The Angolan Government should create incentives so that telecommunications companies can really feel more motivated to invest in the country, especially in more remote areas, according to the Director General of Paratus Angola, Francisco Pinto Leite.
The manager who spoke in an interview with the newspaper Market, said that a good way to diversify the telecommunications sector is to decentralize investments with various stimuli by the current Executive, giving more emphasis to provinces that from the point of view of return on investment are not desirable areas.
Still in his approach, Francisco Pinto Leite stressed that another challenge involves “better distribution and use of the communications development fund, which formally exists, but which in fact we do not see much return for the operators of this fund", reiterating that "regulation point of view, it can be an incentive on the fees and licenses that operators pay to the regulator (INACOM)".
For the Director General of Paratus, ex-ITA, the urgent need to look at Angola “in the sense of mainly motivating the private sector to invest more in areas where, eventually, in a first phase, they are areas of low return on investment".
The current state of human capital in the area of telecommunications and technology was another subject addressed in the interview, where Francisco Pinto Leite underlines that “in many sectors we have to resort to foreign labor because we still don't have enough experience and qualifications to develop, install and then operate some networks".
"Therefore, our own education system in general, focused on technologies, in my point of view, will have to be rethought and redone, in the sense of having a more direct focus on the needs of employability in the technology sector in the country“, He stressed.
It should also be noted that the Director-General finalized his approach with the current challenges of the sector in Angola, reiterating that regardless of continuing with many challenges, we can say “that we have already taken interesting steps in the field of ICTs, mainly in the post-war period, from 2002 onwards, and we have been taking increasingly assertive steps".
"We made some mistakes along the way, mainly with regard to investments, but the fact is that today we are quite independent in terms of the telecommunications and information technology base that we currently have in the country. Just think about what was done during the pandemic, despite everything, we managed to keep some services operational remotely, as well as in the finance and banking sector, with a series of payments that are now made using technology.“, Finished.
To inform that last July the telecommunications company ITA – Internet Technologies Angola announced the completion of the process of aligning and standardizing the brand with that of the Paratus Group and is operating in the country under the brand “Paratus Angola".
According to a company note, this decision on the name change consolidates Angola's position within the Paratus Group, as well as ratifies the strategy of creating a data hub in the country and boosts the offer of efficient and reliable telecommunications services, with the aim of transforming the continent's digital landscape.
Currently, Paratus connects more than 35 African countries through the fiber optic, microwave and satellite network, and where this unification establishes the next step in expanding the group's presence on the continent, allowing more institutions, public and private, to benefit from a quality telecommunications network and services in Africa.
