It is sometimes too easy for the world to wrongfully assume that Africa lags too far behind the global cloud innovation revolution. That is a fundamentally flawed outlook.
As of 2021, our continent accounted only for $1.2 billion of the global public cloud market, it has more than doubled in the past three years and continues to grow exponentially year on year. Soon, Africa will be among the world’s leading cloud innovators, and Kenya will be at the forefront.
The reality of Africa’s historically low economic growth is the very reason that the continent is ideally suited for the speedy adoption of cloud technology.
As Kenya, and the rest of Africa, look towards economic recovery and growth, cloud is the answer to cutting costs and increasing efficiencies as businesses move away from the requirement of hardware and installation.
Cloud is the best cybersecurity
One of the biggest deterrents of cloud adoption lies in the belief that a migration to the cloud will lead to more cyberattacks. While this could be true, it is also true that the advancement and rising complexity of the average cybercriminal syndicate means that businesses need to invest more in protecting their cyber assets.
With the cloud, the benefit of economies of scale and availability of skill within a cloud service provider environment makes it easier to secure your cyber assets with the most up-to-date technologies at par with the threats.
This could otherwise be too expensive and technically unachievable for an organisation using the on-premises option.
Cloud is pathway to start-up success
The last two years have emphasised the need to leverage digital channels to deliver on value propositions. Cloud allows businesses, especially those who are young and ready to grow, a pathway that is ready to scale at a moment’s notice.
Since latency is such a widespread issue in Africa, serving a customer as quickly as possible is the key to competitive advantage, which is life or death in a start-up landscape.
Nobody wants to see loading screens and unnecessary buffers when trying to access mission-critical systems. As soon as the customer experience is interrupted, the customer is already thinking of the competitor.
However, none of this would be possible without a key player in the market who understands the need for resilient and scalable infrastructure—those being infrastructure providers like Liquid.
Mr Muthua is Liquid executive head, cloud and cybersecurity, Kenya
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