South Africa at risk of losing digital lead in Africa

The rate of digitisation in countries like Kenya, Tanzania and Botswana is likely to see South Africa overtaken as the continent’s most digitally advanced nation.

South Africa is falling behind in the battle for the lion’s share of a burgeoning digital economy. Africa Analysis executive director Chris Ngwenyama estimates that digitisation will contribute US$712-billion to the continent’s GDP by 2030.

Ngwenyama and other industry experts joined representatives from the governments of South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana to discuss the future of digitisation on the continent at a Huawei Ministerial Forum in Cape Town on Monday. The event took place ahead of the annual AfricaCom, a telecommunications event held in the city.

“Many African countries have made significant progress in building cloud infrastructure. For example, the State IT Agency provides services for 28 ministries and nine provincial governments and plans to roll out over 400 applications by 2024. Kenya’s Konza national data centre has supported the migration of more than 200 government and enterprise applications to the cloud,” said Leon Chen, president of Huawei in sub-Saharan Africa.

Many of South Africa’s state IT functions are still reliant on expensive to maintain on-premises infrastructure. BCX CEO Joan Bogoshi recently told TechCentral that South Africa’s shrinking fiscus may have a positive effect on the drive to migrate these services to the cloud. “It may actually be the right thing for government today, because typically when you buy your own infrastructure, you create inefficiencies,” said Bogoshi.

Tanzania’s minister of ICT, Nape Moses Nnauye, highlighted the importance of digital access as an enabler of government services to the population.

Infrastructure

“Today, connectivity is one of the human rights because it changes how we access other rights – be it health services, immigration or government services. Investing in infrastructure is the key to all these other rights,” said Nnauye.

“In Tanzania the government is giving subsidies to the private sector to put the infrastructure in place. We know that leaving if we leave the private sector alone then [extending coverage] to the rural areas is difficult for them because they have no business case. So, government has a role to play here,” Nnauye said.

Also helping improve rural coverage in Tanzania is the availability of Elon Musk’s Starlink low-Earth orbit satellite internet service, which went live early this year in the East African nation. In South Africa, however, the SpaceX subsidiary is yet to apply for the licences it needs to operate in the country. The opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, has blamed “archaic” BEE legislation for Starlink’s reluctance to enter the South African market.

The government of Botswana, on the other hand, is mobilising state funds to improve digital access to rural communities and schools.

“Botswana took on a very bold … decision to connect over 500 rural villages. We put in the money to build fibre infrastructure across the country … with more than 150 villages now connected,” said Thulagano Merafe Segokgo, Botswana’s minister of communications, knowledge and technology.

“I wish I had the budget to do that,” deputy communications minister Philly Mapulane said in response.

All in all, the theme of collaboration took centre stage in the discussion with South Africa’s role as a coastal nation highlighted as an important connector for its landlocked neighbours, which do not have direct access to undersea cable infrastructure connecting them to the rest of the world.  – © 2023 NewsCentral Media

• The author travelled to AfricaCom as a guest of Huawei

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