By Feyi Emma

A Cameroon-born international engineering specialist shows that without hardware engineered for consistent production, validation, and long-term operation, digital progress is impossible

Across Africa’s fast-growing digital economy, it is easy to mistake ‘technology’ for software alone. But the most consequential systems are rarely pure code. They are physical tech: devices and infrastructure where software and connectivity only create value if the hardware is safe, durable, manufacturable, and serviceable. State of African Digital Infrastructure makes this stark: a decade of investment has built 4G/5G networks, nearly 1.4 million kilometres of fibre, and roughly 200 commercial data centres, yet keeping pace with data traffic and AI workloads now demands US$7–8 billion a year in new capex for towers, fibre, and hosting capacity.

Connectivity scales fast; dependable physical systems scale slowly unless someone engineers the bridge. Victor Eyanga fills the execution role many digital programs lack: he makes hardware and software behave like one system. Over time, this meant developing a practical execution approach for making digital systems repeatable, manufacturable, testable, and serviceable in the physical world. Early in his career, he contributed to two patented actuator mechanisms for aircraft wheels and brakes within the Safran Landing Systems context. It became a solution that can survive strict safety constraints, tight tolerances, and long service-life expectations. He later applied that discipline at JCDecaux, delivering large-scale digital installations in airport and city environments where the user experience depends on coordinated mechanical, electrical, and embedded digital integration under real-world installation and compliance constraints. His track record also includes operational outcomes that matter at the industry level: managing performance and cost execution across 10+ suppliers with KPI follow-up, and building practical visibility tools such as a KPI dashboard. 

The article argues that, based on Victor Eyanga’s experience, the real challenge in digital infrastructure is not innovation itself but the engineering discipline required to turn digital concepts into physical systems that work reliably at scale.

Where “hardware meets digital” typically fails

In physical tech, problems might come even from promising ideas if there is a gap between a design that works once and a system that works every day in volume production, under real installation constraints, and with real maintenance cycles. Therefore, execution is not a soft skill here; it is a technical discipline: how a product is assembled, how variability is controlled, how risks are identified before launch, how equipment is validated, and how a deployment is accepted before it goes live.

As Victor puts it, reflecting on lessons learned during large-scale public deployments,  “A prototype can prove the concept. Then you have to build the same system every day with the same quality across shifts, suppliers, and real-world conditions. That is why I focus on repeatability. I simplify the assembly, lock down the process, validate the equipment, and remove the sources of variation before customers ever see them.”

Public digital infrastructure is only “digital” if the physical system holds up

In the real economy, technology is rarely judged by the sophistication of its software. It is estimated by whether the system still works when conditions are imperfect: weather changes, power quality fluctuates, maintenance is delayed, or parts come from different suppliers. This is the reality where digital progress meets hardware. As soon as technology leaves the controlled environment of a lab or pilot site, performance becomes an engineering and industrial problem, not a marketing story.

That reality becomes especially visible in public digital infrastructure, where reliability failures are instantly obvious. 

“Airport and city deployments come with constraints people do not see,” the expert explains. “You have strict security and certification standards, demanding durability requirements, and a lot of stakeholders across countries. So an engineer is to make sure the mechanical, electrical, and embedded digital pieces behave like one system and meet the required norms before anything goes live,” he adds.

At JCDecaux, a global company specializing in outdoor advertising present in more than 80 countries with a daily audience of 850 million people, Victor served as a Large-Format LED Mechanical Project Engineer in a leading technical role. He was responsible for the full technical development and industrialization of major public and digital infrastructure programs, with decision making authority over feasibility, compliance, and industrial strategy. In practice, that meant defining the technical roadmap and aligning the engineering streams that determine whether a digital system holds up in the field, including industrial design, mechanical and structural engineering, electrical and thermal constraints, embedded digital technology, prototyping, manufacturing, and quality. It also meant managing the “pressure points” that decide whether projects ship on time and work after installation, including supplier negotiations and investment planning. 

And when the files reference FAT and SAT, those are acceptance tests used to prove readiness: Factory Acceptance Testing verifies the system at the supplier’s facility before shipment, while Site Acceptance Testing verifies it again after installation in the real environment. 

The projects realized under Victor’s supervision span environments where public infrastructure is exposed to constant pressure at very different scales. They include large digital screens at Paris Charles de Gaulle, one of the EU’s busiest airports, with 70.3 million passengers in 2024, and digital structures at Abu Dhabi’s International Airport network. They also include outdoor digital totems deployed in the dense city of San Francisco, as well as digital display systems for the Metro in Helsinki, the capital of Finland. In each case, the point is the same: when digital systems are embedded into physical environments at this level of volume and visibility, reliability stops being a technical nice-to-have and becomes the product.

