I share similar views on the topic:

A cloud strategy in Africa makes absolute sense. The reasons below will justify my view of the trend towards the cloud paradigm in Africa over the next few years to help it join the information super-highway.

GEOGRAPHY: A large continent with a number of countries with disparate levels of access to education and commerce. This makes it exceedingly hard for the standard distributed computing model to proliferate. Cities that can and centers of excellence are too few and spread too far apart to seed this kind of development. A faster and more practical model for growth would be to establish a cloud infrastructure clustered in the few cities that can actually host it.

DISPARATE INFORMATION NEEDS: Let me explain what I mean – given that a majority of the population is still extremely poor and requires access to basic needs – the kind of information that will be most helpful and be readily consumed by the larger population is that which is related to healthcare, hygiene, literacy, safety, micro farming, small business, micro business, and basic social development including village and small town development; in this scenario, the majority of the population are going to be “consumers” of information rather than “producers”. In such a model, a cloud approach makes more sense since these population centers cannot really afford to maintain their own data centers from a logistical, financial, and know-how perspective.

INTERNATIONAL INVESTORS: International investors are one of the major drivers for helping Africa get onto the information super highway. Profitability is a key objective for these investors; the only way they can see the quickest ROI (Return on Investment) is to follow a cloud model. By piggy-backing on Africa’s current major broadband initiative, investors can establish clouds that are physically located in the few major cities scattered across Africa and make the cloud services available to the entire population over cellular-data networks that are proliferating across Africa at a much more rapid rate than any other technology. A cloud strategy is also the cheapest way for information services providers to keep costs low – so it’s a no brainer that this approach trumps the more traditional information services models. Proof of this happening is further seen in the participation at “Capacity Africa 2011” at Nairobi where most of the world’s leading telecommunications companies are showcasing their cellular and broadband efforts in Africa.

SEEDING AFRICA’S GROWTH THROUGH INFORMATION: Who better to seed Africa’s growth than the people of Africa themselves. Like I pointed out, the populations is scattered over an impossibly large geography. The centers of excellence are few and far apart. But it is these few centers that are best positioned to seed development of the rest of the continent by disseminating information that is most relevant at a cost that is minimal. The cloud will allow Africa to achieve this in the most technical and cost feasible manner.

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