"Face aux instabilités, privilégier l'ancrage local", déclare Jérôme Hénique (Orange Afrique & M-O)

Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to this new video with a major player in the African economy. Today, we welcome the French boss, who has the largest turnover on the continent, outside the extractive sectors, 7 billion euros, thanks to 156 million customers. Hello, Jérôme Hennique. Hello, Bruno. You are the CEO of Orange, Afrique and Moyen-Orient, subsidiary of the Orange Telecom Group, many of our listeners know your services well. Your brand is present in 8 European countries, but under your responsibility, there are 17 African countries, to which we can add Jordan. We will come back to your activities, your projects, your vision of this sector, which remains extremely dynamic in Africa. Julien Clemenceau, Chief of the Economy Service of RFI, is with me. Hello, Julien. Hello, Bruno. And you asked the first question. Jérôme Hennique, you have been managing Orange's African operations since 2022, after being the Senegalese adjoint for four years in Lyon-Diaye, which preceded you in these functions. Before that, you have traveled a lot within the French group, in Jordan, in Senegal, in Spain, in the United States, to name your main affections. Where did you learn the most? What was the most memorable experience? Hello, Julien. I would say it's Senegal, because I lived there for five years. I discovered a continent, a market, friends, and high-quality leaders. You mentioned Lyon-Diaye, where I was the adjoint for about three years. And then I was also the adjoint of its predecessor, Cherti Dien-Baye. So, great African leaders who have deeply marked me. Today, you share your life between Morocco, Casablanca, Paris, of course, and then a lot of travel, we imagine. Yes, that's it, Casablanca. It's our operational headquarters since 2020. This is where we have most of our support teams for our 18 countries. I spend a lot of time there. And then I spend a lot of time too in these 18 countries. It's important to go out on the field. You joined Orange, which was still called France Télécom, in 1994. At that time, could you imagine what your company would become? France Télécom, at the time, did not yet have competitors in France, but the company was already present in Africa. Yes, it was the beginning of the opening to competition. And then it was the beginning of the internationalization of the group. And that's what attracted me. At the end of my studies, I wanted to be... We didn't call it tech at the time, but in IT, networks, information systems, because we felt that technology was going to change the future of the world. And then working internationally, that's what interested me. And already in Africa or not at all? No, when I was a student, I thought, you have to travel, you have to discover the world. And it was then, by joining the group, that I was attracted to Africa, with this first successful experience in Senegal. Africa, France and the rest of the world. 2024 is the year of the French-speaking summit on French soil. A strong emphasis on the tech sector, a sector that has no borders, in essence. Economic Francophony, what does it mean concretely? Give us some examples for the Orange Group. So for us, it's first of all our role to support the digital transformation of the continent. That's our core business. That's our reason for being on the continent. And on the fringes of Francophony stands Francotech. And I think it's very important to highlight the great work that entrepreneurs on the continent are doing. There is a lot going on. There are a number of start-ups with great inventiveness, with great quality in all our countries, which we try to support as best we can. We may have the opportunity to talk about it through different devices. The most important being the Orange Digital Center. And we take advantage of every possibility. Summit Viva Tech is one of them. And Francotech, on the fringes of Francophony, will be a great opportunity to highlight them. But what does it mean, Francophony in the tech sector? When we speak a lot of English and we talk a lot with English speakers or with representatives of other languages in the world. It's a linguistic link for these start-ups because their first concern, once they have succeeded in their country, is to export. And first of all, to export to Africa. And for that, to have applications, services in a common language that will allow them to enter other markets. Obviously, it's a facilitation. Then, working in a local language is also important for Orange. We develop our services. We may have the opportunity to talk about Maxite later, also in local languages. But it's true that Francophony, this link to the French language, allows us to expand the market for these tech actors and for these start-ups. But we are at a time when it is very easy to translate any language, not just English. With your phone, you can translate any language. Yes, but it's still a cultural, linguistic and business link to facilitate exchanges. Fortunately, everything doesn't go through an automatic