climate and comms

Government authorities have a key role to play in facilitating the emergence of a digital economy.    Their mission does not only entail adopting and enforcing appropriate and effective regulations but also ensuring that existing infrastructure is leveraged for optimal utilization.   The participants in this strategic workshop will work on ways to make governments and regulators true catalysts for digitalization, with the support of all sector players. This  is the subject matter of a discussion to be held at the Africa CEO Forum in Abidjan next week.  These are my initial thoughts.  All comments welcome. In Africa we have seen the emergence of a mobile telephony market which went from zero to over a billion phones in just over two decades.   The mobile industry requires tight regulation because of the use of a scarce resource – spectrum.    The role of Government has thus, of necessity,   been important in ...

--> All companies – large and small – have IT requirements.   Especially today in the age of big data where everything is connected and all functions are automated and digitised and need to be online.   Those enterprises that are large enough – such as banks, MNC’s, Telco’s, mining houses have been able to afford to build their own data centres to house their IT infrastructure.    Others like SME’s which could not afford to (build their own DC’s) opted for a ‘server room’ or outsourced some of their requirements to a Cloud provider. There are numerous challenges for all companies in respect of how they approach ensuring the reliable provision of IT capacity to run their businesses.    Some companies are not big enough to justify their own DC (scale) and there is a shortage of IT expertise (skill).    Often times those that have the scale to build their own DC’s   then run foul of not having the requisite skills to run the...

Building data centres in Africa is increasingly starting to grab the industry’s attention.   What are the key issues that are influencing the growth of data centre’s in Africa? The data centre industry continues to thrive globally and the big players are still seeing strong growth in mature markets and hence they have little incentive to start looking at smaller data centre’s in what is still perceived to be a high-risk market.   The players who are getting into Africa are going to be ‘specialists’ who see the niche and want to get a foothold early.   Not that there is going to be a shortage of opportunity as the installed base in Africa is still miniscule. The quality and nature of that installed base is variable with very few Tier 3 let alone Tier 4 data centre’s and many are in-house telco data centre’s.     Carrier neutral colocation data centre’s are few and far between.   There-in lies the opportunity.   There is more than suf...

The African data centre market consists primarily of in-house data centres built by banks, Telco’s and Governments for their own use.   This has been a function of the lack of availability of carrier neutral data centres.   However this is changing with the advent of companies like Teraco which are building World Class Tier 3 + data centres which use the latest technologies for managing power and cooling.   The power and cooling requirements of new technology servers and high density suites is leading to many legacy data centre facilities being unable to deliver the energy efficiency benefits of a new purpose-built facilities.    The operating costs of older data centres are thus becoming increasingly prohibitive with the life time cost of power exceeding the cost of building a new data centre. The increased requirement for digital and physical security has lead corporations to seek better and ultimately cheaper solutions by going outs...

Why build Data Centres in Africa when the rest of the World is better geared for them with power and connectivity and they continue to be built at a rapid pace in these advanced markets?     On the face of it – it makes more sense to continue hosting data and services in North Carolina or in Finland if you are an Africa corporate with data hosting and storage requirements. However things are changing in Africa.   “ Ex Africa semper aliquid novi ”   to quote Pliny the Elder – There’s always something new coming out of Africa.    What now?    Well there have been a few drivers.   Firstly there is now connectivity between Africa and the rest of the World.     Numerous submarine cables provide an instantaneous connection between the various landing points and the World Wide Web (in other words the Internet.)   Secondly there is a large effort to install fiber optic capacity within and between numerous African countr...

New life has started to bloom across this drought-ridden continent.     These green shoots are the fruit of the last decade and a half of increasingly feverish activity.     Democracy and mining spring to mind, but what about retail?   What about banking?   And of course mobile – the great enabler ! Chinese colonization proceeds with alacrity while their Global counterparts dawdle.    But is Sino capital and labour what Africa really needs?   Yes – but only if there is no alternative.    The rest of the World, suffering from post 2008 crisis lethargy, is slowly starting to realize that Africa should form part of their longer term plans.   The UK chugs along barely in positive territory while Osborn pats himself on the back for having squeezed the life out of the UK which he now kicks down the road and calls it growth !    The Tea Party almost dragged the USA (and the World) to the brink of an economic moras...