Digital out of home and smart infrastructure earns trust through uptime and repeatability in public spaces. When systems fail, everyone sees it, including commuters, airport operators, advertisers, and the public. Victor’s impact is framed in industry terms that reflect this reality: reducing technical risks and manufacturing costs, supporting on time delivery, and strengthening the company’s ability to win international clients with deployable digital products. Thanks to Victor’s approach, the end users get screens and installations that keep working reliably in high footfall environments.

By the time Victor moved into healthcare manufacturing, his execution model had already been tested at scale in public digital infrastructures.

Turning healthcare products into stable, scalable production

In healthcare, adding connectivity does not automatically make a product useful. What matters to hospitals is whether the device can be produced with consistent quality, delivered on time, and supported without recurring defects or unpredictable performance. If manufacturing varies from unit to unit, reliability and safety risk increase, and adoption becomes harder regardless of how strong the concept is. This is why, in medical devices, a major part of the work happens after the design is approved.

“The moment you add connectivity, you raise the bar. Variability that might be tolerable in a purely mechanical product becomes a real risk when software, sensors, and data are involved,”  Victor Eyanga shares.

This is the core of his role as an Advanced Manufacturing Engineer at Umano Medical, where he applies a field-tested approach to industrialization developed earlier in public digital infrastructure projects. Victor focuses on that execution layer: using the same repeatability-first logic, he helps move new designs from prototype into stable production by working with engineering, quality, supply chain, and manufacturing teams; reviewing designs to make them easier and more consistent to assemble; testing and approving the tools and equipment used in production; and defining the exact assembly steps and process flow so teams can follow the same method every time. He also applies structured risk checks before launch to prevent recurring production problems, tracks performance using simple operational dashboards, and drives practical improvements such as reducing assembly time, simplifying build steps, and lowering avoidable costs through process discipline and basic statistical monitoring.

“I don’t only make sure a new device can be built correctly, but also ensure that the company can build it at the right cost and with a predictable plan,” he explains. “That is why I prepare cost packages for new launches, estimate the investment needed for production, and check the return on those investments before we scale.”

At the business level, the maturity of this approach has produced measurable business results. Victor led the production setup and ramp-up for a connected product line that has generated about ₦875.7 million in revenue since commercialization, and he delivered about ₦320.6 million in annual savings through manufacturing process optimization in a separate business unit. Beyond the financials, the practical outcomes are the ones hospitals feel: more consistent build quality from unit to unit, fewer production issues that delay deliveries, and a clearer production process that makes performance more predictable over time. 

As Victor comments, “People often separate engineering from patient safety, but manufacturing consistency is part of safety. If two units don’t behave the same way, you introduce uncertainty where there shouldn’t be any.”

His execution work at Umano Medical has also been independently recognized turning a complex redesign into a production-ready device built for serial deployment under international quality requirements. He received the international American Business Expo Xmas Award 2025, winning Engineer of the Year in the Medical Devices & Equipment category for the industrialization of the redesign of the Ooksnow medical bed. The Jury Board, consisting of independent experts, entrepreneurs, investors, and professionals from multiple sectors, assessed his project against criteria such as innovation, measurable impact, and industry significance, and recognized the work for turning a complex redesign into a production-ready medical device built for serial deployment under international quality requirements. 

As infrastructure programs scale up, small execution errors turn into large systemic costs. Investment alone does not produce reliable outcomes. 

“For me, it comes down to whether you can build it, test it, run it, and maintain it the same way every time. If you can’t, then the design isn’t finished yet. That’s why manufacturability and serviceability have to be considered from the very beginning. You simplify the build, make the steps obvious, and validate the tools so every unit behaves the same,” Victor concludes.

The same logic applies to launch readiness. Systems should not go live on assumptions. They must pass structured risk checks and formal acceptance steps before shipment and after installation. Performance also depends on coordination. Design, mechanical and electrical work, embedded technology, quality, production, suppliers, and stakeholders must operate as one system. When they do not, reliability breaks down. Finally, technical decisions must connect to economics. Cost models, industrialization investments, and supplier performance determine whether infrastructure can scale reliably and remain sustainable over time.

The best execution engineers are usually identified by what they can repeatedly deliver: designs that survive scale, validation gates that prevent field failures, and manufacturing systems that hold quality constant across suppliers and shifts. Victor Eyanga’s record shows those markers across safety-critical aerospace work, high-visibility public deployments, and regulated healthcare manufacturing, with results that can be measured rather than described.

Feyi Emma, an analyst, wrote in from Lagos