translator on your phone to discuss business between the actors. Exactly. Don't you feel that French companies don't fully grasp this opportunity of the French language, which is spoken by more than 300 million speakers and which allows for a special relationship? And so, this economic Francophony, in terms of France, doesn't really exist? I think it remains to be developed in large part. I was in RDC last week. It's probably the largest French-speaking market in the world. More than 100 million inhabitants. So, it's a lever on which, indeed, our companies have to rely more. In Africa, France, there are also ruptures. There are difficulties. France has lost its spark with a part of its youth. In the Sahel, it's even more than that. Does this impact your activities? Not directly. Why? Because we are a multilocal group. Obviously, Orange is an international group, but we are Senegalese in Senegal, Ivorian in Ivory Coast, Malian in Mali. And that's very important. Each company is a national one, with very important regional subgroups. Sonatel is a West African champion, which is present in Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone. Same thing for the group Orange Côte d'Ivoire, which is present in Burkina Faso, Liberia. And that's very important. This local anchoring, which preserves us, in a way, also from an association to France, which has perhaps less good advertising on a part of the continent. But that means you rely more on local staff? Totally. Our 18,000 employees, who are our first ambassadors, are employees of the continent. Our DGs are, for 99% of them, DGs of the continent. Not always from the same country, by the way. We have a Burkinabe in RDC, a Benin DG in Cameroon. But we have African talents who also wear the Orange brand. And then all our employees, who are strongly engaged, who are the first ambassadors of the brand. But still, the coups d'état, the political instability, the armed conflicts that we have in the French-speaking world, but also in the English-speaking world. In Africa, we have this conflict between RDC and Rwanda. It still represents difficulties for a group that wants to develop these activities all over the continent. Yes, we know that working in Africa is not an easy task. From that point of view, we are exposed to risks, political, geopolitical risks, security risks, health risks, economic risks. We have a devaluation in Egypt. We are not present in Nigeria, but the companies that are present have suffered a major devaluation. But nevertheless, the fact that we provide essential services, services of proximity to the population, I think, and that we do it from companies that have been deeply anchored locally for 25 years, with local personnel extremely competent, extremely engaged. I think that's what preserves our model. And then we have developed for a long time, but in a more structured and systematic way since 2018, a model that we think is virtuous, which is a model of performance and economic development in the service of developing countries through our core business, which is digital inclusion, but also through all our actions of social and environmental responsibility that are visible and on which our employees are committed. But that means that you rely on specialists of economic intelligence to prevent any local changes to take the lead? Not particularly. We follow them, of course. We follow them closely. We try to anticipate them. We know that over a year of elections, in a country, we risk facing trouble. What guides us is two things. It is first of all the security of our employees and our operations. In the countries that you mentioned, the states of the Sahel, obviously, there is a strong insecurity and red zones that prevent us from operating in certain parts of the country. Including repairing your equipment when they are destroyed? Yes, that's it. About 15% of our sites in Burkina Faso are no longer accessible. We will not expose our employees to go and maintain them, repair them at the slightest security risk. So we obviously choose to operate only on a part of the territory where the conditions of security are associated. The other aspect that we obviously follow and that can impact us is that these troubles or these hours can be translated into an economic slowdown, a drop in purchasing power. And that will directly impact our consumers. In Mali, there is currently a shortage of electricity. This shortage of electricity weighs on the availability of our services and on the ability of our customers to buy and consume them. But in Mali, for example, given the difficulties of the population, perhaps the loss of purchasing power, do you see a drop in the consumption of your services or not at all? No, not from that point of view. It is really the energy difficulties that we face in Mali that impact us and for which we will perhaps talk about the environment a little while ago. We had to accelerate programs that were already engaged, but to have the autonomy of energy operation of our networks, and in particular with solar, because the availability of electricity in Mali is