Orange Botswana rebrands, revels in milestone
Pauline Dikuelo | Thursday March 24, 2016 12:09
When explaining the new brand and tagline, Orange chief executive officer, Patrick Benon said they have embarked on a strategy termed Essentials 2020, which was informed by Orange’s ambition to offer unparalleled customer experience.
“The essence of the strategy is to always connect people to what is essential to them. The brand introduces a new pallete of colours, which are meant to enhance the already vibrant brand. The new colours on the brand pallete are pink, blue, green, yellow and purple and we have decided to leave the logo unchanged,” he said at the 18th anniversary celebrations held in Gaborone this week.
Benon said their strategy has been adapted to a local three-year strategy so that they can implement the central ambition of Essentials 2020 taking into account the setting of the local environment.
For the past 18 years, Orange has invested over P150 million annually on infrastructure for the deployment and expansion of their network coverage and have 17,000 partners, hawkers, dealers and retailers distributing Orange services thus creating employment.
The Minister of Transport and Communications, Tshenolo Mabeo said since Orange acquired their licence 18 years ago, it had paved way in the network providers industry as the country has witnessed a number of significant advancements within the telephony industry.
“It cannot go unnoticed that there has been tremendous growth in the access and use of mobile telephony, data and Internet services throughout the country with the highest mobile penetration rate in Africa of over 160 percent,” he said.
He added that mobile technology continues to expand its horizons by providing a tool to facilitate efficiencies and convenience particularly in digital and financial inclusion as well as health, education, agriculture and government services.
“We note Orange’s successful journey and achievements and we are confident that as the company matures, we will continue to see improved quality of network and network reliability,” he added.
Orange Botswana chairman, Satar Dada said despite being given the opportunity first, there were uncertainties about the viability of the business given the small and scattered population.
“The new technology required sound technical know how and the country at the time did not have such skills; infrastructure was also at infancy stages,” he said.
According to Dada, operating in an unknown territory and having to compete was a big risk. The regulatory regime had just been inaugurated with only one year of operation prior to the decision to award the mobile network licences.
“Despite all these challenges, we took a leap of faith and remained resolute and enlisted all the requisite steps and efforts to run a sustainable mobile network operator,” Dada said.
Annually, Orange commits one percent of its annual revenues towards the universal access fund, which is managed by BOCRA. Their Corporate Social Responsibility has continued to impact education, people living with disability, sports, culture, music agriculture, healthcare and the empowerment of women and girls. Orange has also nurtured and empowered local artists such as Vee and Scar, as well as pioneered a multi-million-pula sponsorship for the national team, Zebras, in 2005.
This year, the Orange Foundation intends to support and promote digital education for women and girls and in and out of school youth as well as people in rural communities. Orange Botswana serves more than one million customers country wide on a GSM, GPRS, edge, 3G and 4G network.