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M-Pesa 14 An anniversary
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MICHAEL MBUTHIA
working 29 From as a chartered
accountant to leading a panAfrican business, meet Kennedy Chinganya, MD MTN Business
Details how KBA-IPSL creates interoperability in banking
April 2017
Gordon: 33 Jamila The CIO who
escaped the Somali Civil War
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EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Harry Hare EDITOR Rob Hough TECHNICAL STAFF WRITERS Lillian Mutegi Baraka Jefwa Jeanette Oloo COLUMNISTS Ben Roberts Bobby Yawe James Muritu Peter Muya Sam Mwangi HEAD OF SALES & MARKETING Andrew Karanja BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Njambi Waruhiu ACCOUNT MANAGERS Amuyunzu Oscar Vanessa Obura SUBSCRIPTION & EVENTS Ellen Magembe Mellisa Dorsila DESIGN Nebojsa Dolovacki Published By
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Rob Hough
WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AND IT SMELLS GOOD
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ere we are in the world of blockchain, architects crafting complex systems, smaller and smaller companies doing more and more thanks to the cloud, observations that hacked robots could throw eggs at us rather than cook them for us – and there’s been some buzz around the Silicon Savannah about a new mall. And it was a glorious debut and opening for the Two Rivers Mall, complete with bands and fireworks. It was not unlike splashy Silicon Valley launch parties in 1997 or so, a time when startups bought Aeron chairs – at several hundred U.S. dollars, more than a month’s rent for an apartment in the area – for all their employees. Now they pay less than one-quarter of that money for mediocre chairs and rent’s at least four times what it was 20 years ago.
Here’s a hope, though, that while we love ecommerce and fancy tech, the mall does better than pets.com and other hugely funded, equally unsuccessful startups from way back when. While there are better things than shopping, there are worse things than getting up from a chair, expensive or otherwise, and being around other people. And let’s assume that even the biggest fans of tech and startups aren’t rooting for an old-style business to fail. If some people go to Two Rivers, said to be the largest mall between Cairo and Johannesburg, for one or two things at one or two stores, maybe coffee or a meal, they can also go to one store, Carrefour, for darn near all things. The vast store, one of a chain with roots in France, can feel like Jumia has come to life. Phone selection? Massive. Clothing selection? Substantial. Plenty of appliances, TVs, bed sheets and lots more, to include an enormous selection of food? Yes, yes, yes and yes. Amid all that, perhaps their finest offering: fresh-baked hot bread, if you’re a little fortunate with your timing. There are worse ways to attract customers than the smell of bread that’s just out of the oven. Researchers, to include those who’ve won a Nobel Prize, have noted that the sense of smell has powerful effects. In
their 2004 announcement of a Nobel Prize in Medicine going to researchers who broke new ground in understanding the sense of smell, the organisation noted, “A unique odour can trigger distinct memories from our childhood or from emotional moments – positive or negative – later in life.” Any number of studies have found that smell is the sense that’s most strongly connected to memory. Though some of the detailed, scientific understanding of how scents affect us is relatively new, people have known about this for decades, probably centuries. A 70-year-old ad placed by a chemical company encouraged business-owners to “send for folder about smells that sell.” Flash forward to 2017 and there I was in Carrefour to take a look around and buy something to keep my skin from getting more dry than Bob Yawe’s sense of humour. And there it was, maybe, the faint scent of bread. It seemed to have made its way from somewhere, all the way over to the land of skin lotion, soap and toothpaste. Hot bread wasn’t a part of my childhood, as best I can remember, or my later years, but oh did it smell good. This called for further investigation. In keeping with the provide-a-staggering-selection approach, there were all sorts of loaves, but the smell drew me right to the ones that were just baked. The bag of bread in my hands was hot, not merely warm. Rude or strange as it might have been to eat in the store, about 75 percent of my loaf made it to the checkout line. Carrefour and hot bread are a long way from startups and blockchain, but among the oldest, newest, largest or smallest businesses, there are profits to be earned, and even free advertising by enthusiastic customers who spread your news for you, by executing effectively and using tools wisely to give people what they need – and want.
TO CONTACT ME:
CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
QUOTED VERBATIM
Michael Mbuthia, Chief Information Officer, KBA-IPSL
Kennedy Chinganya, Managing Director, MTN Business
Delano Kiilu, Columnist, CIO East Africa
Bob Yawe, Columnist, CIO East Africa
“We have taken a piece of technology and used it to further our agenda. What we have done is expose that technology across to banks, allowing banks to talk to each other. This has never been done before. Technology notwithstanding, we are trying to address the fundamental issue in the industry and the issue is cash.”
“When I joined the ICT industry I was more of a Finance individual. I think working for multinationals changed me from being an accountant into being a businessman. At IBM, my roles were not accounting-functional roles; they were more finance-advisor roles and that exposed me not only to numbercrunching, but to discussions around business growth.”
“We’ve simply run out of the ability to absorb all the new platforms that are currently emerging and making mincemeat out of last year’s latest and greatest stacks that we so heavily invested in. The architectural aspect of future design is going to have to be designed around ultra-open standards in terms of design.”