extremely low. You mentioned Nigeria a little earlier. Orange has not entered any major country in recent years. Yet it was an objective displayed, notably in Lundiai, which would have liked to enter a large country. You are not in Nigeria, so you are not in Ethiopia, you are not in Algeria, you are not in South Africa. Have you given up this ambition to enter these large markets? It is not an end in itself. First of all, we are very happy with our current footprint, the 17 African countries and Jordan, which you mentioned earlier, which is enough to ensure significant growth. At two figures, as you mentioned earlier. But we are looking, what interests us is in particular the large population basins, because our activity is very much linked to demography. As you said, we have 156 million clients. These are large-scale operations. We are interested in these publics in Ethiopia. At two figures, since there was first an opening of the Ethiopian government for the granting of licenses, an opening to competition, with new licenses that have been granted. And more recently, discussions, which were more advanced on this second part, on the partial privatization of Ethio Telecom. So we stay open, we stay interested. But we always look at this at the prism of value creation. Will it bring something to our operations? Will it create value for the group? And above all, will it allow us to deploy our model, which is a model, as I said earlier, of anchoring. We do our operations from the continent, with a seat in Morocco, with shared service centers, a dozen that are now distributed in three countries. We need to be able to deploy this model of mutualization between our countries, which is very important. And for that, we need to have a certain number of guarantees on the control of the operation that we are going to buy in particular. There are a lot of conditions to meet when you want to set up in a country. A license, a network. There must also be actors, partners on site. Do you think that Africa Telecom needs a consolidation today? We will say to be better organized to be able to develop it again. What is often said in our sector is that synergies are not so trans-frontal, but they are very strong within countries. What we have seen in Africa, as in Europe, is to have no longer one, two, three operators, but often four or five per country. What we see is that the fourth and fifth, they often have a hard time living. That this translates into price wars, by the multiplication of infrastructure investments, where we may be more interested in mutualizing. What interests us is to see if these aspects of consolidation can take place within countries. This is also why we like it in Europe. And it's the same thing in Africa. We have about the same number of operators in Africa and the Middle East. I think it's 140 operators when you have three or four in China and the United States. And you no longer look at a big operation? In the past, you have discussed with South Africa and with MTN, you have discussed with Barty Hertel for very broad mergers. Is this still relevant, this type of dialogue around value creation, always? There is no project, there is no discussion around M&A projects that I could reveal to you today. We meet these actors, especially to talk about both the sectoral difficulties that we meet in countries where we are operators both or all three, often to talk about taxation issues, issues of network deployment difficulties, energy issues. It is more on these issues that we are discussing with them today than on M&A issues, as we say, acquisition merger. When we talk about the telecom sector in Africa, the news is often related to the price war and the demands of consumers who often find that the prices of mobile services are too high. Can they still go down? Yes, first of all, they have dropped sharply. If we take the period 2019-2023, on average, for orange services, for the price of the mega or the price of the giga, they have dropped by 40%. So it's still an extremely strong trend to go down. They must continue to go down. There are the competitive effects, of course, but above all, it reflects a cost of production that must be understood because it is higher than what we can have in Europe, typically. Why? Because, first of all, we are still in the face of extremely intense deployment of our networks. We invested 1.2 billion, almost 1.3 billion this year in Africa to bring the latest technologies, 4G, now 5G, fiber. We make fiber everywhere in Africa, as we do in France and Europe, with the same standards of quality elsewhere. And then we have costs that are specific to Africa, for example, to bring data back to the world Internet. We need underwater cables, the latest generation cables that are coming, which will also lower prices. At the moment, I was in Mwanda last week to visit the landing station, as we call it, of the Two Africa cable that will serve the RDC. This cable will allow to multiply the flows by 10 and to lower the cost of transport of the mega to the world Internet by 3. So that could be reflected directly in the consumer