Ericsson from Europe to Africa: Meet Some of our Global Team

November 5, 2015 at 3:27 pm · Filed under Opinion and tagged: Africa, CBIO, CPM, Ericsson, RAN, RSSA, Travel

One of the greatest things about working at Ericsson is the opportunities you have to work with people from different countries, cultures and backgrounds, and maybe even travel to work where they are.

One such organisation is the RSSA CHI (which stands for Region Sub Saharan Africa Competence Hub Ireland). This team provides senior competence across the Sub Saharan Africa region. At Ericsson, this means Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Congo, Cameroon, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Namibia and many more – quite an adventure!

Team members, who are regarded as being the best in their field, will travel on assignment to these countries to assist or manage some of the most complex, challenging, strategically important and rewarding projects in the world.

The team itself is fairly representative of the best of Ericsson: a diverse mix of professionals from all over the world who have each excelled individually and have joined forces to form a unit that has a strong ethos of teamwork (they describe themselves as the “A-team”).

Although they travel significantly thought the year, I was pleased to catch up with Jeffrey Manalaysay and Hamizan Mohamad when they were here in Ireland recently (where, as you can see, we were having a typically fantastic Irish summer).

Hamizan Mohamad

Hamizan Mohamad is a veteran of telecoms and joined Ericsson in 2007, and Ericsson Ireland in 2011 as a Senior Customer Project Manager, managing multimillion-dollar rollout projects and programs on Ericsson’s behalf. Although I had worked with him since 2011, this was the first time we met face to face. He told me the RSSA region itself gave you a lot of varieties in terms of culture, working environment and customer interactions. You will meet up with new challenges everyday which makes the job even more interesting. This creates diversity in your experience and it makes your job very enticing!

Jeffrey Manalaysay

Jeffrey Manalaysay has worked with Ericsson for over 10 years now, in the Philippines, Sweden, Brazil, Algeria and now Ireland. He is a Senior Solution Architect, helping bring Ericsson’s customers ambitions to fruition through innovation. Jeffrey told me: “I have travelled to various African countries specifically in the Sub-Saharan region. Since Africa is a continent like none other, it has that which is elegantly vast or awfully little. It goes the same with the projects; it could be a huge turn-key project or a small delivery; very challenging or a “walk in the park.” Either way, there are always lessons to be learned. But the biggest lesson from Africa both in a professional and personal experience was that, our life’s joys come mostly from relationships and friendships, not from material things.”

Hamizan and Jeffrey work on projects in the RSSA Region (illustrated). Having recruited for this division a couple of years ago, I have discovered a couple of interesting facts about Africa that I thought I would share with you:

1. Sub Saharan Africa has a bigger land area than India and China combined- wow.
2. The number of languages spoken in Sub Saharan Africa is over a thousand.
3. More oil is produced in Sub Saharan Africa than in the Middle East- sorry EMEA!
4. Mobile Data penetration is expected to double by 2017.
5. The second largest market in the world for Guinness is Nigeria. (Is this why the RSSA CHI is in Ireland?)

So, if you think you are the next Hamizan or Jeffrey, and you’d like to discover RSSA like I have, we would love to hear from you. We’re hiring right now:

Senior Solution Architect – BCSC/CBIO
Senior Solution Architect – RAN
Senior Customer Project Manager – NRO
Senior Customer Project Manager- CSI
CSI Program Director/Manager

Comments