How Cloud Computing Will Reshape Africa’s Development

Introduction

Africa has continued to embrace the use of Information Technology at both policy level and infrastructural development. Access to internet bandwidth is improving through technologies like 3G, Wi Max, Fiber, Satellite etc. and this is attributed mainly to the increasing competitiveness in telecommunications sector and continued investment in infrastructural development. According to Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) Annual Review 2009/2010, Uganda has 3.5 million people who have access to internet service which represents approximately 10% of the total population.

Below is a table that represents the world internet usage and population statistics.

WORLD INTERNET USAGE AND POPULATION STATISTICS
World Regions	Population (2010 Est.)	Internet Users Dec. 31, 2000	Internet Users Latest Data	Penetration (% Population)	Growth 2000-2010	Users % of Table
Africa	1,013,779,050	4,514,400	110,931,700	10.9 %	2,357.3 %	5.6 %
Asia	3,834,792,852	114,304,000	825,094,396	21.5 %	621.8 %	42.0 %
Europe	813,319,511	105,096,093	475,069,448	58.4 %	352.0 %	24.2 %
Middle East	212,336,924	3,284,800	63,240,946	29.8 %	1,825.3 %	3.2 %
North America	344,124,450	108,096,800	266,224,500	77.4 %	146.3 %	13.5 %
Latin America/Caribbean	592,556,972	18,068,919	204,689,836	34.5 %	1,032.8 %	10.4 %
Oceania / Australia	34,700,201	7,620,480	21,263,990	61.3 %	179.0 %	1.1 %
WORLD TOTAL	6,845,609,960	360,985,492	1,966,514,816	28.7 %	444.8 %	100.0 %
Internet Usage and World Population Statistics are as of June 30, 2010. Copyright © 2000 - 2010, Miniwatts Marketing Group. All rights reserved worldwide.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is computing where shared resources, software and information are provided over a large networked environment like the internet. Cloud computing provides services that are broadly divided into three categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service such as data centres (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) such as online scanners.

Benefits of Cloud Computing to African States

Cloud computing therefore presents opportunities for users especially in weak economies like Africa to affordably access high performance infrastructure, more advanced technologies, and incur less maintenance cost on hardware and software. Africa therefore stands to benefit greatly from this technological advancement and below are some of the advantages:

1.      Low cost of access to high performance (high bandwidth, low latency and stable network connection) infrastructure for data center hosting. This provides for professional data handling, data backups and disaster recovery options. Institutions can even develop applications delivered to their users over the internet, hence no need to buy servers and upfront licensing, affordability of software licensing being one of Africa’s biggest challenges.

2.      Increased visibility and an improved image of African States to the rest of the world thus more opportunities in terms of investment, tourism, trade, employment opportunities and access to international markets.

3.      Access to more employment opportunities for most of the African youth and professionals in journalism, broadcasting, money markets, education, etc.

4.      Improvement in the education sector through online exchanges between different academic institutions, students and tutors.

5.      Ease of access to both open source and proprietary information in journals and online libraries.

6.      Access/use/interaction to new technologies at no extra cost. Cloud computing provides Africa with an opportunity to access multiple open source tools that can be applied to their computing needs thus reducing the licensing burden on the resource constrained African users.

7.      E-governance to improve service delivery especially by the public sector and ease of information sharing between African governments and the citizens

The Challenges

Africa faces a great deal of challenges in adoption, application and exploitation of the advantages of ICT of which cloud computing is part.  This section therefore brings you some of the challenges that Africa faces:

1.      Low levels of awareness of the use and application of ICTs. According to UNDP 2010, the adult literacy rate in both sexes (%15 years of age and above) is 76.4 percent (Total population of 15 yrs. and above is about 16 million which 50% of the total Uganda’s population) but there are less than 10% Ugandan internet users.

2.      Low investment in infrastructural development has hindered the wide spread use of ICTs and access to internet for example, according to Uganda Communications Commission about 3.5 Million people have access to ICT’s in Uganda which represents about 10% Uganda’s total population compared to the developed world which is more that 50%.

3.      High costs of bandwidth that make access to the internet difficult for many Africans. High costs in bandwidth are mainly due to a less competitive environment in the service provision sector.

4.      Importation of old ICT equipment like old computers and absolute technologies to Africa making maintenance costs high and disposal very difficult. This has discouraged purchase of computers. African needs custom made cheap equipment for the African environment in terms of cost and maintenance.

5.      Access to electricity is very low for example, less than 5% of Ugandans have access to electricity, about 6% of those are rural and yet 88% of the whole Ugandan population resides in rural areas according to the 2003 national Census.

6.      There is a growing concern and discomfort of using ICTs due to fear of information theft. This mainly is as a result of illiteracy and ignorance about security. This can also be attributed to lack of IP sensitization and poor legal framework for electronic transactions in most of the African states.

Conclusion

Africa can benefit a lot more from cloud computing, especially a country like Uganda that has a big number of graduate unemployed youths. Cloud computing won’t solve all of its problems but will and can help contribute greatly to its social economic transformation as it is evident in other countries like India.

However African governments and their developing partners have to enhance sensitization and awareness of the populace about the opportunities cloud computing provides, help make the cost of internet bandwidth affordable and invest more in the development of ICT infrastructure to increase the coverage of the service to wider and more remote areas.