FEATURE conversations are developing elsewhere as governments place greater emphasis on protecting sensitive information.
The result is growing interest in sovereign, private and hybrid cloud models. These requirements are also supporting investment in local and regional infrastructure, providing greater choice for organisations operating in regulated industries.
Building around Africa’ s infrastructure realities
Despite the momentum, fundamental infrastructure challenges remain. Connectivity and power reliability continue to constrain cloud expansion in parts of the continent, particularly beyond major economic centres.
Yet Saidu said providers are increasingly designing around these realities rather than waiting for ideal conditions.
Investment in local data centres, fibre networks, internet exchange points and edge computing is helping bring services closer to users and reduce dependence on infrastructure hosted outside Africa.
Power remains another crucial consideration. Data centre operators are increasingly combining grid electricity with renewable energy, batteries and backup systems to improve resilience.
The convergence of cloud and AI will make those infrastructure foundations even more important. Cisco’ s research identifies infrastructure as one of the key elements of AI readiness, meaning the ability to provide strong, secure and reliable networks will increasingly influence how quickly African organisations can capitalise on AI.
Enterprises, meanwhile, are embracing hybrid architectures that recognise that not every workload needs to reside in a large public cloud region. Applications and data can remain local or operate at the edge, while public cloud capacity is consumed when
additional flexibility and scale are required.
The convergence of cloud and AI will make those infrastructure foundations even more important. Cisco’ s research identifies infrastructure as one of the key elements of AI readiness, meaning the ability to provide strong, secure and reliable networks will increasingly influence how quickly African organisations can capitalise on AI.
Rather than following a single path towards cloud maturity, Africa is consequently developing a model shaped by its own economic, regulatory and infrastructure conditions. South Africa may remain the most established market, but the emergence of Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Morocco and other markets suggests that the continent’ s cloud opportunity is becoming increasingly distributed.
The next stage will be less about simply getting workloads into the cloud and more about what enterprises can build on top of it. As AI, sovereignty and industry-specific applications move to the centre of technology strategies, Africa’ s cloud market is entering a new phase, one in which infrastructure maturity and business transformation will increasingly develop hand in hand. • www. intelligentcio. com
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