SA’S DATA, CLOUD BLUEPRINT IN THE WORKS, SAYS MINISTER

The South African government is in the process of finalising the National Data and Cloud Policy, says communications and digital technologies minister Mondli Gungubele.

Gungubele made the comments during a breakaway session on digital opportunities in SA, at yesterday’s South Africa Investment Conference in Sandton, Johannesburg. According to a statement, the state is looking to the policy to strengthen its capacity to deliver services to its citizens, ensure informed policy development based on data analytics, as well as promote the country’s data sovereignty and the security thereof.

“We are excited about going forward. Google and Amazon Web Services have made huge commitments in terms of data investments and cloud service availability, which is going to help us focus with least cost on the innovation space on development of technologies,” states Gungubele.

The draft policy, which was published on 1 April 2021 for public comment, proposes to develop a state digital infrastructure company and high-performance computing and data processing centre.

It also aims to consolidate excess capacity of publicly-funded data centres and deliver processing, data facilities and cloud computing capacity.

South Africa is one of the continent’s mature cloud markets, with the country leading cloud adoption in the region.

In addition, hyperscalers have increased their investments in the local cloud computing space, establishing their data centre facilities in the country.

Despite the intensified and pervasive cloud adoption, studies show the lack of skills is among the main difficulties in this process.

Gungubele indicates government has ambitious targets, especially for the three targeted areas: digital connectivity, digital literacy and digital skills.

“We are targeting young people, women and SMMEs for these areas. We already have a huge number of people that are hungry for learning.

“We are working with universities and international communities to ensure there is intensification of innovations to promote capabilities as far as these industries are concerned. We are, among other things, already rolling out artificial intelligence hubs.”