ATCON boss, Teniola reveals how Nigeria lost $30b ICT FDIs to S/Africa
The President of Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Engineer Olusola Teniola has listed poor power generating capacity; harsh business climate; foreign exchange volatility; high level corruption, as key factors redirecting Nigerian bond foreign direct investments (FDIs) in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to South Africa.
Otherwise, the listed facilities are better provided in South Africa than Nigeria, even though Nigerian remains the major African market to beat that South Africa.
Citing examples with the redirection of two Data Centres by Microsoft to two South African cities of Johannesburg, and Cape Town, at the expense of Nigeria, he said the loss in the diversion is worth about $30 billion.
His view was corroborated by the Senior Programme Manager, Microsoft Azure’s Blockchain-as-a-Service, Michael Glaros, at a forum in Lagos, when he revealed that his group spent about $15 billion on each of its Data Centre infrastructure across the globe.
Business Hilights gathered that Microsoft has Data Centres covering 40 regions across the globe, more regions than any other cloud provider.
The official said this new investment is a major milestone in the company’s mission to empower every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more, and recognition of the enormous opportunity for digital transformation in Africa.
According to Microsoft, expanding on existing investments, Microsoft will deliver cloud services, including Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365, from Data centres located in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa with initial availability anticipated in 2018.
This is as the Executive Vice President, Cloud and Enterprise Group, Microsoft Corp, Scott Guthrie, said the firm is excited about the growing demand for cloud services in Africa and their ability to be a catalyst for new economic opportunities.
He said “With cloud services ranging from intelligent collaboration to predictive analytics, the Microsoft Cloud delivered from Africa will enable developers to build new and innovative apps, customers to transform their businesses, and governments to better serve the needs of their citizens.”
