has served as the CEO of the International Bank for Trade and Industry of Gabon (BICIG).

Coulibaly added: “Airtel is committed to Gabon and is here for the long term. We firmly believe in the continued growth of our Gabon operations and we plan to invest $125 million in the country in the next three years. I am confident that the team, under Mr. Ayo Iguendha’s strategic guidance, will help businesses and the youth access world class data services.”

With presence across 17 African countries, Airtel is the largest telecom service provider across the Continent in terms of geographical reach and had over 63.7 million customers at the end of quarter ended March 31, 2013.
Globally, Airtel is ranked as the 4th largest mobile services provider in terms of customer base.

Other reasons they gave nod for the concept to thrive in m-Government, due to its potency to, “Delivering timely and accurate information to citizens and an established system of two-way communication between the government and people are some of the keys to strengthening democracy.

“Nigeria then needs to take a giant step forward from e-governance to SMS-based m-governance in various areas such as: elections, banking, health, education and various services.

Also, the annual International Data Corporation (IDC) Social Business Survey collaborate the experts’ report. According to the new report made available to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek, it revealed a clear focus on using social media to drive initiatives based on bidirectional feedback rather than just a one-way broadcast communication mechanism. This is evident across all social experiences, both inside and outside the business.

 Vanessa Thompson, research manager, enterprise social networks and collaborative technologies, said in the report that, "Companies will continue to learn from social deployments, and as social capabilities are applied to an increasing number of use cases, a more granular set of business value metrics will emerge. However, there is still a broad set of business use cases in customer experience, employee experience (empowerment), and partner experience (including partner and supplier enablement) that can be augmented by additional social capabilities to drive increased business value."

Major findings of the study include that “over the next 12 months, the most sought-after business initiative companies will look to social software to provide will be online communities, with 35% of respondents looking to this capability.

Ideasourcing will be sought by 27% of companies, and innovation management, qualified as a more complex process than ideasourcing, will be sought by 26% of companies.

The survey polled 701 senior executive-level decision makers in the United States on their current and future technology and business plans, perceptions, and experiences related to the use of social media/networking for business purposes and corporate-sponsored enterprise social software.