Motorola has commended its African network of resellers and channel partners on the sidelines of an event to showcase the latest radio technologies.

The company has hosted a similar partner event in Nigeria, and more are planned for Kenya and Cote D'ivoire later this year.

Laurent Tribout, Director of Sales Channels in Africa, says the company has proved to be resilient despite unique and unexpected challenges four decades after it first arrived, and twenty years after the introduction of a dedicated team to manage the channel in Africa.

"Last year we experienced some of the worst challenges a business can face across the continent and it is the beauty of Africa because people are used to these difficult situations. They know how to cope with different situations in a way that America and Europe may struggle to match. Ebola was a disaster for the economies in West Africa and investment began to decrease there was a steep slowdown, in East Africa ... Kenya and Tanzania also experienced challenges due to terrorism. Nigeria also had challenges due to the political changes there and South Africa also had to deal with the devaluation of the Rand. Africa has managed to cope with all these challenges and the people carry on."

Tribout says much of the region has since stabilised and Motorola Solutions is launching products that include the MOTOTRBO radios and interoperability communication solution, as well as the WAVE 3000 with the aim of taking advantage of improvements this year.

"Africa remains the continent where there are a lot of opportunities and for us it is not only about what we are doing now but more about the future. We plan to open more offices across Africa in order to have more people who can support our partners. We've got people in Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon, Angola and South Africa, but we are trying to cover even more of the different regions.

30% of Motorola's profits in 2015 came from South Africa, the company's biggest market on the continent according to Tribout.

He says channel partners from Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa are providing valuable feedback. "They are telling us that we have a good product range. We are here to support them and that is what they like. Many companies are looking at their own profitability and because we don't have a volatile channel, some of them have been with us for many years which shows that we offer them the right support. They tell us that the company needs to differentiate itself even more by increasing its local presence. We are being very open and transparent."

Peter Pienaar, Senior Regional Sales Manager for South Africa, says Motorola's newly launched radio communications products will be most useful for mining houses, law enforcement and parastatals - as well as emergency services, especially when the GSM network is down.

"The radios that we had before today's launch were the normal one, two, three and four thousand series and they have all now been refreshed to the new E version and this has IP and better sensitivity. WAVE is an all new system that comes with interoperability. The SLR 5000 that we are bring out is a refresh of the existing repeaters. We've also added a new trunking system called capacity Max."