“Government has provided an enabling environment for the introduction of innovative solutions to its problems, but it is us who have refused to embrace the new dispensation.”
www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
FROM OUR ONLINE LOCATIONS Five most popular stories on www.cio.co.ke
Apple releases limited edition of Iphone 7 to help fight against AIDS Kenyan diaspora is the biggest sender of digital remittances to mobile accounts Instagram will let you book appointments to become more like Yelp and OpenTable WorldRemit partners with KCB to offer instant money transfers to Kenya Airtel brings you “Tubonge”!
Five top facebook.com/ cioeastafrica posts with highest reach Day two of the #Africacloudsummit! Great conversations and insights coming from the cloud discussions... #Africacloudsummit: We need more architects in IT #AfricaCloudSummit: A look at the Kenyan cloud with Muchemi Wambugu The cloud’s here to stay -- and so are threats Two days to go to the Africa’s largest cloud summit! have you registered? Join over 250 delegates in a two day intense cloud computing discussion. Vimal Shah, CEO BIDCO Africa will be speaking at #AfricaCloudSummit, join in as he walks us through the CEOs View on cloud. For more information and registration visit: https:// www.africacloudsummit.com/
Five top tweets with the highest reaction #GoTvWow and #DSTVThanks promotions are set to begin on the 7th of March @DStv_Kenya And we are off. The inaugural #AfricaCloudSummit kicks off @RadissonBlu Nairobi with CEO, CIO, EA Harry Hare giving the opening remarks. pic.twitter. com/npxRbhHpi1 George Njuguna, CIO, @HFGroupKE, takes the stage #africacloudsummit to touch on Cloud Adoption Challenges on a Macro Level. pic.twitter. com/MeftoYrfkL Muraga says that the biggest challenge was convincing board about moving from #CAPEX systems to #OPEX systems. #AfricaCloudSummit pic.twitter.com/fWsHnV5S2P Great insights from the panel discussion now underway at #Africacloudsummit. @JohnGalligan @coachyawe @Barclays_Kenya pic.twitter.com/ YUfriJOxK9 5
GUEST EDITORIAL
BY JAMES MURITU
DEMYSTIFYING ENTERPRISE
ARCHITECTURE Enterprise Architecture isn’t a hot, flashy topic, but the region’s lack of focus on EA has taken a real toll on IT environments.
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he history of Architecture in the IT world stems from the need to have scalable systems with re-usable components that simplify the process of building, deploying and maintaining enterprise systems, while taking care of all the major facets around data, security, interfaces and performance. Over the years, the role of Architecture has grown, with more focus placed on bridging the gap between Business Strategy and IT Strategy. In my working career, the best IT Architects I came across were from the U.S. West Coast. This explains why a lot of design work happens in this area and development work is often completed in India, China or the Philippines. Broadly speaking, Architecture in the tech world can be categorised into Applications Architecture, Business Architecture, Data Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Security Architecture and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Suffice it to say that SOA may also be viewed as a paradigm of Application Architecture with a mandate of providing principles that influence design decisions that provide robust and well-built IT systems. In layman’s terms, Application Architecture is to a system-development team what a building blueprint is to a team of construction workers. While there’s no limit to the level of detail required, some teams keep it simple providing only high-level abstract physical and logical technical representations. Others may choose to delve deeper into granular details including data models, security standards and data-flow diagrams just to name a few. Enterprise Architecture has a more overarching role and tends to have a holistic view of an organization in its current and future states from a strategy, business and technology perspective. 6
According to cio.com, Enterprise Architecture focuses on four crucial C’s: connection, collaboration, communication and customers, with a primary concern of aligning a business’s strategic vision with its information technology. The enterprise architect must therefore map, define and standardize technology, data and business processes that will satisfy today’s and tomorrow’s business needs. With such a view, the Enterprise Architecture role is critical in mapping IT resources that will integrate the business needs and what technology has to offer. It’s critical to note that successful and effective CIOs often have world class Enterprise Architects as their right-hand generals. Continuing with our earlier analogy, Enterprise Architecture is to an organization what a city master-plan is to a city. It follows that the initial inputs of an Application Architecture will come from the Enterprise Architecture, without which the Application might not be compatible with or fit within the organization’s strategy. While most Universities have placed an emphasis in churning out technical focused IT personnel such as system developers, web designers and graphic designers, very few Unis, especially in Africa, have taken note of the role
The enterprise architect must therefore map, define and standardize technology, data and business processes that will satisfy today’s and tomorrow’s business needs.
