Gartner says CIS in Africa to reach N14.14b in 2019

 ITRealms

The Gartner's "Hype Cycle for ICT in Africa, 2015" has said spending on end-user communications infrastructure  services (CIS) in sub-Saharan Africa will reach $71 million about N14.14 billion in 2019, ITRealms reports. 

Gartner's "Hype Cycle for ICT in Africa, 2015" report identifies over 30 key technologies and describes how they will impact business performance during the next 10 years

The senior research analyst at Gartner, Mbula Schoen, said, "The Hype Cycle aims to help global strategic officers and domestic CIOs from both the private and public sectors take account of the current state of important technologies across Africa, including their maturity, adoption and traction, It will help them make informed decisions about where to invest and how to advance their operations locally."

Innovations in information and communication technology (ICT) are dramatically changing the way African governments and businesses operate. For example, sophisticated data mining is being used in smart agriculture in several countries to improve how crops are grown by predicting weather, demand and outbreaks of disease, ITRealms reports.

The largest group of enterprise solutions likely to experience "growing pains" as the ecosystems mature and expectations exceed performance centres on payment include digital wallets, retail mobile payments and direct communications service provider billing. 

This is apparent, for example, from the aftermath of the hype surrounding the launch of the Apple Pay service last year. Global adoption of contactless transactions and NFC-enabled mobile payments has been slow, whereas SMS-based solutions have had better adoption in India and parts of Africa. Consumers' lack of enthusiasm for retail mobile payments (mainly due to security concerns) and the unwillingness of large, multichannel retailers to invest in mobile payment processing infrastructures have put this technology almost in the trough of disillusionment.

According the Business Intelligence, through 2015, emerging smartphone apps (such as augmented-reality viewers, smartphone e-book readers and scriptable mapping tools) will offer new delivery platforms for educational content. In addition, ITRealms gathered, the continued proliferation of connectivity in semi-urban and rural parts of Africa could represent a powerful force to narrow the "digital divide," one of the biggest social issues in Africa.

Cyriacus Nnaji/GEE

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Pix:  Mbula Schoen