p42-44 octavian lottery 16/1/09 11:12 Page 34
RWANDAN LOTTERY
Lotto goes wireless
in Rwanda
Octavian’s lottery systems and start-up expertise has helped turn the
dream of the Rwanda national lottery into reality in less than 18
months, despite a lack of conventional telecoms infrastructure.
I
t’s hard to imagine a national lottery in Europe
operating without the seemingly essential
requirements of a nationwide cabled telecoms
infrastructure and near 100% penetration of TV
into homes. After all, retail ticket sale terminals
need to connect to central servers in an instant via
the phone network; ticket holders watch the live draw
as part of weekly or twice-weekly TV shows; and those
who miss the live draw typically check later online or
on teletext to see if their numbers have come up.
A challenging landscape
In Rwanda, however, the technical and social
landscape is somewhat different. Despite continuing
investment in telecoms, Rwanda is still a long way
from having a cabled infrastructure across the entire
country. Then there’s the matter of television Detailed discussions then began in earnest on exactly
coverage: currently, only around 2% of households in how Lotto Rwanda would operate, both technically
Rwanda have a TV. and culturally.
“Given the challenges we faced, it has been an Octavian put a team of systems and lottery start-up
incredible team effort to get from award of contract experts to work on the project and quickly came up
to launch in just under 18 months,” says Philip with an outline systems solution that would provide
Brizoua, Director General of Lotto Rwanda. the technical backbone. After further extensive
So how did Lotto Rwanda make the transition from discussions, it was agreed that Octavian would
dream to reality in such a short space of time? Mark provide not only the actual systems for Tilia to
Hutchinson, head of Octavian’s specialist lottery operate Lotto Rwanda but also a complete start-up
division OctaLotto, takes up the story. “Any successful and ongoing marketing solution.
lottery launch requires an extremely close working
relationship between the various organisations The need for partnership
involved”, says Hutchinson. “In terms of the core Tilia Games has extensive general gaming
operations, the main organisations involved were Tilia experience in Africa, but needed to partner with a
Games, who were to operate the national lottery for lottery specialist. “Three things in particular
Lotto Rwanda; Rwandatel, the leading convinced us that Octavian was the right partner to
telecommunications provider in Rwanda; and work alongside for this complex launch,” says Alan
Octavian.” Hollway, Tilia’s Chief Operating Officer. “Firstly, their
OctaLotto team has unrivalled experience in the
The starting point lottery world – not just involvement in the UK and
In July 2007 Tilia Games was awarded the exclusive US, but in smaller, developing countries too.
licence to operate a national lottery and place Secondly, they had a proven end-to-end lottery and
gaming machines in Rwanda. Aware of Octavian’s gaming management system that was immensely
successful implementation of systems and its scalable and could easily be customised to suit the
acquired, wholly owned subsidiary GSI’s track record specific technical requirements in Rwanda, including
in successful lottery start-ups and operations around the need to operate much of the retail ticket sales
the world, in June 2008 Tilia brought in Octavian. operation using wireless technology. And thirdly,
42 FEBRUARY 2009
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