of Enterprise Architecture as a critical and defining field in the IT world. This explains why typical IT environments in most public- and even private-sector companies comprise a spaghetti pile and cobweb of multiple systems, devices, cables, servers and interfaces that cost millions annually to maintain, with no clear upgrade or replacement roadmaps. The value that organizations can yield from encapsulating Enterprise Architecture in their business processes is massive; the top benefit is provision of an organization’s holistic view of how technology is designed, built, deployed and maintained. Lastly, it’s imperative to emphasize that Enterprise Architecture goes hand-inhand with IT Governance and collaboratively helps in establishing governance across the enterprise, which helps in building a controlled and well-directed institution. It acts like a framework for leadership, organizational structure, business processes, standards, practices, etc. For IT folks with a passion in Enterprise Architecture, TOGAF, The Open Group Architecture Framework, is the de facto global standard for Enterprise Architecture and is governed by the Open Group Architecture Forum. TOGAF comes with a certification program with qualification achieved through passing two exams, following a course of self-study or attendance at an Accredited Training Course. There is also an entry level qualification, TOGAF 9 Foundation, which is achieved by passing just the first exam. James Muritu is the CEO and founder of Project Dimensions Ltd CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
CONTENTS
APRIL 2017 6 Guest Editorial 8 In Brief 9 Appointments 10 Regional Round Up NEWS
12 13
FEATURE
Smartphone sales slow in Africa while feature phones remain resilient
to use data sci24 How entists and machine
Beware the “exploit kit infection chain,” Cisco researcher warns at SecureWorld Boston
challenges that 36 8keep CIOs up at night
TREND LINES
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An M-pesa anniversary leads to looking back and looking forward
15
Realities of architecture: what you need and what you get
16 26
PICTORIAL
Cover story:
Michael Mbuthia
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From working as a chartered accountant to leading a pan-African business, meet Kennedy Chinganya, MD MTN Business www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
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Inaugural African Cloud Summit Attracts Region’s top tech leaders
TREND LINES
Details how KBA-IPSL creates interoperability in banking IT AND LEADERSHIP
MyDawa attempts to digitize Kenya’s Healthcare sector one pill at a time
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OPINION challenges for 38 Three the web, according to its inventor
piece: If the 39 Opinion timing isn’t right for cloud, consider a Managed Service approach instead
archi40 Accentuating tecture all the cloud’s 41 Seek subtle advantages and opportunities
Hard TALK innovation 42 Getting into government
Nairobi, Dakar meetings drive public-sector digital transformation
START UP CORNER
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learning
ANALYSIS
Nairobi innovation week highlights opportunities for African startups
WOMEN & TECH
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Jamila Gordon The CIO who escaped the Somali Civil War
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IN BRIEF AROUND
ZOONA RAISES FUNDS TO BOOST MOBILE BANKING SOUTH AFRICA-BASED PAYMENTS SERVICE PROVIDER ZOONA HAS RAISED US $1 MILLION FROM THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCE CORPORATION (IFC) AND THE MASTERCARD FOUNDATION TO STRENGTHEN THE REACH OF ITS MOBILE BANKING SERVICES IN ZAMBIA, THE COMPANY ANNOUNCED.
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nitially launched in Zambia, Zoona has become the country’s leading payments service provider. It provides financial services through its mobile money platform, and offers emerging entrepreneurs an opportunity to provide money transfers and financial services to low-income consumers through its network of more than 1,500 mobile money agents, the company added.
STARTUPS IN KENYA, NIGERIA AND SOUTH AFRICA: TAKE YOUR SHOT TO WORK WITH GOOGLE’S ACCELERATOR GOOGLE’S LAUNCHPAD ACCELERATOR, A SUBSTANTIAL PROGRAM TO HELP PROMISING STARTUPS, IS NOW ACCEPTING APPLICANTS FROM CANDIDATES IN KENYA, NIGERIA AND SOUTH AFRICA.
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he company asks questions of people who might be interested: Have you and your team set out to address a real challenge for your home city, country and region? Are you ready to scale your tech startup into a thriving, tech company by leveraging Google’s global reach and resources? Those who are selected get to “work closely with Google for six months,” to include two weeks of all-expense-paid training at Google Headquarters in California; equity-free support; access to Google engineers, resources, and mentors; credits for Google products; and marketing spotlight opportunities, the company said. The deadline for the next class is 23 April. For more information: https://developers.google.com/startups/accelerator/
SLIIDE GRABS A MAJOR AWARD AT GSMA WORLD CONGRESS SLIIDE AIRTIME, WHICH DELIVERS NEWS AND SPONSORED CONTENT AND PROVIDES USERS WITH FREE AIRTIME, WAS NAMED MOST INNOVATIVE MOBILE APP AT THE GLOBAL MOBILE WORLD AWARDS.
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he app, founded by South African Corbyn Munnik, debuted last year in Nigeria; the company has its eyes on other countries in Africa and abroad. The project is part of the Partnership for Financial Inclusion, a US$37.4 million joint initiative of IFC and the MasterCard Foundation to expand microfinance and advance digital financial services in sub-Saharan Africa. “Mobile money solutions have been rolled out across the continent in recent years with remarkable impact on financial inclusion. Now is the time to focus on the products offered through these mobile platforms to ensure they meet the needs of low-income people and small-scale entrepreneurs and truly help improve peoples’ lives,” said Riadh Naouar, head of IFC Financial Institutions Group Advisory Services in Sub-Saharan Africa. 8
AROUND the
WORLD ROBOTS ARE VULNERABLE TO HACKING IT SECURITY FIRM REMINDS US TO REMEMBER THAT ROBOTS, TOO, ARE VULNERABLE TO HACKING.
