East Africa – KigaliTech

[Column] Caroline Mukiira: Hybrid Cloud: The catalyst for increased financial inclusion in Africa

Africa has made huge strides over the past decades towards the financial inclusion. The digitization and simplification of money management has especially proved to be a sturdy vehicle in making headway in this regard.

Yet, more work needs to be done as only 34 percent of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa have a bank account and 350 million people are still unbanked. In Kenya, financial inclusion as of August 2020 stands at 82.9%, an improvement from 26.7% in a decade, while the commercial banking industry is the fourth largest in Sub-Saharan Africa but there’s still room for growth.

Technology has been at the heart of financial inclusion in Africa and today we’re seeing how technology trends are evolving much faster than imagined. The pandemic has accelerated the pace, and we have seen digital transformation initiatives within the sector compressed from years to months.

Building the right platform

With the evolution of technology, banks are pivoting their platforms towards open ecosystems and the secure sharing of data with third-party applications from fintechs and online financial service vendors to increase access to banking services to the masses. The 2021 IBM CEO Study – that drew on input from 3,000 CEOs across 26 industries and nearly 50 countries – has found that such ‘platformification’ of banks is here to stay.

Home to over 150 fintech companies, Kenya has one of the biggest and most developed fintech ecosystems in the African continent, owning to the proliferation of mobile phones and the rise of mobile money alongside technologies such as hybrid cloud and AI to name a few.

Innovation through a secure cloud

In highly regulated industries like the financial services sector, increasing financial inclusion for the unbanked is a juggling act between security and compliance together with innovation, and hybrid cloud is the answer to the conundrum.

Hybrid cloud can help banks and fintechs cope with the hurdles of compliance, security, and innovation while meeting customer expectations and venturing into new services. As banks become platform providers, hybrid cloud adoption lowers the total cost of technology ownership and improves operational efficiency – promoting innovation, aiding in the development of new business models and supporting more fulfilling customer engagements.

While the cloud offers clear advantages to banks and most are actively using cloud services, few have actually moved mission-critical regulated workloads to the cloud to date. In many cases, this has been due to concerns about whether cloud environments complied with stringent security and regulatory requirements.

Meeting industry requirements

If banks are going to guard against fraud and criminal activity while delivering on their promises to digitally sophisticated customers, they have to build their platforms on technology solutions designed to meet regulations of the financial service industry.

In response to this, IBM launched Cloud for Financial Services – a financial sector specific cloud offering – which features built-in security, regulatory and compliance controls that help minimize risks for banks integrating with third party independent service vendors (ISVs), fintechs and software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers.

IBM has also been investing in confidential computing research and technologies for over a decade, and the solutions provide greater assurance that data is protected and visible only to its owner and no one else. This means banks can now be as compliant on the cloud as they are within their own data centers, and they can demonstrate compliance on a continuous basis.

As we continue in the journey to financially include more of our people across the African continent, the future of banking across Africa is dynamic and exciting.

With the right technology partner such as IBM and being cloud-ready, financial services institutions can build a strong ecosystem of partners – be it fintechs, startups – to offer an array of services at a quick pace and lower cost to entice the unbanked to the digital economy.

Caroline Mukiira is the General Manager, IBM East Africa

iSAT Africa and SES Networks to provide reliable 4G services in East Africa via O3b mPOWER

Communities living across the eastern most peninsula of Africa will be able to enjoy 4G services on their mobile phones following a three-year partnership agreement signed by fixed satellite solution and professional service provider, iSAT Africa and SES, the leader in global content connectivity solutions. The two companies announced today that this new service will be available first via SES’s O3b medium earth orbit (MEO) constellation to subsequently migrate and expanded to SES’s next-generation MEO system, O3b mPOWER, in 2022.

iSAT Africa is well-established in the region for embracing innovative mobile internet connectivity solutions for unconnected rural communities in Africa. Through SES’s highly-flexible and scalable O3b mPOWER system that can deliver low-latency high-speed connectivity services from tens of megabits to multiple gigabits per second to a single site, iSAT Africa will be able to quickly scale its network to meet anticipated extensive connectivity demands. The fibre-like connectivity will equipe iSAT Africa to enable local mobile operators to deploy 4G services to close the digital divide. iSAT Africa is among the first companies in Africa to sign up for O3b mPOWER.

