The Rise Of The African Cloud - 2021: How Global And Local Cloud Platforms Are Powering Africa's Digital Economy

The African cloud is rising. Our research finds that the use of standard cloud services is already widespread in the African continent, turbocharged by the COVID-19 pandemic. Cloud-based office applications are increasingly vital components of the African modern workplace. The rise of the cloud in the African market ostensibly goes beyond basic office applications. From banks looking to accelerate the rollout of new applications to startups disrupting entire industries with innovative, cloud-powered models, cloud services are transforming Africa’s productive capacity and emerging as one of the most essential pillars of Africa’s digital transformation.

There is some way to go, for Africa is, in truth, a tough place for cloud services. Many countries do not offer adequate, affordable, broadband speeds; latency to cloud data centers is too high from many locations. And perhaps most of all, the cloud is fundamentally about putting trust in what you cannot see, in a region where seeing and touching are essential to trust. All the same, the upside is considerable - and cloud services represent an opportunity that only the undiscerning would be prompt to dismiss.

This report is an extensive attempt to frame and quantify this opportunity. It is about the near-term economic, commercial and investor upside presented by the rapid adoption of cloud services in the African market. It is the outcome of 18 months of extensive research and data analysis, dozens of interviews and conversations with enterprises and service providers and two African cloud user and provider surveys. We explore drivers and obstacles to cloud adoption across key verticals, with deep dives into financial services, the public sector and startups; we analyze how cloud migration approaches play out in the African context, from lift-and-shift models to full workload refactoring.

We break down how the momentous shift of customer spending towards the cloud and the rising weight of global hyperscale cloud providers are transforming the African IT marketplace, squeezing out some providers while elevating others. And we put some numbers on the cloud opportunity, outlining why this is one of the fastest-growing segments of the African ICT marketplace.

This report does not pretend to have all the answers. But consistent with the publisher's ethos, it does pretend to offer the most comprehensive picture available on African cloud services markets.

From banks looking to accelerate the rollout of new applications to startups disrupting entire industries with innovative, cloud-powered models, cloud services are transforming Africa’s productive capacity and emerging as one of the most essential pillars of Africa’s digital transformation. The latest release in our Cloud research series, the publisher’s Rise of the African Cloud is arguably the most comprehensive analysis available on African private and public cloud services markets. Including analysis of enterprise demand and cloud migration dynamics; market sizing and forecasting; competitive analysis; and much, much more. 

This report includes a report in PDF format and key chart data in Excel.