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e can marvel at the thought of vast increases of productivity and precision thanks to robots in the workplace, and at the thought of home robots making our coffee and cooking our breakfast. It’s important, though, to make sure that “they’re secure, well protected, and not easy to hack,” IOActive said in a recent report. “If not, instead of helpful resources they could quickly become dangerous tools capable of wreaking havoc and causing substantive harm to their surroundings and the humans they’re designed to serve.” The U.S. firm tried to hack popular home, business and industrial robots; the results “show how insecure and susceptible current robot technology is to cyberattacks, confirming our initial suspicions,” the firm said.
5G IS ON THE WAY AND TELECOMS VOW IT WILL BE BIG AS SURELY AS 3G FOLLOWED 2G AND 4G FOLLOWED 3G, 5G IS WELL ON ITS WAY, ACCORDING TO TELECOM COMPANIES AROUND THE WORLD.
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ith predictable enthusiasm, they say the impact will be far-reaching for businesses in general, IT departments and consumers.
“We’ll see new as-a-service business models based on network slicing,” Ericsson, a Swedish firm said recently. “Network slices in the context of 5G will be like virtual networks on-demand. 5G will enable more secure transactions and expand the battery life of IoT devices by 10X. All this will create opportunities for new use cases that we haven’t yet dreamed of.” Speaking last month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the firm’s CEO and President Börje Ekholm said, “5G will transform all industries, and our customers are already gearing up for the future by evolving their current 4G networks. This is the key foundation to enable the automation and business transformation needed for the Internet of Things, as well as data-hungry services like virtual reality and augmented reality.”
BIG DATA FOR SOCIAL GOOD DEBUTS THE GSMA HAS DEBUTED BIG DATA FOR SOCIAL GOOD, WHICH IT SAYS WILL USE MOBILE OPERATORS’ BIG-DATA MUSCLE TO PROVIDE ASSISTANCE DURING CRISES.
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ixteen companies across more than 100 countries are participating in the program, which will have trials beginning in June, based in Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Myanmar and Thailand, the group said. Providing examples of what the program can do, the mobile operators’ trade group said in a recent statement that, “by monitoring the flow of people to and from impacted areas, public health organisations can more effectively respond to prevent epidemics, slow the spread of disease and better target relief efforts. Humanitarian agencies can also more accurately aid evacuation, response and recovery efforts.” CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
APPOINTMENTS MICROSOFT APPOINTS SAMER ABU LTAIF PRESIDENT OF MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA REGION Microsoft has announced the appointment of Samer Abu Ltaif as the president of the company’s Middle East and Africa (MEA) region. Abu Ltaif, who joined Microsoft in 2004, has held a number of senior roles across the region, the company said in a statement, adding that he has led public- and private-sector initiatives and played a significant role in expanding its presence in the Middle East’s Gulf states. A key part of Abu Ltaif’s role will be to drive the digital-transformation agenda of the region across governments, enterprises, developers and small- and medium-sized businesses, the company said.
GOTV KENYA APPOINTS SIMON KARIITHI GENERAL MANAGER Simon Kariithi has been appointed to the position of general manager for GOtv Kenya. He will be responsible for leading, directing and controlling GOtv Kenya’s operations. Kariithi, who will report to the managing director, Kenya, has extensive working experience in Sales & Marketing within Telecommunications, having worked for Samsung Electronics for more than 12 years, rising from sales manager to director of Internet & Mobile, where he extensively covered East and Central Africa Region. Kariithi holds a Master of Science degree in Business Management from University of East Anglia and a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry.
SAFARICOM BOARD APPOINTS DR. BITANGE NDEMO NON-EXECUTIVE & INDEPENDENT DIRECTOR Dr. Bitange Ndemo has been appointed to the Safaricom Board as a non-executive and independent director. Nicholas Ng’ang’a, Safaricom chairman, said in a statement that the decision was reached through a Board of Directors’ meeting held in March. Dr. Ndemo is a noted ICT industry expert who lectures on Entrepreneurship and Research Methods at the University of Nairobi’s Business School, the statement added. Most of his research centers on the link between ICT and small and medium enterprises in Kenya. Dr. Ndemo also served as the Permanent Secretary of Kenya’s Ministry of Information and Communication, from 2005 to 2013, when he initiated several transformative projects including infrastructural and development programs, as well as marketing Kenya as a destination for business process outsourcing, the statement added.
HAKKEN APPOINTS ANTHONY NJIHIA TERRITORY SALES MANAGER, EAST AFRICA Mr. Anthony Njihia has been appointed by Hakken as the territory sales manager for East Africa; his main focus will be helping the company, a multinational IT Management consulting and technology services provider, grow in the East Africa region. Mr. Njihia has more than 16 years of cross-industry experience, with more than eight years in the ICT industry. He has established market leadership in both startup and territory-expansion for companies such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where he was among 320 sales professionals globally who were nominated for a major company award. Mr. Njihia holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics & Political Science from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa and a Masters in Economics from the University of Nairobi. www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
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REGIONAL ROUND-UP
COMPILED BY JEANETTE OLOO
RWANDA: INTERNET SOCIETY TO PIONEER AFRICA REGIONAL INTERNET AND DEVELOPMENT DIALOGUE THE INTERNET SOCIETY HAS ANNOUNCED THAT IT WILL HOLD THE FIRST-EVER AFRICA REGIONAL INTERNET AND DEVELOPMENT DIALOGUE FROM 8-9 MAY IN KIGALI, RWANDA, IN PARTNERSHIP WITH UNESCO AND THE REPUBLIC OF RWANDA MINISTRY OF YOUTH AND ICT.
