Awarded each year during the Africa Tech Festival, the “CXO of the Year” is a prestigious award that celebrates a leader who has demonstrated in the field of ICT, “exceptional leadership in the management of organizations, strategic planning and the management of rapid change”.
The current CEO of Orange Cameroon, Patrick BENON, has 17 consecutive years of experience as CEO. Benin, the Central African Republic, Botswana and Cameroon have successively welcomed this executive who holds an engineering degree and a doctorate in telecommunications and computer science from the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Paris (Télécom Paristech) in France.
His leadership career began at the head of Benin Telecoms. In four years, between 2007 and 2011, Patrick BENON succeeded in providing the public company with a regulatory legal and financial framework after its separation from postal services, and in positioning Benin as a sub-regional center for international access thanks to fiber optic interconnections with Nigeria, Togo, Niger and Burkina Faso (these interconnections allowed Benin Telecoms to provide submarine cable capacity to neighboring countries).
Within the Orange group subsidiaries, Patrick is recognized for his management style and his transformational approach.
In 2011, when he was appointed head of the Central African subsidiary, the company was experiencing a decline in its turnover, a negative EBITDA rate and a persistent social crisis. When he left in 2014, the company’s turnover was growing, with a regular double-digit average per year, a positive EBITDA and a restored social climate. Furthermore, under his leadership, Orange Centrafrique launched the country’s first 3G network and successfully maintained it despite a severe military crisis in the country in 2013, which he managed while ensuring the safety of staff and technical resources. Patrick’s time allowed Orange Centrafrique, then the last operator on the market in 2011, to return to growth and relaunch its quest for market leadership, which would be achieved a few years after his departure.
This rapid transformation was also observed at Orange Botswana, which was in decline when he arrived in 2014 and which moved to double-digit growth when he left in 2021. Indeed, when Patrick BENON took over at the helm of Orange Botswana, the company had been experiencing a decline in revenues and a high turnover of human resources for years. Patrick BENON implemented a 360° transformation plan that turned around Orange Botswana’s results and enabled the company to conquer market leadership. Under Patrick’s leadership, Orange Botswana became the first operator to launch the 4G, 4G+ and 4G-TDD network. The structuring work that led to these results continues to bear fruit today within Orange Botswana, which became the market leader in 2022.
In Cameroon, where he was appointed Managing Director of Orange Cameroon in September 2021, Patrick BENON arrived in a context of tense social climate and a profitability challenge. In addition, some regions of the country have been experiencing a security crisis for several years, a situation that has limited the company’s operations in these areas. True to his method, Patrick BENON co-constructs with his teams a transformation program whose acronym is REPERES. This plan clearly defines the strategic priorities that are carried by each of the letters of REPERES:
R for Growth Relay,
E for Customer Experience,
P for People,
E for Efficiency,
R for Resilience,
E for Environment/Social and
S for Security.
The transformation began to bear fruit in the following years, with, on the commercial level, the revitalization of activity in regions in security crisis, the launch of unlimited home Internet based on the TDD network, the launch of the Maxit super-application which brings together on a single platform the Internet and Call telecommunications solutions, Orange Money financial services as well as an E-commerce universe open to other companies. As well as the creation of a subsidiary of Orange Money Cameroon which became the first operator approved as a mobile payment institution in Central Africa. Internally, precise surveys called eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) make it possible to measure the improvement in staff satisfaction.
Corporate Social Responsibility is not left out, Patrick BENON tells us that: “as an African, I am fully aware of the weight that telecommunications operators represent in the economies of our countries, and the extremely important role of catalyst for development that we must play.” This is the reason why he gives pride of place to the two main pillars of societal actions of the Orange group which are: the Orange Digital Center (ODC) and the Orange Cameroon Foundation.
Asked about this recognition, Dr. Patrick BENON wanted to dedicate it to his teams at Orange Cameroon, his previous teams at Orange Botswana, Orange Central Africa and Benin Telecoms as well as his wife Noëlla for her daily support. A statement that comes as no surprise for this leader who says he draws his motivation from his attachment to Africa and its people.