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...

According to McKinsey shareholder returns on telecom assets are down 60% over the last 4 years in the Middle East Africa (MEA) region. ( http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/telecommunications/our-insights : Telecommunications industry at Cliffs edge).     The main culprit is stagnating growth.   MEA includes mature markets like those in the Middle East where (mobile) penetration levels are close to 150% as well as high growth markets like Ethiopia where penetration is below 50%.    It is thus not useful to undertake analyses on an aggregate basis.   The mature markets are where data revenues are starting to show signs of rapid growth –but the markets are saturated.    In many African markets – particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa [1] – the decline in ARPU (average revenue per user) is no longer offset by subscriber growth and there is soon to be a decline in revenues and profitability. In order to profit from the explosion...

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...

After two days of data centre conferencing in Monaco what emerges is consensus about a few things.    The imminent impact of the Internet of Things, outsourcing, virtualization, Colocation and the ongoing migration to the Cloud,   but also the awareness that there exists a massive shortage of data centre capacity in Africa and the urgent need to address it.    There is more data centre capacity within the M25 of London than on the whole continent of Africa. However, where there is some disagreement is exactly how to go about it.   Where to build?   Who to build?   How to build?   Who to finance?     Doing business in Africa is not easy.   But we are inspired by JFK–– “ We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard ".       Africa is hardly the moon but to some people it might as well be! Power, that ever present bogeyman, seemingly presents one of our b...

Dambiso Moyo argues that “ limitless development assistance to African governments, has fostered dependency, encouraged corruption and ultimately perpetuated poor governance and poverty” [1] .     It is self evident that sustainable development has not taken off despite the billions in foreign aid to African Governments over the last 60 odd years since the end of the colonial era.     Having eliminated aid as being a non-starter for African development the challenge now is to find the magic formula.     What key attributes, artefacts, behaviours or mechanisms will have the highest impact?      It is a highly complex web of factors and interdependencies that will lead to a sustainable future.    Issues like improved governance, the rule of law, better education,   better health care,   greater FDI,   trade,   even climate change will all be key factors that will impact the future ...

As far as data centres are concerned Africa is a blank slate. London alone has more than 2 times the number of DC’s than the whole of Africa. The majority of DC’s in Africa are enterprise/Telco/Banking/Govt in-house.    Very few are carrier neutral.   There are also no Cloud DC’s to speak of. With the advent of massive capacity brought about by the deployment of multiple submarine cables Africa can now connect seamlessly to the rest of the World at seemingly unlimited bandwidths.   This increase in capacity of connectivity brings with it the benefit of lower costs which underpins a virtuous cycle of increased usage, higher demand, lower prices and so on. As the international investment community starts to wake up to the opportunities brought about by fast growing (albeit off a low base) economies, rapid urbanisation, a young growing population, there will be a steady increase in FDI in infrastructure,  agriculture as well as investment into services and...

I have been waiting for Jeremy Rifkin to get with the African program.   It was only a matter of time.   For those of you who don't know, he is the guy who wrote ‘ The Third Industrial Revolution’ ( http://thethirdindustrialrevolution.com/ ) which is the story of the convergence of the communication and energy revolutions.   In it he talks of the rapidly emerging trend of local power generation and the sharing of that power laterally across the grid analogously to WiFi sharing between adjacent WiFi networks.    This is very powerful because it obviates the need for large capital projects for power generation – which have the downsides of : long lead times, centralised monolithic infrastructure, large expensive and wasteful distribution networks - all well illustrated by the current Eskom debacle. It is not widely known that only about 15% of Africans have access to power.   Millions of African children are forced to read by the lig...

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...