According to the GSMA 2020 report, mobile coverage has been expanding in Sub-Saharan Africa quickly; 3G coverage expanded to 75% compared to 63% in 2017, while 4G doubled to nearly 50% compared to 2017. However, the coverage gap in Sub-Saharan Africa remains the highest globally as it is home to 67% of the world’s population not covered by mobile broadband. This is because attempts to deploy 4G networks in sparsely-populated rural and remote areas continue to be an economic challenge. With telcos and internet service providers increasingly seeking innovative, cost-effective yet reliable connectivity solutions, SES’s MEO satellite-based MEF-certified service that can ensure seamless interconnectivity with any network is an ideal solution.

“At iSAT Africa, we don’t just believe in delivering connectivity to everyone across Africa. It’s also about delivering differentiated, cost-effective and reliable services that will enable various businesses to expand. This agreement represents a leap towards achieving that mission with iSAT Africa being able to deliver 4G services to communities and businesses located in underserved areas. As long-term partners of SES, we are confident this innovative solution will enable us to offer differentiated connectivity services to our telco customers,” said Rakesh Kukreja, Founder and Managing Director at iSAT Africa.

John-Paul Hemingway, CEO of SES Networks said, “We will be able to revolutionise the connectivity capabilities of mobile operators across Africa together through this agreement with iSAT Africa. The O3b and O3b mPOWER systems will easily enable the deployment of 4G services and high-performance networks for cloud applications regardless of where they are across the region. The enhanced flexibility and scalability of O3b mPOWER will truly connect Africans living in underserved areas in the most economically viable manner.”

www.ses.com

Dimension Data earns top cloud accreditation as an Azure Expert Managed Services Provider

NTT Ltd., a leading global technology services company, has earned the Azure Expert Managed Services Provider accreditation. Branded Dimension Data in the Middle East and Africa region, it has been recognised by Microsoft with the highest accolade for Azure Cloud experience, being named an Azure Expert Managed Services Provider (MSP).

Microsoft’s highly selective programme helps customers identify top tier partners to enable and support hyper-scale cloud implementations, from mission-critical apps, entire data centre footprints, to hybrid environments.

As one of a handful of partners globally, the Azure Expert MSP status forms the fundamental foundation for Dimension Data’s success in the global arena of High Value Services and Managed Services on Azure.

“We are honoured to be recognised for our skills as an Azure Expert Managed Services Provider. There are very few companies around the world who have earned this accolade, and it is a testament to our talented technical teams and deep Microsoft skills and experience. Our current and future cloud clients can be assured that we meet the highest standard for service delivery, support and security.” Says Werner Kapp, Chief Executive Officer, Dimension Data.

This prestigious endorsement is based on Dimension Data’s proficiency across a breadth of capabilities and for its customer service delivery and technical knowledge. Having met the stringent skills and experience prerequisites, Dimension Data also completed a rigorous audit by an independent third party that evaluates its managed services offerings, technical teams, processes and technologies.

“We are thrilled to be a part of this programme,” says Fernando Navarro, Head of Product Management for Managed Services at NTT. “Azure Expert MSP is the highest accreditation as a managed services provider by our strategic partner, Microsoft. We have been able to prove our skills and know-how in the public cloud arena and look forward to helping our clients do great things with Microsoft Azure.”

With deep experience in Microsoft technology, Dimension Data offers full-stack services from networking and infrastructure that supports Azure, to cloud migrations and cloud applications. Backed by unrivalled security and comprehensive managed services, Dimension Data is leveraging Microsoft Azure to innovate and develop cutting edge solutions using data, AI, IoT and Machine Learning.

This achievement further strengthens Dimension Data’s strategic partnership with Microsoft, as the two companies are committed to driving digital transformation with their clients.

“In the last year, our partners have helped their customers to reimagine a new world of business, while at the same time, continuing to invest in specialised skills and capabilities. Achieving the Azure Expert MSP accreditation is a hallmark of the commitment with which partners like Dimension Data are not only supporting their customers to become more digitally resilient, but also to how they are building new products and services for digital transformation,” says Lionel Moyal, Commercial Director at Microsoft South Africa.

With the widest reach across the Middle East and Africa and together with global parent company NTT, Dimension Data is solidifying its status as an industry leader in cloud managed services.

www.dimensiondata.com