If the foundation be absent what can the Techies build

A.K.A the place of policy in the development of digital infrastructure

neosnetworks.com

Africa Data Centres, a subsidiary of Cassava Technologies, a telecommunications and technology infrastructure provider, has entered a strategic partnership with CSSi South Africa, a cloud provider, to enhance data storage capabilities for local enterprises. The partnership aims to deliver resilient and cost-effective cloud solutions to both large and small businesses in South Africa.

This follows Cassava receiving an undisclosed investment from Nvidia and launching its AI Multi-Model Exchange, which provides telcos with access to multiple global AI models, including those from OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), and Google (Gemini). This platform enables Telcos to offer these models to their subscribers in a cost-effective manner.

Against the backdrop of these investments and partnerships in South Africa, Equinix, having recently acquired MainOne a Nigerian cloud provider, announced a USD 22 million investment to build a data centre in Lagos, Nigeria. The centre aims to serve Nigeria’s rapidly growing tech and start-up ecosystem. Also targeting this market, MTN is developing its Cloud-as-a-Service platform alongside a cloud accelerator programme.

So What?

Despite the ubiquity of digital technology, people sometimes forget that software is based on very hard infrastructure. The recent AI development arms race has brought the importance and limitation of the physical infrastructure that powers our digital world to the fore again. But the absence of Africa in that conversation has highlighted the relatively insignificant contribution the continent has to the creation process of technology on the global playing field (when it comes to consumption we are leaders). The recent infra moves by Cassava Tech and other domestic players show that domestic players are beginning to consider the importance of investment into domestic digital capacity either for business continuity or data sovereignty reasons. But one overarching theme across the two markets highlighted (Nigeria and South Africa) is the role policy plays in driving these objectives. In the case of South Africa, digital and data privacy laws like the National Policy on Data and Cloud Policy have driven the domestic cloud industry as businesses seek to localise their data storage.

In Nigeria, currency depreciation as a result of change in foreign exchange policy has made foreign cloud providers more expensive and have created opportunities for locally priced providers, an opportunity that MTN Nigeria is planning to leverage to the fullest.

We point out this policy backdrop to show the importance of government in the long-term viability of a sector. In Nigeria, the tech sector has grown despite the government, not because of it. But in a world where venture funding is slowing down and international investors have found a new domestic returns engine in AI, the African start-up and tech space will need to be given actual conducive playing fields for the next stage of growth to be unlocked.