French telecom giant Orange has showcased its innovations at the AfricaCom conference in Cape Town, South Africa. These innovations include solutions targeted at a wide variety of products and services including smartphones, e-education, and of course, the company’s commitment to the betterment of the region’s startup ecosystem. Among the highlighting points of Orange’s announcement was the news about its newly forged partnership with KaiOS Technologies to push quality digital services to more and more people. This new venture will kick off with Orange customers getting access to smart feature phones running on the KaiOS.

The first product rolled out by the joint venture will be a 3G smart feature phone, with a 4G upgrade scheduled for later in 2019. Orange also utilized the platform to shed light into its e-learning initiative called the African Digital School. This new program aims to mobilize Orange’s infrastructure, expertise, and access to provide quality training -- especially in the digital growth sector -- to deserving youngsters.

Among the early partners in this new initiative are the CNED, the University Institutes of Technology, and Open Classrooms. Apart from that Orange has also entered an agreement with the Virtual University of Tunis to leverage the institutes’ extensive range of digital education programs. All goes as per plan, and the telco could also strike a similar deal with the Virtual University of Senegal.