GE
  • Multimedia content

  • Images (3)
    • Abu Sulemana, Chief Information Officer GE SSA speaks on industry digitization during the GE East Africa Digital Roadshow
    • Getty Melaku,Chief Financial Officer for GE Africa addresses the audience at the event
    • Hani Chohan, GE Chief Marketing Officer speaking during a panel discussion at the GE East Africa Digital Roadshow
  • Links (1)
  • All (4)
Source: GE |

GE East Africa Digital Roadshow

Africa is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, but the continent still faces significant challenges around clean water, power, transportation and healthcare

Digital initiatives will create up to 3.45 million new jobs between 2016 and 2025 - translating to 10.7% job growth in the electricity industry

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 26, 2017/APO/ --
  • General Electric spearheads a digital transformation with the GE East Africa Digital Roadshow in Kenya and Ethiopia.
  • Investment in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is expected to top $60 trillion during the next 15 years. And by 2020, over 50 billion assets will connect to the Internet.

General Electric (www.GE.com), the world’s premier Digital industrial company is paving the way for industrial digital transformation with the GE East Africa Roadshow which was held in Nairobi and Addis Ababa. The two events gathered key players in the digital space for stakeholder panel discussions on the importance of digital industrial transformation in the region to unlock the region’s digital future.  

The roadshow was an opportunity for the world’s premier digital industrial company to engage with key local stakeholders to unlock the region’s digital future.

What is Industrial Data?

Industrial machines are not known to produce, share and capture data in a manner that can enable companies to understand them better, predict their defects and optimize their performances. GE is leading a whole new sector of technology which consists of enabling machines connect to multiple other applications and platforms, as well as to send and receive massive amounts of data through the cloud/internet, making it possible to understand, operate, improve and service them remotely.

Why the digital industrial revolution matters for Kenya?

Industries such as aviation, healthcare, mining, oil and gas, power generation, and transportation represent upwards of 30% of the global economy, and touch the lives of almost everyone on the planet. These capital-intensive industries have long-lived assets such as aircraft, generators, locomotives, and turbines that are mission-critical and require considerable monitoring and service throughout their 20- to 50-year lives. A “big data” platform that brings new value to the wealth of data coming from these assets, their processes, and the enterprises in which they exist, will set the stage for a new wave of productivity gains and information-based services.

Industrial data is growing twice as fast as any other sector. Yet today, less than 3% of that data is tagged and used in a meaningful fashion. The digital industrial revolution is poised to radically reshape how we produce, distribute and maintain physical assets—from gas turbines to entire manufacturing plants. A growing, regional network of connected assets, designed to apply split-second machine learning to big data, the digital industrial revolution will help local businesses extract valuable insights from assets to transform operations, enable innovation and explore new business models.

GE is bringing new digital infrastructure solutions to the region by connecting software, apps and analytics to industrial businesses, enabling them to operate faster, smarter and more efficiently. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the company is pioneering technologies to help companies capitalize on the Industrial Internet, fuelling productivity and value from existing assets and enabling new business models and growth potential.

Getty Melaku the Chief Financial Officer for GE Africa said: “We are excited to bring our cutting edge digital solutions and expertise to businesses in East Africa to optimize operational and business innovations for increased productivity and profit. We see a huge opportunity for the continent at large to benefit from the digital industrial revolution and leap-frog existing industrialization models, and quickly improve competitiveness in the global economy”.

Africa is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, but the continent still faces significant challenges around clean water, power, transportation and healthcare. GE’s offering optimizes operations to improve asset performance while keeping costs down by combining software and data analytics with machines’ hardware to build a range of competitive manufacturing and services industries.

“The digital industrial revolution is both a cultural and technology shift and companies that don’t evolve, will fail to deliver critical business outcomes and stunt their productivity gains. Our customers in Africa demand the same equipment performance as the rest of the world and are constantly looking at ways to enhance asset performance. Forty of GE’s Oil and Gas customers in Africa are using Digital solutions to optimise operations,” said Chief Information Officer for GE Africa, Abu Sulemana.

GE has incorporated learnings from its extensive industrial business processes to release “Predix” the world's first industrial operation system which powers the modern digital industrial businesses. GE is committed to empowering organizations enter a new era of industry digitization. Local businesses will be able to create innovative apps on “Predix” that turn real-time operational data into actionable that can deliver outcomes across many different industries. These outcomes range from the reduction of unplanned downtime to improved asset output and operational efficiency.

Job creation from industrial digitization

According to a report by the World economic forum, there is significant opportunity in the electricity sector for digitization to create jobs. Digital initiatives will create up to 3.45 million new jobs between 2016 and 2025 - translating to 10.7% job growth in the electricity industry. Job creation potential is highest in the consumer renewables sector, with energy storage integration creating up to 1.07 million new jobs. New jobs in smart asset planning (925,000 new jobs) and asset performance management (596,000) more than address job loss from automation or more efficient technologies. A significant problem that utilities are facing is an ageing workforce, with a weak pipeline of new talent and a potential productivity gap as new employees are recruited and trained. Digital initiatives go some way in ensuring that experience is captured as the workforce retires, with significant productivity gains expected.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of GE.

Media contact:
Annette Mutuku
Culture Communication Leader, Africa
GE Global Growth Organization 
E: Annette.Mutuku@GE.com
T: +254204215109

About GE:
GE (NYSE: GE) (www.GE.com) is the world’s Digital Industrial Company, transforming industry with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected, responsive and predictive. GE is organized around a global exchange of knowledge, the “GE Store,” through which each business shares and accesses the same technology, markets, structure and intellect. Each invention further fuels innovation and application across our industrial sectors. With people, services, technology and scale, GE delivers better outcomes for customers by speaking the language of industry.