price. Then, in the component of the return cost of mega-octet production, there are also taxes, and that is very specific to Africa, depending on the countries, it's between 6 and 12% of taxes, with a few exceptions that go up to 30%, which are sectoral taxes, which, in a way, are also found in the consumer final price. And we have to address that with public authorities in the countries. Indeed, we often talked about taxation. Your representatives, in any case, we often talk about it, to complain about the fact that it is too important in Africa. And yet the growth of the orange group, it is done, the growth of the margin of the orange group is done for many in Africa. And there is a little paradoxical side when we look at these figures. This is where you earn the most money, and this is where you complain about the conditions that are made for you. So, it's a little paradoxical. First of all, there is great pride to be a very large contributor and economic actor of the continent. And there is absolutely no subject to be the first tax contributor, which we are in many countries. We also consider that it is our responsibility. What is counterproductive, it's not the tax on companies, it's sectoral taxes that come to weigh on our results and that come to overshadow our investment capacity. And that's very, very important. Because, as I told you, we invest more than a billion, a billion two hundred million. We are trying to continue to increase this investment, about a hundred million euros a year. Why? Because we are at a phase where we still need to deploy networks strongly, which is obviously less the case in Europe. Mobile network, but also fixed network with fiber. And we need this investment capacity with a rate that is more of the order of, we invest a little more than 17% of our turnover. In some countries, more than 20%, more than 25% in Morocco, in RDC, because there is still a lot to do. So, if we can't get a sufficiently positive result, it comes to impact. What kind of taxes do you think are counterproductive? Taxes that are based on the turnover are generally not good taxes. We prefer taxes on companies whose reason for being is understood. When we have, I'll give you an example that is very speaking, which is a tax that we have in most countries, which is generally of the order of 3% of the turnover, and which serves the universal service. The universal service is supposed to help us deploy our networks in non-covered areas which, in essence, are, a priori, not profitable for operators. And so, it's supposed to come to feed the funds that will contribute to help operators invest. However, this contribution to the universal service in most countries, it is poured into the public treasury and it is not used for what it was created for. It's interesting, you talk about it there. Operators rarely talk about it. They rarely denounce this state of affairs which is known to everyone. The GSMA, which is the organization, the lobbying of operators worldwide, talked about it maybe more than ten years ago. But operators are quite discreet. And it's true that this tax for universal access, it is often very poorly used and there is a need for major reforms. Why don't you push more publicly for this reform? Is it because of your relations with governments? Is it a delicate thing to do, to speak publicly on this issue? No, I'm doing it this morning, but it's actually discussions that we must have country by country with the authorities because the situations are very different. I had the opportunity to discuss with the RDC authorities a short time ago. I said 34% of sectoral tax, it just kills our ability to invest in the country, which is one of those, you said it earlier, where the need for the deployment of our networks is the most important. On the contrary, countries like Botswana, Burkina Faso, help us deploy networks in rural areas by using these funds. So there is not one common situation in Africa. There is a global situation of overtaxing the sector because, as Alion Diae said, you have to get the money where it is, under the pressure of international organizations. And the states are turning to the tax payer or the most important tax payers, which are telecom operators. But this is a situation on which we have to work country by country. All the operators together, you mentioned the GSMA, we have a group called G6, which are the main operators, which represent the main operators in Africa. We meet regularly on the margins of the Mobile World Congress organized by the GSMA to carry this speech publicly and to each state in particular. So all this in a context of strong competition, with a very strong stake in new services. At the end of 2023, you launched the mega-app, Maxit, which brings together your telephony offers, financial services, savings, and e-commerce offers. MTN, one of your main competitors, also has its application called Ayoba. Why this new strategy? Is the idea to do like Google, like the other GAFAM, to have mutualized services? It reflects, it embodies our multi-service strategy on the digital. And this is very important because