Menu

Cisco Systems, a leading manufacturer of networking hardware and telecommunications equipment, has announced plans to open its EDGE Incubation Centre in Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana and Nigeria. This was one of the announcements made at the Cisco Connect conference on Monday.

EDGE stands for Experience, Design, Go-to-market and Earn. The objective of the EDGE centre, which was first launched in South Africa in 2018, is to share business knowledge, help develop small and medium businesses in the digital age, speed up their entry to market and, as a result, create new jobs.

According to Cisco, the EDGE centre provides small and medium enterprises (SMEs) access to Cisco’s communication and collaboration technology, as well as training and enablement programmes. These training programmes focus on topics that are pertinent to the local economy, such as smart ports, Internet of Things (IoT) in agriculture and smart cities. In addition, the SMEs are able to connect with Cisco’s experts, who can support them with developing their business ideas and concepts.

Speaking at the Cisco Connect conference, which held in South Africa, Clayton Naidoo, General Manager for Cisco – Sub-Saharan Africa, said, “We are inspired by the prospect of an economy with abundant jobs, a place where entrepreneurs can thrive. Our goal is to enable small and medium businesses to achieve their growth by allowing them to have to access our world-class technology.”

Other announcements made at the conference were the launch of the African partner repair programme and the training of one million students in Africa by 2025, through the company’s networking academy (NetAcad). Since its launch in 1998, up to 700,000 students in Africa have participated in NetAcad.

With the launch of the repair partner programme, Cisco aims to work with selected distributors who will be able to repair and restore its hardware and make high-quality, refurbished technology accessible to small and medium organisations in Africa. In addition, the repair centres will also carry out testing, quality engineering, fulfilment, process management and procurement, as well as inventory control.

“Our goal is to create value through ‘glocal’ manufacturing and channel models,” said Naidoo. “By glocal, we mean using global manufacturing practices with local execution.”

By investing in repair centres in Africa, Cisco intends to contribute to job creation and skills development, fight counterfeiting and promote Cisco’s Authorised Channel.

Since its launch in 1984, Cisco’s products have helped the societies securely connect and seize tomorrow’s digital opportunity today. It currently has 10 offices in Africa, namely Algeria, Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.