By Jean Granger, Global account director, sub-Saharan Africa, Orange Business Services

As the world’s population grows, so does the demand for food, water and natural resources. With a wide range of activities spanning across fishing, global transport, marine mining and offshore production, the ocean provides a largely untapped and promising resource.  It also positions a platform for the offshore Oil & Gas industry to play a vital role in the global economy. 

The Oil & Gas sector in Africa faces many challenges, including remote locations, perfectible ICT infrastructure, employee wellbeing concerns, and concerns around costs. Other concerns include extreme weather conditions, declining oil prices, poor metal prices, the need to make real-time decisions and a constant search for how to operate more efficiently. 

Accessing the natural resources locked within our oceans has become a far more difficult and dangerous task. The rising costs of offshore exploration and mining is forcing Oil & Gas operators to explore deeper waters in search of financially viable resource deposits. This, in turn, is driving businesses to also explore ways and means of increasing operational efficiencies while ensuring its adherence to critically important health and safety industry policies. The adoption of digitalisation within all aspects of the Oil & Gas industry, where it can achieve one or both of these objectives, has been high on the priority list. 

Technology plays an increasingly important role in assisting the sector to successfully deal with challenges and achieve its objectives. Cloud solutions are assisting businesses to control and adapt their costs, while IoT, wearables, drones and data analytics are allowing businesses to increase productivity and safety while lessening negative environmental impact. In order to achieve these outcomes, an underlining reliable and performing network is key. Satellite solutions can bring the reach, reliability and performance that are required for the industry – but this requires strong digital strategies and the right partner. 

Strategies should be centred around solutions offering global coverage, specialised solutions that can limit accidents during high-risk operations, solutions offering access to information in real-time, and solutions centred on traceability and monitoring ensure more control for those businesses operating in this volatile sector. Essentially, these businesses need flexible IT infrastructures that help to increase productivity whilst still driving down costs. 

Digitalisation is moving beyond connectivity and data gathering towards a comprehensive digitalised approach to optimising operations, creating new opportunities for growth and enabling new business models. The main challenge for CIOs in the sector is to manage both local and global initiatives. Quite often, ideas stem from the people on the ground, as local units implement local solutions based on their experience, knowledge of the technology and available technology. The challenge for the CIO is to be aware of sector trends and challenges globally, to ensure that local initiatives can progress while remaining compliant with global policies to limit the risks involved.  The CIO should be equipped with a global picture, in order to make decisions about what could benefit to the entire organisation, and will need to have the right arguments, support and relays to have the entire business adhering to the global initiatives.

Over the years, a dramatic shift has taken place, as the industry fully embraces digital transformation. Digitalisation in the deep-sea sector is increasingly seen as a foundational catalyst that is opening up the possibility of advanced business models, workflow, and mining productivity. 

I believe that businesses operating within the sector are beginning to better understand what digitalisation truly is, and are becoming more open to the possibilities that the digital transformation presents for their businesses. The challenge is to convince business leaders that these new technologies can be adapted and can optimise ways of working. CIOs will have to prioritise their digital strategies in terms of their business goals. 

I don’t believe it is true to say that Africa is lagging behind in terms of technological uptake in the Oil & Gas and mining industries. The availability of terrestrial and satellite networks has allowed the continents Oil & Gas industry to improve communication for enhanced safety, with other locations and offices for productivity and cost optimisation, to implement central flexible cloud solutions available to everyone, and to start consolidating and analysing collected data. I believe we can look forward to seeing increased transformation and technological uptake on the continent, as digital technologies continue to improve.