Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 92 | Page 7

EDITOR ’ S NOTE

Greetings to the readers of Intelligent CIO

Africa . Africa has always been brimming with potential , and nowhere more so than Kenya , one of the fastest-growing economies in the region . Kenya ’ s plans for its future are based on a foundation of technology and innovation , particularly establishing a robust digital infrastructure .
Under the Kenya Master Digitalisation Plan , the government aims to lay out over 100,000 kilometres of fibre optic cable , install twenty-five thousand hotspots in key business centres , move government operations to the cloud , and accelerate the development of the Konza Technopolis , a smart city project . One of the key catalysts driving this growth is the adoption of cloud services . with a strong DevOps approach for managing its infrastructure . Almost all the key applications that allow Mukuru customers to access services , or through which Mukuru staff can support customers , have been built in-house by Mukuru ’ s software engineering team .
As Chief Information Officer , Sandy Rheeder , looks after all things IT at Mukuru . She oversees product development and the focus here is to manage teams that build the technology that underpins the financial services that Mukuru sells to its customers . Sandy heads security and risk management across both the technology products and typical IT operations landscapes .
Turn these pages to read more about the digital transformation that is taking place across Africa .
However , we are still seeing many sectors with higher data sensitivity like finance and healthcare express concerns over data privacy and security , slowing the broad adoption of cloud infrastructure . Atef Djmoui at Extreme Networks discusses these issues in this month ’ s Talking Business .
Wishing you the best of business success in the month ahead .
And in this month ’ s cover feature we look at how fintech player Mukuru is managing its cross-border product deployment across 13 African countries . Mukuru is a next generation financial services platform in Southern Africa that offers financial services to a customer base of 16 million + across Africa , Asia and Europe .
Mukuru is a digital platform that uses the cloud , specifically Amazon Web Services , for its technology ,
Arun Shankar Managing Editor arun @ lynchpinmedia . com
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