Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 33 | Page 9

NEWS African Development Bank welcomes investment from the Clean Technology Fund T he Clean Technology Fund (CTF), one of two multi-donor trust funds within the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) has approved US$20 million for the Facility for Energy Inclusion (FEI), a facility sponsored by the African Development Bank to provide sustainable financing for small-scale renewables in Africa. FEI is a US$500 million financing platform whose objective is to catalyse financial support for innovative energy access solutions. FEI On-grid, a targeted US$400 million fund, supports improved energy access through the development of small-scale renewable energy generation and mini-grids across Africa, while the Off-Grid Energy Access Fund (OGEF), a targeted US$100 million fund, supports off-grid energy distribution companies and boosts their long-term capacity to access capital markets at scale. The CTF investment, composed of a US$4 million junior equity tranche and a US$16 million senior concessional loan, will be drawn from the Dedicated Private Sector Program III, designed to provide risk-appropriate capital to finance high-impact, large-scale private sector projects in clean technologies. “Access to affordable and reliable energy has huge benefits at various levels of any society,” said Anthony Nyong, Director of Climate Change and Green Growth at the African Development Bank. “Most of the 600 million people estimated to lack access to modern energy services in Sub-Saharan Africa are also among the most vulnerable to the disastrous consequences of climate change.” ///////////////// Saicom Voice Services adds Data Management solution to stack S aicom Voice Services has added a data management solution to its evolving product stack, driven it says, by customer demand for world class services that are customisable to local business requirements and realities. “The plan should be a blueprint for the organisation and should not be seen as just an insurance policy in the event of data loss or corruption, but as an opportunity to test, run reports and do integrity checks in isolated environments. “Our clients have come to rely on us for customisable solutions that deliver best-of-breed capabilities, and our data management solution is no different,” said Josh Grunewald, Cloud Hosting Manager at Saicom Voice Services. “We want to ensure our clients get the most out of the services and solutions they partner with us for, and we believe that differentiates us from many of the larger providers.” “We bring a customer-first, consultative engagement approach to our data management offering that goes beyond just back-up.” The company believes that, while backup is a critical business requirement, it is only as good as the last restore, and that the key to successful data management is understanding what you can do with your business data. “We wanted to make sure that our clients are clear on how their data can be used to make their businesses better through testing in non-production environments; mitigate risks by eliminating ransomware in backed up data and using that to restore production environments,” added Grunewald. www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 9