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he two-day meeting will bring together experts including government and inter-governmental organization officials, business and educational leaders from throughout the continent to discuss how Africa can use the internet to advance education, innovation and job creation.
The event aims to gather various organisations working online and in development across the region to identify synergies and create opportunities for coordination and collaboration. The Africa Regional Internet Development Dialogue is an opportunity for key stakeholders to discuss not only the challenges, but also the achievements in building the internet economy and education in Africa, review successes and setbacks of various initiatives throughout the region, share lessons learned and identify the next steps different stakeholders need to take. This conference is part of a global series of Internet development conferences organized by the Internet Society with the aim of furthering the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that aim at tackling the world’s main development challenges by 2030. Regional Internet Development Dialogues were held last year in Asia Pacific, hosted by UNESCAP, and in Latin America and Caribbean in partnership with Inter-America Development Bank and hosted by the Government of Argentina.
KENYA: TREASURY LAUNCHES M-AKIBA FOR SMALL INVESTORS TO INVEST IN GOVERNMENT BONDS THE KENYA NATIONAL TREASURY HAS OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED M-AKIBA, THE LONG-AWAITED MOBILE-BASED PLATFORM FOR BOND AUCTIONS – WHICH SETS A WORLDWIDE PRECEDENT.
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n The platform seeks to open a new channel for investors with small amounts of cash to invest in government bonds instead of keeping money in the bank.
M-Akiba will pay investors a tax-free interest rate of 10 percent, intensifying competition for cash deposits between the government, banks and Saccos, officials said. The Treasury is initially expected to auction the first tranche (Ksh 150 million) of the bond that allows every individual to invest a minimum of Ksh 3,000 and additional amounts in multiples of Ksh 100, according to media reports. The bond is open to all mobile users registered with Safaricom and Airtel and the interest is payable every six months. The three-year bond, modelled as an infrastructure bond, will be the first in the world to be sold on a mobile-money platform. Experts believe it will open up the bonds market, currently dominated by financial institutions and high-net-worth individuals, to retail investors. 10
CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
REGIONAL ROUND-UP
UGANDA: SUREBÜDDY BRINGS SPONSORED COVER TO UGANDA WITH NEW INSURANCE APP SUREBÜDDY, AN ANDROID APPLICATION HAS BEEN LAUNCHED IN UGANDA TO BRING SPONSORED INSURANCE AND INSURANCE-RELATED PRODUCTS TO THE MARKET THERE.
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he app renders advertisements, which consumers watch, and then they receive free screen cover as a reward.
“Strive Masiywa once said something that became part of my belief system.” Johan Basson, SureBüddy spokesperson, said in a press statement. “He said that if you identify a human need and reach out to meet it you have the most sure-fire way to succeed in business.” SureBüddy will implement the first phase of its service by providing screen cover in conjunction with Phone Doctor, and has partnered with Africell, one of the fastest-growing mobile telecommunications groups in Africa SureBüddy said it plans to roll out into 11 Sub-Saharan Africa countries, as well as India, Turkey, Indonesia, Philippines and Pakistan, with South American countries to follow.
TANZANIA: TIGO TANZANIA AWARDS $40,000 TO SUPPORT PROJECTS RUN BY LOCAL SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS TIGO TANZANIA, IN PARTNERSHIP WITH NGO REACH FOR CHANGE, HAS GIVEN AN AWARD OF USD $20,000 EACH TO TWO WINNERS OF THE 5TH EDITION OF THE TIGO DIGITAL CHANGEMAKERS COMPETITION.
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he competition identifies and supports social entrepreneurs who use digital tools and technology to improve communities and impact future generations. In addition to a substantial financial grant, winners are provided with access to Tigo and Reach for Change’s Incubator Program, which provides them with advice, expertise and access to global networks, enabling them to build financially sustainable social enterprises that create lasting, large-scale change for communities, Tigo Tanzania said. According to a press statement by Tigo, this year’s winners are Sophia Mbega and Nancy Sumari. Ms. Mbega impressed the judges with adigital initiative that is geared toward helping self-help women’s groups popularly known as VICOBA (village community banks). Ms. Sumari’s award-winning initiative, JENGA HUB, focuses on foundation knowledge for children. Through her hub and co-creation space for kids, she teaches computer programming, robotics and coding skills to primary-school children. This is the fifth year that Tigo and Reach for Change have held the competition. Winners were selected from hundreds of passionate social entrepreneurs who use digital tools and technology to implement solutions to problems facing Tanzanian communities, the company said. www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
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NEWS
BY DAVID HAMMETT
SMARTPHONE SALES SLOW IN AFRICA WHILE FEATURE PHONES REMAIN RESILIENT Africa's smartphone revolution is showing signs of a slowdown according to the latest figures compiled by International Data Corporation (IDC). The global technology research and consulting services firm says the continent's smartphone market totaled 95.37 million units in 2016.