our role as an operator on the continent, it goes beyond providing connectivity services. You said it, there are mobile financial services, Orange Money, 36 million customers. There are services in other areas, content distribution services and digital services. We also do energy with Orange Energy in many countries. And finally, we realized that first of all, our customers are getting more and more smartphones. We will be at about 61% next year. And that they used different apps for each of these services, and that there was a need for simplification and to embody, under a super app, this multiservice universe that Orange offers them. So the big universes, you said it, it's first of all to be able to manage its telecom services, manage its line, its telephone credit, as we say in our countries, but also to find its Orange Money universe, its Orange Money account, its transactions. And then from that, we have a very interesting audience base to develop it on a marketplace, which is the third part, which is to offer third-party services of digital content distribution, gaming, television services, streaming services. And what GAFAM do, does it inspire you anyway? Do you look closely at what Samsung and others do? Yes, of course, and their services are already very used on the continent, but we consider that we have a place by both the services we already offer and the support of our base customers towards this adoption of the smartphone, which allows us to be at the forefront and to be legitimate in offering them this type of super app. It's very simple to emerge in this universe where people know you extremely well, but for digital services, perhaps you are first heading towards other digital services related to the consumption of content on the Internet, you are first heading towards GAFAM. But I think you had a goal of 45 million by 2025. Now you are at 12 million. We can see that there is still a lot of progress to be made, that it is complicated. How do you see the rest of it? Were these 45 million perhaps a bit exaggerated as a goal? We will see, because we are at 12 million out of 8 countries, of which the last one was opened this summer, it is Guinea. By the end of the year, we will have opened the 18 countries. You see 12 million out of 8, we are not far from the trajectory we have set ourselves. It is less of a quantitative goal in itself than to look at the quality of the services we offer. This super app is very well rated in stores, whether it is Android or Apple Store. We see that we have a useful service. And what we also see is that 20% of our customers already used the Orange Money app to make their transactions. So we simplify their life, and that is extremely important. We regroup in a unique promise of a unique application all the daily services they need. This is the promise of Maxfit. I have no doubt about its future success, both quantitative and the ability that we will have to embark with us. And add bricks each time. Of course. In the service of a constituent community. This is the challenge for the team that deals with it in Morocco, with developers who are in Mali, in Egypt, in several of our countries. It is both to deploy in all these countries at the same time, at the moment, in a sequenced way, by wave, but this is still the race. And then to enrich the value proposition. We have a lot of services in the roadmap that will enrich Maxfit. The challenges of digital deployment in Africa. Jérôme Hennick, Orange boss in Africa and the Middle East, is our guest on Radio France Internationale. A question from Julien Clemenceau. For several years, you have accompanied start-ups, sometimes by entering the capital. What is the objective? Is it to build an ecosystem around Orange? As I said earlier, our model is an economic performance service for the development of countries and digital inclusion. Digital inclusion is our core business. It is to bring connectivity everywhere, always further, with the same standards as in Europe, the best flows. But it is also to support the digital ecosystem of countries. We believe in it a lot. It is an initiative that we launched in 2012 in Tunisia at the time, called the Orange Digital Center. We have 16 today out of 18 of our countries. And we have 32 in the regions, because the idea is not to have them only in the capitals or in the big cities, but it is also to present these devices, often in partnership with universities, the ministries of national education in the regions. So what is it for? It serves to incubate and accelerate these start-ups with, first of all, coding training programs. We have more than 1,200,000 beneficiaries who have been trained for free in coding, but also in cloud technology, cybersecurity, in AI now, with partners. We mentioned GAFAM earlier. We have Amazon Web Services, which offers training in our Orange Digital Center. And we believe in it a lot. A large part of these young people are trained for free, again, and with a particular awareness of diversity. 