Telecom (130)
Demand for broadband connectivity is growing in Africa. So are the risks of cybercrime. Improving supply while protecting access has become a necessity to ensure the region's development.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced yesterday it will soon deploy two root server clusters in Africa. One is confirmed to be installed in Kenya. The two technical infrastructures will allow Internet queries from Africa to be processed locally, without depending on networks and servers located in other parts of the world. It will also improve network quality by reducing latency throughout the region.
According to the international non-profit organization - which coordinates the domain name system and plays a key role in maintaining a global, interoperable and secure Internet – the clusters “will reduce the time it takes for a website to load, particularly when there are spikes in Internet usage. This will bring immediate benefits for everyday Internet users across the continent.”
The root servers will also reduce the impact of a potential cyberattack on the continent. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyberattacks aim to overwhelm servers with a flood of queries. The technical infrastructure will allow for greater bandwidth and data processing capacity, reducing the risk of Internet downtime due to a cyber-attack.
ICANN's investment in Africa is part of the ambitions of the Partner2Connect digital coalition launched on September 20, 2021, by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The goal is to drive meaningful connectivity and digital transformation globally in line with the African Digital Transformation Strategy (2020-2030).
Currently, only 33% of the African population has access to the Internet, according to ITU. With the digital transformation accelerating and inducing high Internet consumption, the Union believes that the rate will increase rapidly in the coming months.
Muriel Edjo
French telecom group Orange launched in 2019 a plan - Engage 2025- to offer consumers a better experience. To achieve this goal in Africa, the company has partnered with Atos to rethink its business process on the continent.
The deal will see Atos - a company specializing in the provision of integrated solutions in the areas of cloud, cybersecurity, and supercomputing- support the digitalization of some of Orange's subsidiaries in Africa; 14 subsidiaries are targeted. Two contracts were signed to this effect last February 22 between the two parties. The objective is to significantly optimize Orange's operating expenses over the next five years, reduce its carbon emissions, and improve the group's operational resilience and business agility in the region.
The first contract requires Atos to support and maintain about 100 apps in key areas - such as billing, customer relationship management, business intelligence, big data, procurement, order entry, and management - across Orange subsidiaries. The contract also includes infrastructure management for four specific subsidiaries: Orange Burkina Faso, Orange Sierra Leone, Orange Cameroon, and Orange Madagascar. The same approach will be gradually applied to other subsidiaries in the region.
The second contract Orange signed with Atos is for the deployment of Orange Private Cloud - a dedicated cloud computing environment - in six subsidiaries (Burkina Faso, Botswana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo). In these countries, Atos will also be able to support the integration of multi-vendor applications into Orange Private Cloud.
“We have ambitious digital transformation projects for our affiliates (Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Tunisia). Atos’ expertise in cloud services and business-critical application management, its deep knowledge of the telecom market, and its local presence in several countries in the Middle East and Africa make it a very valuable partner for Orange in the region,” says Jocelyn Karakula, CTIO, Orange Middle East & Africa.
The collaboration between Orange and Atos comes as part of the renewal of the CISA contract signed in 2017 by the two parties, but which covered only seven African subsidiaries. This new contract incorporates new innovative areas that fall within the scope of Atos, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, cloud monitoring services and cloud orchestration, predictive maintenance, and intelligent automation.
Orange's new step aligns with one of its four growth ambitions for 2025, which is "to deliver a reinvented customer experience, smarter networks as well as improved operational efficiency."
Muriel Edjo
Africans need good access to the internet to contribute to the digital economy. Well aware of this challenge, Orange has, over the past five years, increased its investments in network coverage on the continent.
Telecom group Orange and Sonatel, its Senegalese subsidiary, announced on February 16, 2022, their partnership with the Luxembourg-based satellite telecom services provider SES to expand broadband connectivity in Africa. In this framework, Orange and Sonatel will deploy and manage SES' O3b mPower gateway on the continent. O3b mPower, a next-generation medium earth orbit satellite communications system, will be deployed in Senegal at Sonatel's teleport site in Gandoul, and other local satellite sites.
Jean-Luc Vuillemin (photo), director of international networks at Orange, explained that the partnership with SES stems from Orange’s conviction that “satellite remains a technology of the future and that the recent innovations it has been experiencing will surely reinforce its position in the telecommunications industry, in Africa but also other regions with more developed infrastructure like Europe or North America.”
Demand for high-speed internet in Africa has gone up significantly since 2020. This demand was mainly driven by the Covid-19 pandemic which sped up the digitization of several services, as well as changed data consumption habits. However, despite a greater demand, the network coverage in Africa is still low - in rural areas especially. In 2021, the penetration rate for mobile Internet on the continent was 28%, according to the GSMA. The latter also reports that 206 million sub-Saharan Africans have no access to a mobile network; this is out of a population of 1,084 million in the region.
For Jean-Luc Vuillemin, the collaboration with SES “will play a key role in Orange’s mission to build intelligent and open networks that will help make digital technologies more accessible and used by as many people as possible.”
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Officially launched on Jan 1, 2021, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) holds several business opportunities for African e-commerce. However, to leverage these opportunities, African countries need adequate policies. Assessing the gaps in these policies is a mission recently undertaken by Smart Africa Alliance.
On Dec 17, 2020, the Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group greenlit a $1.5 million grant to Smart Africa Alliance, a group of 32 African countries, organizations, and international companies that want to create a single digital marketplace in Africa.
The grant, provided by the African Development Fund (the Bank’s concessional window), will be used to assess policy gaps in the digital and e-commerce ecosystems of Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Ghana, Liberia, Uganda, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Republic of Congo, São Tomé and Príncipe, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Lacina Koné, CEO of Smart Africa, said: “One of the critical challenges preventing the continent from preparing for Africa’s bold new future is the inability to conduct cross-border payments for goods and services due to a lack of solutions and crippling policies. Our partnership with the African Development Bank is crucial in creating an enabling environment to advance e-payments, and the digital economy is essential for Africa’s renaissance.”
Smart Africa Alliance will, as part of its assessment mission, consult with public and private sector stakeholders to develop an e-learning program that will directly benefit 600 stakeholders, including government officials, small and medium enterprises, private sector mobile network operators, and indirectly benefit another 2,500.
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) officially began operations on Jan 1, 2021. Regrouping all 55 African Union member states, this 1.2 billion people market has a gross domestic product (GDP) of $2.5 trillion. According to the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa, it is an asset that can foster the boom of e-commerce in Africa. However, for this to happen, every country must have a legal e-commerce framework that favors international trade.
“This project is both timely and vital. For the continent to create a unified digital market by 2030, efforts should focus on harmonizing and building a cohesive policy environment for intra-continental trade,” said Nicholas Williams, Division Manager for ICT Operations, AfDB.
Muriel Edjo