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nd while this is up 3.4 percent year on year, it represents a considerable deceleration from the double-digit growth rates seen in the previous two years, with demand being hampered by the currency fluctuations that are affecting the continent. Overall, 215.33 million mobile handsets were shipped in Africa during 2016, up 10.1 percent on the previous year. However, it was feature phones that were largely responsible for this growth, with shipments increasing 16.1 percent year on year in 2016 to total 119.97 million units. This growth saw feature phones increase their unit share of Africa’s overall handset market from 53 percent in 2015 to 56 percent in 2016. “Africa has always been a tough market for mobile phone companies to crack, and in 2016 that challenge got even harder,” says Simon Baker, program director for mobile devices at IDC CEMA. “Many African economies struggled throughout 2016, and this had an inevitable knock-on effect on the smartphone market, which had previously experienced a very strong 2015. It was a particularly tough year in Nigeria, with the devaluation of the naira causing a drop in confidence in the distribution channel. And while North African markets saw an increase in overall handset shipments in 2016, the pace of growth slowed year on year due to exchange-rate fluctuations in Egypt and security issues in Algeria.” Samsung continued to lead the African smartphone market in 2016, largely through a reworked product portfolio that now includes more mid- to low-range models. However, at 28 million units, its 2016 smartphone shipments in Africa showed little growth from the figures recorded in 2015. The second-placed smartphone vendor was Transsion, widely known throughout Africa via its itel, Infinix, and Tecno brands. And in terms of feature phone shipments, Transsion comfortably outperformed its main competitors in 2016.
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Chinese vendors have been showing more interest in the African market in recent quarters and expanding into new countries. However, this expansion strategy is delivering mixed results across the continent. Of the big international Chinese vendors, Huawei posted year-on-year shipment growth to remain as Africa’s number-three smartphone vendor in 2016, while Lenovo saw flat growth and ZTE and Alcatel both suffered slight declines. “Price competitiveness has become a key issue in many African markets,” says Ramazan Yavuz, research manager for mobile devices in Africa at IDC CEMA. “To grow significantly in these markets, vendors have to be able to address the continent’s large low-income population by providing phones that are priced very competitively. As such, global vendors are cautious of the lower-priced Chinese brands now entering the market and are keeping a close eye on them.” Lenovo has returned to East Africa with its Moto brand, introducing a high-end phone early this year amid talk of bringing in lower-priced phones, as well. Across the globe, the company’s relatively affordable phones have earned considerable praise and are generally regarded as among the very best choices in their market segment. Bringing those phones to East Africa and beyond could have a notable impact on the company’s share of the market. Looking ahead at the high end of the market, Samsung and Apple are expected to introduce substantially revised versions of their best phones, though considering the prices, those phones will generate headlines more than they’ll have a serious impact on market numbers across Africa. 3G handsets continue to account for more than half of all new smartphone shipments in Africa, although 4G devices saw year-onyear growth of more than 50 percent in 2016. IDC is predicting that 4G handsets will account for more than half of new smartphone shipments in Africa by 2018, as prices for entry-level 4G phones drop and the number of 4G networks across the continent grows. For example, Egypt saw the launch of a major 4G network toward the end of 2016, and more countries are set to follow suit in 2017. CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
BY BOB BROWN
NEWS
RANSOMWARE CROWD’S BIG ON CUSTOMER SERVICE
BEWARE THE “EXPLOIT KIT INFECTION CHAIN,” CISCO RESEARCHER WARNS AT SECUREWORLD BOSTON CISCO SENIOR SECURITY RESEARCHER BRAD ANTONIEWICZ OFTEN GETS ASKED WHETHER THOSE WHO TAKE PEOPLE’S COMPUTERS HOSTAGE WITH RANSOMWARE ACTUALLY HOLD UP THEIR END OF THE BARGAIN AND DECRYPT FILES WHEN VICTIMS PAY BY BITCOIN.
“T
hey’re in it to make money… Good customer service is important to these people,” he said, and not at all tongue in cheek, during his lunchtime address on the opening day of SecureWorld Boston. Antoniewicz dove into the topic of ransomware variants like Cerber as part of a broader talk on An Anatomy of an Attack and the elaborate ecosystem behind cyberattacks. As he relayed, what starts as something seemingly simple like the infiltration of a Wordpress blog, often has much more serious consequences when you follow the “exploit kit infection chain.”
AND THE NEXT THING YOU KNOW, YOU’VE GOT RANSOMWARE In the example Antoniewicz shared, a blog showed up normally for Chrome browser users, but in the form of an error message when accessed via Microsoft Internet Explorer.