51% are women, and a large part of them will set up their own projects. This will increase their employability. They will be targeted by large groups to join them. But it will also develop their entrepreneurial spirit. And we see a lot of start-ups in these Orange Digital Centers. We have accompanied about 300 since the beginning. So we incubate them, we offer them a Fab Lab so that they can prototype, develop their projects. We accelerate them, and sometimes we invest, but not always. We have invested in about twenty of them, which seem to us to be the most promising, through a dedicated fund called Orange Venture, which has an African share. Is it to remain a minority, or to take control of it, possibly, if one of them becomes really ultra-performing? No, it's to remain a minority, and it's, again, to facilitate their development. We also have a lot of commercial links with some of them. They are often in the tech field, which is very close to the telecoms field. So we also bring them commercial contracts with Orange in the different countries, or with our partners, by the way. At the beginning of 2024, Jérôme Nique, there was a very important incident on submarine cables off the Ivory Coast. We talked a lot about it. Three cables were cut. Do we know what happened? Are the submarine cables that cross the African coasts more vulnerable than those found elsewhere in the world? More vulnerable, I don't know, but it's true that it never happened. I remember very well, it was March 14th at 7.30 a.m. I arrived at the office, and I started getting alerts on my phone every minute, saying, we don't have internet, we don't have internet. It affected a lot of our countries, six of them, the Ivory Coast, but also countries that were connected by the Ivory Coast to these submarine cables, Burkina Faso, Mali, Liberia, Guinea. So, what happened? We don't know exactly, because it's an incident that occurred, which is extremely rare, because it cut several cables at the same time. But cutting on one cable, you can have it on two cables, it's rare. Three cables simultaneously, it never happened. It happened about 150 km from the Ivory Coast and 3,000 m deep, so no one went to see it until then, but we think it's the most probable, that it was a seismic submarine movement, so that it was simultaneous on the whole... It can't be an evil act at this depth. At this depth, and... A very mean fish, maybe. Yes, well, he really had a big tooth, because to cut three cables at this depth, it's still complicated. No, it's a geoseismic submarine movement, probably. But what was interesting was the management of this crisis, and the awareness, the awareness still reinforced, it gave us on the importance of the resilience of our networks, because, of course, countries that are without the Internet, it's extremely complicated. It allowed us to see the extreme importance of the terrestrial Pan-African network that we deployed, called Joliba, which has 12,000 km of fiber, which connects eight of our countries together. Because what we did was, in the end, all this traffic that came out of the Ivory Coast and that couldn't get out on these submarine cables, we routed it terrestrially, above the cut, towards Senegal, we routed it again, and after 24 hours, 70% of the traffic had been recovered. After 48 hours, it was 100% of our capacities that were restored, by going out by another route. Hence the importance of these terrestrial backbones, and the work we do around this backbone, which we call Joliba, in addition to the submarine capacities. And that, the fact of having grouped all your terrestrial cables within Joliba, made it easier to activate, to derive the capacity. Would it have been more difficult if each country had managed its own cable? It would have been much longer. If we had had to wait for the cables to be restored, I think they were repaired in mid-May, so it was still very, very long. Moreover, Orange Marine, the fleet of cable ships of the Orange group, contributed to these repairs. But obviously, it would have been extremely complicated because then we would have to discuss it operator by operator, to go out through limit-off countries, to try to see those who have the capacity, who are ready to rent us temporarily. This is what we also did, in addition to Joliba. But Joliba was an immediate response, and it shows the importance of this network, which we will increase again, both in terms of capacity, and which we will continue to extend too. It is very important to cover more countries. Extending it beyond West Africa, bringing it down to Central Africa? We are rather thinking of bringing it up to Morocco. And from Morocco, obviously, we have direct capacity to Europe, in particular through a submarine cable called Medusa, which was partly funded by the European Union. We are also discussing with other operators who have the same type of Pan-African backbone, but rather in East Africa, to see if a continuity from end to end would be appropriate, and if we could have commercial agreements with these actors. Why? Because they serve both for our own capacities, as we have seen, in terms of traffic security, it is very important, but they are also capacities that