L-impact-socioeconomique-d-Orange

Published on 04 June 2019

Orange’s socio-economic development

Technology offers everyone – both individuals and businesses – the chance to develop and progress. In this way it is proving to be a powerful tool for nations to create value and enable socio-economic development. That’s why we’re promoting digital inclusion, supporting local entrepreneurship and developing innovative and essential services, and why we’ve begun to measure the impact we’re having across our operating countries.

 

Promoting digital inclusion

Being a responsible operator means taking into account the profound inequalities caused by today’s digital world. Half of the world’s population has no internet access and a large part of the connected population is not very tech savvy, which is why Orange is helping to overcome the reasons for exclusion linked to new technologies. In 2018, we invested €4.6 billion in our networks with the goal of increasing coverage and improving internet quality globally, including the installation and maintenance of 450,000km of submarine cables around the world. To support consumers, the Orange Foundation makes digital technology a key enabler for education, training and employment. For example, the Orange

Foundation has opened 250 Digital Centres in 20 countries to help women learn digital skills and find a job.

 

Developing essential and innovative services

Present in 26 countries around the world, Orange plays a leading role in their development by providing concrete solutions to people across a range of sectors (mobile financial services, energy, education, agriculture, health and more). Orange Money meets the needs of nearly 40 million people in Africa and the Middle East, including 15 million active monthly users, enabling them to manage their finances from their mobiles. In 2018, nearly 2 billion transactions were carried out via Orange Money.

 

Supporting local entrepreneurship

Orange supports innovation and entrepreneurship through dedicated programmes in France and abroad. We help start-ups through our accelerator network of 17 Orange Fabs across four continents, staying by their side over a period of several months to help them develop their product or service. The Group’s incubator network (CTIC Dakar in Sénégal, SabouTech in Guinea etc…) enables local African businesses to access expert advice and monitoring. What’s more, the Orange Digital Ventures fund has invested in more than twenty scale-up businesses. Over the last ten years, we have invested more than €260 million in supporting entrepreneurship.

 

Value created and shared by Orange

  • €9.1 billion in salaries and wages
     
  • €7.4 billion in net investments excluding licences
     
  • €4.6 billion investment in networks 
     
  • €18.6 billion in external purchases (suppliers etc) 
     
  • €2.2 billion in taxes and licences

Global figures : 26 countries where Orange operate

 

 

How do we measure the socio-economic value we create?

We carry out studies to estimate our contribution to our operating countries. Following France and Niger in 2017, in 2018 we expanded our analysis of our footprint to five further African countries: Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Senegal. These studies show that our activities have led to creating thousands of direct, indirect and induced jobs.

Orange’s activities generate cash flows and create local added value. This value is increased even more when you add the impact of our projects and services when used for business, and the impact of our social and environmental programmes.

Source: Goodwill-management study