“Somehow an error message is being spawned by another process outside the browser,” he said. “This is a pretty bad situation.” Clues given by the page source code show suspect code had been added in the IE view by someone who used an exploit kit to compromise the blog and potentially, visitors’ browsers and systems. Neither the blogger nor the blog’s followers would likely realize what’s going on. “This is incredibly indicative of a specific campaign called Pseudo-Darkleech,” Antoniewicz said, that uses the “pretty awesome” – as in powerful – RIG exploit kit. It even comes with a single-paneof -glass dashboard that attackers can use to identify victims by browser type, operating system and country of origin, among other things. www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
Would-be attackers frequently access exploit kits on an “as a service” basis, then hit unsuspecting victims with malware such as ransomware, Antoniewicz said. “This is a whole ecosystem,” from those who hacked the blog to those who provide the exploit to those who pay to have the ransomware like Cerber Red (also called Red Cerber) installed, he said. This elaborate ecosystem gets back to Antoniewicz’s comment about the criminals who wield ransomware and their attention to providing good customer service, as in, typically freeing computers that are held hostage after a victim pays. What's more, ransomware only locks down certain files, folders or directories — after all, the perpetrators want you to be able to use your computer to pay your ransom.
When patient zero gets hit that's not when the attack actually started
“They have support forums in case you have trouble getting onto Tor, in some cases they have live chat and in one scenario they even had a dial-in number for technical support,” said the Cisco researcher, who also includes Hacker in Residence at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering on his resume. His favorite case involved a support forum in which a victim was having all sorts of trouble getting on Tor, dealing with Bitcoin, etc., and eventually got involved in such a long thread of messag-
es that the attacker got worn down and released the files for free.
SEEKING ‘PATIENT ZERO’
Antoniewicz and his peers study attacks like the one described here to better understand what Cisco customers are up against. One of the first things researchers do is try to find what he referred to as "patient zero, the first person to get infected" to learn what else on the network might have been affected. This can help vendors build signatures to detect future breaches. "When patient zero gets hit that's not when the attack actually started," Antoniewicz said. "There was a whole prior phase to all of this. There was when the attacker compromised that first web site. There was when the attacker had to set up the infrastructure that serves up these exploits. There's when the attacker needs to set up reconnaissance to figure out who they're targeting and understand the network." Antoniewicz and his Cisco Umbrella colleagues not surprisingly examine attacks from the DNS level and he said those in the crowd could do likewise by viewing DNS logs. DNS is often overlooked, but can give you a real read on what's happening on your network and even let you block certain connections before they are made, he said. The Cisco Umbrella team exploits machine learning and big data analytics to make sense of such data, using IP geo-location, predictive and other models. While Antoniewicz's background is actually more on the attack side of IT security, his teammates include plenty of data scientists, and he said that's where most security teams need to go these days to thwart emerging threats. Bob Brown is a news editor for Network World 13
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BY ROB HOUGH
AN M-PESA ANNIVERSARY
LEADS TO LOOKING BACK AND LOOKING FORWARD M-PESA’S RECENT AND WIDELY HERALDED 10TH ANNIVERSARY CERTAINLY WAS A MOMENT WORTHY OF RECOGNITION. M-PESA IS NOW NORMAL IN THE SOCIETY AND AT THE SAME TIME EXTRAORDINARY. IT’S NOT PRESS-RELEASE HYPE TO SAY IT’S HAD A VAST, POSITIVE IMPACT IN ANY NUMBER OF WAYS. ANNIVERSARIES, IN THE BUSINESS WORLD OR OTHERWISE, TEND TO BE TIMES BOTH TO LOOK BACK, AND LOOK AHEAD.
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iquid Telecom and a number of other experts have done just that, sharing broader thoughts about what’s transpired in the world of Kenyan tech and startups, and what’s needed. “Over the past 10 years,” Liquid notes, “Kenya has developed a solid reputation as a leader in the tech start-up scene within Africa - and has become known as Africa’s ‘Silicon Savannah.’” Liquid’s report notes that along with M-PESA, real-time event-mapping platform Ushahidi also helped boost Kenya’s image in the tech world. “Developed in response to violence following the 2007 disputed presidential elections, the software behind the platform has been regularly used in emergency scenarios worldwide, including in the wake of the 2010 Haiti and Chile earthquakes, as well as in New Zealand in 2011,” Liquid said in a recent report that looks at tech developments and innovation in Kenya, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa, what some call the KINGS. Speakers at the inaugural Africa Cloud Summit noted that some major challenges and opportunities with IT and economic development are driven by forces outside the tech world. One speaker pointed out that the very nature of work in Kenya is changing, from standard jobs to what some call the gig economy, with Uber being the classic example of non-traditional employment. Nyimbi Odero, an advisor to the Ministry of ICT, told the audience: “The age of finding an 8-to-5 job is gone. We are 14
never going to have large factories employing thousands of people.” The government has responded, he noted, by creating ajira.go.ke, a site that helps Kenyan freelancers find things to do to make some money. Ajira relates that it “aims to introduce young people in Kenya to online work and provide the tools, training and mentorship needed for young people to work and earn an income through online work.” There’s a vibrant culture of entrepreneurs working hard to make things happen, Liquid, Odero and others agree, along with valuable support from the government, large corporations, other governments and various organisations. Some sharp-eyed observers, perhaps sharp-tongued observers, have been fretting a little, wondering if maybe some folks on the Silicon Savannah need more of a grind-it-out, take-smallsteps approach and fewer dreams of creating unicorns – companies that are sold for one hundred billion shillings.
