Vodafone Egypt participated in the 25th edition of Cairo International Technology Exhibition (Cairo ICT 2021), taking place from November 7 to 10, as part of its continuous end eavours to support the government’s national projects and its efforts towards digital transformation, in line with Egypt Vision 2030. Through its participation, Vodafone Egypt showcased its latest digital and technological solutions at its pavilion this year, underlining the company’s leadership in integrating technology into the lives of Egyptians.
Several sectors fronted the company’s agenda in this year’s edition, namely: digital health, financial inclusion, digital/smart agriculture, water consumption rationalisation, as well as digital education, one of the most important fields that Vodafone focuses on.
Starting with the Universal Health Insurance (UHI) project, Vodafone serves as the Egyptian government’s strategic partner in partnership with Ministry of Health. The company has managed to lead the Internet of Things (IoT) by providing smart agriculture solutions and rationalising water consumption, in addition to its ongoing efforts to expand “Vodafone Cash”, the leading e-wallet services, to achieve financial inclusion. Through these digital technology solutions, Vodafone reaffirms its leadership in providing the latest technological solutions for a sustainable digital future.
“We are pleased to participate in this year’s edition of Cairo ICT which has become the leading platform for key players in the information and communication technology sector. Vodafone is exhibiting its latest innovations in line with our digital transformation strategy. The most advanced digital solutions and services will continue to be our top priority for a sustainable digital future to ease Egyptians’ lives,” stated Mr Mohamed Abdullah, CEO of Vodafone Egypt.
“All the services provided in this edition of Cairo ICT are introduced to complement the government’s digital transformation and financial inclusion direction, in line with Egypt Vision 2030, as well as providing new services to our customers to maintain our leadership in the Egyptian telecom market,” Mr Abdullah added.
Vodafone Egypt showed a video from Luxor revealing the most significant developments in its technological applications and solutions in partnership with the government and its relevant entities, revealing its impact on Egyptians’ lives and supporting digital transformation.
On top of these national projects is the strategic partnership with Ministry of Health and Population to automate the comprehensive health insurance system, which includes the complete digitisation of hospitals, commencing with information management systems and radiology systems and progressing to enterprise resource planning and financial management. Vodafone is also working with the government to coordinate the deployment of advanced technological services and the most significant parts of digital transformation in the entire automation process for hospitals, healthcare units, and the health insurance system.
This national project began in Port Said and was then implemented in Ismailia and Luxor. Vodafone will continue to reach out to more governorates through collaboration with all suppliers to create a digital healthcare services platform and apply digitisation in Egypt’s comprehensive health insurance system that offers health care services remotely.
Vodafone also exhibited the recent advancements of this project in Luxor, where 1,055,000 people were covered in Luxor’s comprehensive health insurance system, in addition to performing a full medical examination for about 355,000 citizens in the governorate. Since its launch, Vodafone, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the Luxor Governorate, was able to provide more than 1.6 million medical and treatment services, including 36,000 high-precision surgeries to beneficiaries of the new comprehensive health insurance. The company also provided medical services through 5 hospitals and 47 family medical centres and units that are working up until now among the institutions linked with the General Authority For Health Insurance – Luxor providing services under the new comprehensive health insurance system.
Believing in the need of integrating technology across different sectors, Vodafone introduced solutions to improve smart agriculture and optimise water consumption. During the exhibition, Vodafone affirmed its leadership by displaying the most recent technologies of (IoT), to provide smart agriculture solutions, such as developing irrigation innovations to improve the efficiency of water management in order to rationalise agricultural water use, boost agricultural productivity, and increase the value of the water unit.
Through its solutions, Vodafone aims to enable the agriculture and irrigation sectors to save more than 18 billion cubic metres of water, in addition to technological irrigation systems, whether drip or sprinkler, which can save 30 per cent of irrigation water, 10 per cent of fertilisers, and about 20 per cent of energy while increasing output by up to 30 per cent.
Vodafone also displayed the latest updates of the educational platform “Ta3limy”. The company offered devices in its pavilion so that visitors can register on the digital platform, as part of its efforts in digital education. The educational platform, which was launched in 2019, aims to stimulate the use of digital education by offering an integrated digital learning environment. The platform achieved remarkable results in recent months, with over one million users. Vodafone has forged a number of international collaborations to provide digital content for all aspects of the educational process.
The platform offers numerous educational curricula for school years as well as programmes to enhance students’ talents. The platform provides a series of high-level courses for teachers and parents from the world’s leading educational institutes, allowing Egypt’s educational sector to accomplish holistic educational boom that focuses on all elements of the educational system, including students, parents and educators.
Vodafone’s role in education extends to more than 30 free digital literacy courses, as well as courses to train the youth on digital work-related skills including digital marketing, content creation, web development, 3D design, robotics, programming, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship, with the goal of building capacities in the young to keep up with recent developments in communications and Information Technology.
Furthermore, Vodafone Foundation has collaborated with the presidential initiative “Decent Life” to deliver digital education for 100 schools by equipping these schools with cutting-edge technology and providing internet connection. Vodafone Egypt is also supporting these communities by developing the network and building 8 towers in 7 villages among the initiative in order to improve the services provided.
In terms of financial inclusion, Vodafone is leading the e-wallets sector in the Egyptian market with 65 per cent market share. The company demonstrated the impact of e-payment solutions on easing people’s lives and saving time and efforts and announced expanding Vodafone Cash services, as part of supporting Egypt Vision 2030.
These expansions include offering pension payments transfer services to beneficiaries, as well as the possibility to sign the pension declaration form via Vodafone Cash, and digitising the process of transferring money to anyone, anywhere in the simplest way possible, instead of traditional forms such as the post office and express mail. In addition to other Vodafone Cash services including transferring money to someone in another city or town, paying tuition fees, receiving money from customers, and paying supplier costs. For the first time, Vodafone revealed a service that allows customers to borrow up to LE1,000 in Vodafone Cash wallet for a set period based on their i-Score credit rating and communications behaviour, allowing its customers to finance and invest in their businesses as well as meeting basic household expenditure needs.
Vodafone’s solutions include entertainment services targeting the youth, who make up a substantial portion of the population. Vodafone Egypt launches the VF Play platform, a complete gaming platform that allows young people to enjoy popular games free, without ads or in-app purchases. The games section contains a catalogue of 1,000 games that players may download on their Android or IOS smartphones, engage in tournaments, and play their favourite games (e.g., PUBG) to win enormous and minor prizes promptly. Players may also go through the available competitions in this section to view their prize pools and participation.