are sold, in the form of sales, basically, to other operators who need it. Network security is important. Another major issue, the digital sovereignty of the African continent. Are the data of Africans managed by Orange? Or are they really hosted on the continent? Or does it happen elsewhere? Yes, they are managed by Orange, country by country, and we are extremely concerned about that, even before the RGPD equivalents were adopted by all African countries. We decided to... RGPD is the European Regulation on the Management of Data. On the Protection of Individual Data. We have the same standards of protection in our African countries as in France and in Europe. And on housing, almost all of it, I say almost all of it, because our Mobile Money platform is still hosted in Europe, replicated in the countries, and it will be migrated to the countries in the next two years. But otherwise, all of our services are hosted locally. And for some of them who are mutualized, they are mutualized in Africa through what I told you earlier, shared service centers. We have three hubs for that. There is one in Morocco, there is one in Dakar, and there is one in Abidjan, which allows us to group service platforms that serve several countries. You have one of these hubs in Morocco and two in West Africa. When we look at your map, there is obviously one missing in Central Africa. When are you going to create this hub in Central Africa? Our countries in Central Africa are working a lot with each other, but on specific synergies. For example, between Cameroon and the RDC, between the Central African Republic and Cameroon. We had a fire a few years ago in RCA, and fortunately, Cameroon has supported the reconstruction of RCA data centers for a rapid recovery. So there are synergies on the cluster of Central African countries. We don't necessarily need to host shared service centers, as these countries are also very well connected to our countries in West Africa and can rely on Abidjan or Dakar service centers. The multiplication of data, the development of AI, make the tech sector an important CO2 emitter. You have installed solar panels on many orange sites, on your telecom stations as well. And you produce renewable electricity. What percentage of this renewable electricity do you use for your needs? Or in any case, what percentage of your needs is covered by renewable energy? This is an indicator that we follow very precisely. Over 12 months, we went from 27.4% of the renewable energy ratio, we call it the RER, to 35.1%, which was our 2025 goal. So we are ahead. So how are we ahead in terms of our goals? And we are very proud to contribute to the Net Zero Carbon 2040 ambition of the group, which is a commitment of the group to which we must contribute. With an equation that is more complicated for us than for other geographies, it is that we are still in the phase of significant deployment of networks, of extremely strong growth of traffic, and all this has a strong need for energy consumption. Yes, because your network is not always connected to the power grid. It is even rarely connected to the power grid. In 70% of cases, we are electrically autonomous. So what is important is that this electrical autonomy is solar and more and more solar. We have solarized 10,000 sites to date out of 40,000 sites. So we have 25% of our sites that are solar. Beyond that, we solarize our data centers. You said it, if you go to see the data center of the Abidjan Shared Service Center, it is entirely covered on its roof and on the roof of the solar panel parking lot. This allows us to reduce the energy footprint of the data centers. And then we activate what we call the green features, the green options in all our networks. What does it consist of? It consists of being more economical on the energy emissions of our networks, for example, by dimming certain frequencies when there is no traffic or when there are few customers. So you don't yet consider yourself as an electricity producer. The idea is not to sell electricity to national companies. So our first need is to be autonomous and energetically for our own needs. Every time we can do it, we try to deploy solar farms. We did it in Jordan. I was lucky enough to be the general director of Orange Jordani at that time. We deployed, developed a 35 megawatt solar plant that continues to expand and covers. At the time, it was planned to cover 110% of our own needs. Why? Because the legislation allowed to exceed a little and sell 10% more to national electricians. Today, it only covers 75% of the needs. Why? Because data traffic is increasing enormously and we need it. If we can replicate this model in as many countries as possible, we will. What is difficult is to obtain the regulations, the authorizations and the evolution of the regulations country by country to allow us to deploy these solar plants. This is due to the evolution of the regulatory framework, which is often slow and difficult in countries. Beyond that, we also provide energy solutions to our customers through what we call Orange Energy. And we do it in three ways. The