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The development of cloud computing has certainly helped businesses to reach new heights but can it also do this for countries? The connectivity that is available from cloud computing can be far more valuable to those who lack resources than those who have an abundance of them. In many ways cloud computing acts as an equalizer and has the potential to accelerate economic growth in Africa as a whole.
The beauty about cloud computing is that it can help pretty much any company in almost any geographical area. It frees business from the necessary investment in infrastructure and hardware and allows the company to focus on its core business mission instead of the things needed to support business operations. Cloud computing can offer a 33% reduction in IT investment while at the same time increasing capacity by 35% on average. These results are magnified in certain regions of Africa.
In America, for example, without cloud computing there are still a multitude of resources that can be tapped because of public infrastructure, access to liquid credit markets, and more. In many regions in Africa (excluding more developed countries such as South Africa) these amenities are not always available. This is what makes cloud computing so critical to growth throughout Africa. It allows small operations that would never have dreamed of participating in the same technology as massive global corporations the ability to do just that.
Obviously cloud computing does not tell the whole story; and just because it is as accessible to those in Nairobi as those in New York does not mean that we will see large global companies emerge overnight. The principle factor of cloud computing is that it connects business in Africa and whole countries into the same world network that America’s largest companies operate in. The playing field is no where near even but it is hard to find another single factor that can have such an impact.
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