Alibaba, Whale Cloud Partners Gov’t On Innovative City Dev.

Government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Whale Cloud (rebranded from ZTEsoft), a Chinese Company, on innovative city development at the headquarters of the Alibaba Group.

The agreement, signed by the Minister for Communications, Mrs. Ursula Owusu Ekuful, and Mr. Ben Zhou, CEO of Whale Cloud, would reinforce mutual cooperation and fuel innovation and smart city development in Ghana, applying the cutting-edge technologies and solutions developed by Whale Cloud and Alibaba Cloud.

The country’s capital and largest city, Accra, is undergoing rapid urbanization, causing challenges for city administrators and inconvenience for citizens.

Under the MoU, Whale Cloud would form a strategic partnership with Ministry of Communications of the Republic of Ghana and deliver its innovative city solutions to resolve these challenges.

The Innovative City solutions would help launch rich industrial applications quickly on the platform of a unified operation center, including e-Government, ET City Brain, Mobile Payment and a Unified Media Center.

This would be done with the use of cloud architecture, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data and Artificial Intelligence technology jointly developed by Whale Cloud and Alibaba Cloud.

It would help government solve urban governance issues with the support of machine learning and AI algorithms, improve efficiency of governance and lower the costs of government operations, in order to transform Accra into an innovative and digitalized city.

Whale Cloud and Alibaba Cloud will also provide strategic and professional advice to transform the e-commerce landscape and help e-commerce business development in Ghana to flourish.

By: Emmanuel Yeboah Britwum