distribution of solar kits with partners. We have about 400,000 homes that use it today. But above all, we are partners in mini-grid projects and also projects of national electricians to increase the availability of energy. As you know, a large part of sub-Saharan African countries do not have, populations in these countries do not have a reliable and continuous source of energy. We close the energy chapter. A financial question. Yes, next to Orange Money, which we talked about, are your mobile financial services. You launched Orange Bank Africa in Côte d'Ivoire in 2020 with the ambition to make it a large regional digital bank. To date, the activity remains concentrated in Côte d'Ivoire. When will you be able to open a new country? And then you have 1.6 million customers. And there too, you had much more important ambitions. About 10 million customers. Yes, so it's important. What is important is the service we want to provide. So we say 36 million customers. So PICO is very small. You said it in Côte d'Ivoire, but we have almost 10 million loans made since the beginning. So customers are re-borrowing. Obviously, if they have repaid their first loan, it works very well commercially. Why is it longer than expected? There is no disappointment at the commercial level. No, at the commercial level, there is no disappointment. We could also have even more customers, even more loans. What we are paying attention to is the cost of risk and the default rate. And that's what the central bank is asking us. Why did it take longer to get permission to deploy in a second country, which is Senegal, which is technically ready and which will be deployed very soon commercially? Because precisely the central bank, and I think it's legitimate, wanted to make sure that this model could work because it is still very innovative. We saw microfinance institutes get into it, but not on the scale of a bank and a detail bank like Orange Bank Africa. So this model has proven its efficiency and its way towards profitability in Ivory Coast. It will be launched in Senegal. When we can find partner banks that offer the same service, in fact, we did it because the detail banks, the commercial banks in our countries do not offer this type of service at the level we wanted to address our 36 million customers in Orange Money. If we find partner banks that are ready to do it, we can do it very well without having to launch our own bank. So that's what we're doing with AccessBank in Botswana. You don't have a vocation to become a banker in all your countries? No, we don't have a vocation to become a banker in all our countries. So that's an ambition that was abandoned because Orange in Europe also had ambitions in the banking sector and it's over. Yes, it's not the same model at all. For us, the model is really to provide credit services to our base of clients in Orange Money. And somewhere, we already have 36 million current accounts. It works very well in Orange Money. Thanks to this two-digit number, as you said earlier, it's profitable, there's no subject. The question is, how do we bring this service necessary for micro and micro-credit clients? One last question, Jérôme Hénique, before concluding this interview. We hear all the hopes you have for the African continent at home. We also hear the brakes that sometimes block your projects. Are you part of what we call today the Afro-optimists for the African continent? Or would you rather call yourself Afro-realists? Realist, which leads me to be optimistic, because, first of all, I've been working on the continent for a long time, about 15 years, alongside Aliondiay, whom you mentioned earlier, and whom I greet, who is my president of the board of directors and who is a mentor for many of us. And on these sides, with our teams, I saw the continent transform in an extremely positive way thanks to digital. It's the beauty of our job. Our heart of the job is connectivity, digital inclusion, and seeing that every day makes me extremely optimistic. Being in contact with the start-ups you mentioned earlier, with this enthusiasm, this energy, this enthusiasm... And wouldn't you say that there is sometimes an excess of optimism which is ultimately a bit of a B.A., which prevents real transitions? No, you have to be realistic about the brakes and the risks. You have to address them one by one. You have to change the local regulations. We were talking about taxation earlier. Obviously, we face risks of all kinds. You can't deny them, you have to address them. But if I look at the past, we've been on the continent for 25 years. It's 25 years of continuous growth. And today, as you said, it's the group's main engine of growth. It represents 18% of the group's turnover, but it represents the vast majority of its growth. And that's what makes me optimistic. You count on Africa. Thank you, Jérôme Minique. Thank you. Director General of Orange in Africa and the Middle East. Thank you for being in the studios of Radio France Internationale. This interview is to be found on our YouTube channel. You type these few words. RFI, the guests of the economy.