Ethiopia's Digital Transformation with Myriam Said

My guest on Habesha in Tech was Myriam Said, who is currently Digital Advisor at the Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia coordinating efforts in transitioning Ethiopia to a Digital Economy. Previously she was the Director of the National Digital Transformation Program at the Ministry of Innovation and Technology where she led the development of “Digital Ethiopia 2025”; an Inclusive National Digital Transformation Strategy. Myriam was born in Addis Ababa, went to Lycée Guebre-Mariam and attended her secondary education in France (1st Degree in Mathematics, 2nd Degree in Physics, Master in Physics applied to the Environment). She moved back to Ethiopia to focus on practical works. Her first unpaid job was at UNHCR as Environmental Impact researcher. But at the time, ICT was vibrant in Ethiopia more specifically the system integration area. For that reason she took a CISCO certification and start working for a System Integration company as a junior engineer. Myriam spent over 15 years in the private sector. She started in a leading ICT System Integration Company implementing National IT Infrastructure projects and was then the co-founder of a Digital Financial Service Provider that built several digital platforms to enable payments and bring efficiency on how people transact. We discussed about Ethiopia's Digital Transformation & on issues that are currently changing the digital space. We talked about unleashing value from agriculture, The next version of global value chains in manufacturing, building the IT enabled services, and, digital as the driver of tourism competitiveness. We also talked about the "broader ecosystem: People, Connectivity, Payments, Digital ID, Cyber security, E-Governance and more. I would like to thank Myriam for her willingness to come to our session to share us the latest information on Ethiopia's Digital Transformation Journey. Please have a listen and tell us know if you have any question and what you feel about our conversation.