Nyimbi Odero, advisor, Ministry of ICT On markedly smaller, less-dazzling levels, Kenyans, more than 70 percent of whom have some internet access, have taken a lot of initiative to find freelance work, Odero said. He noted that Kenyans make up a substantially disproportionate number of people on Upwork, a popular site for freelance workers seeking opportunities. And it’s in that realm, not necessarily in the world of headline-making deals, that he anticipates considerable growth in employment for Kenyans and benefits for the nation. “If you can type, you ought to be able to work,” he said at the Africa Cloud Summit, after relating an example of large numbers of people doing small amounts of court-related transcription work. Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary at Kenya’s Ministry of Information and Communication from 2005 to 2013, called for additional government support to help those who wish to work for others and the entrepreneurs.
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the introduction to Liquid Telecom’s report begins, “When will we see Africa’s first ‘unicorns?’”
He related in Liquid’s report that the government “needs to invest heavily in increasing the number of young people with access to digital skills and entrepreneurship support.
The introduction concludes: “The world is still waiting with anticipation to see the emergence of Africa’s first ‘unicorns’… It is a story that is capturing the imagination of the business community at large, as these start-ups are poised to bring serious disruption to the market, while potentially changing consumer behaviour forever”.
“Remember that success in innovation depends on how much you spend in R&D. African governments must invest in R&D if Africa is to compete globally. If success comes from one in 100 startups, then we must expand the catchment area of young developers and at the same time provide support to those who show promise.” CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
BY BARAKA JEFWA
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REALITIES OF ARCHITECTURE: WHAT YOU NEED AND WHAT YOU GET
DURING THE RECENTLY CONCLUDED AFRICA CLOUD SUMMIT, GEORGE NJUGUNA, CIO HF GROUP, MADE A BATTLE CRY TO THE IT INDUSTRY. HE CALLED FOR MORE SYSTEM ARCHITECTS, WHO WILL HELP CIOS MEET AND SURPASS THEIR GOALS. There is a need for education and training from any number of sources, to include vendors, Gichohi said, to ensure architects have the knowledge they need to craft effective, efficient systems Fortinet trains local partners and customers, an important role in creating system architects, Gichohi believes. The training provides insights into the company’s product portfolio and how it can improve network security for businesses. The training also offers technical coverage with advanced labs to simulate different network scenarios, which provides trainees with additional understanding of architecting.
George Njuguna, CIO HF Group
“W
e need more architects in IT, who need to draw the cloud systems for us as CIOs and allow us as CIOs to have better conversations in future,” said Mr. Njuguna, who shared his views while discussing cloud- adoption challenges experienced from a macro level.
“In most institutions today, the word ‘architect’ is haphazardly used. Organisations need to invest in their internal capacity as well as invest in IT architects. As CIOs, we need them to tell us how far we can go with the cloud, as well as walk us through the security details. This will help us have greater conversations on systems we will be implementing.” In trying to understand the importance of architects in the industry, as brought to light by Mr. Njuguna, CIO East Africa interviewed John Gichohi, system architect, Fortinet, East Africa, who reiterated the CIO’s point by saying: “The system architect/engineer plays a vital role in IT. His role is to understand the requirements of a business, design and propose the products and solutions that will help the business actualize their needs and assist implementation teams in configuring the proposed set of products to the businesses’ satisfaction.” www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
While Gichohi believes that even though architects are important for business, he realises that not all businesses can afford them. “To the business, it would make sense tapping their skillsets during projects in a case-by-case basis rather than having them as full-time resources. Honestly, I think the systems-architect role should be outsourced, apart from some critical businesses that would require an inhouse design teams, like Telcos,” he said. Looking at regional awareness of an IT architect’s job, Gichohi says that the role is not yet as understood in East Africa as it is in global markets. “Most businesses focus on point solutions that have regional presence and uptake rather than solutions that can give them value that’s relevant to their business needs. As dynamic as IT technology is with the adoption of cloud solutions, for example, many CIOs face challenges in understanding how this upcoming technology impacts their current IT environment –and the businesses push to have efficient and dynamic IT systems in place. The regional market is therefore being reactive to embracing the role of system architects,” he explained further.
“We are planning to start enrolling system architects in a forum where we will openly discuss challenges and success stories we have experienced to share knowledge between the growing ecosystem of systems architects in the market,” Gichohi said. Per a recent report by Gartner, the worldwide x86 server virtualization market reached about $5.6 billion in 2016, an increase of 5.7 percent from 2015. As more businesses adopt virtual systems, Gichohi insisted that the role of a systems architect is more vital than ever. “As easy as cloud adoption and virtualization on both public and private clouds sounds from a marketing perspective, it is a nightmare when it comes to the actual design and implementation of solutions on these cloud platforms, as each platform has different architectural structures and challenges,” he added. “The adoption of SDN for example brings with it some design and architectural challenges that need deep understanding of how networks are architected and how different solutions plug in to achieve orchestration. Fortinet has been providing security solutions from the onset of the cloud platforms, and we offer ‘bring your own license’ and ‘on-demand’ security solutions for customers to uptake on an OPEX model.” 15
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BY BARAKA JEFWA
MYDAWA ATTEMPTS TO DIGITIZE KENYA’S HEALTHCARE SECTOR ONE PILL AT A TIME The plight of counterfeit drugs is a big problem in Kenya. They account for more than 25 percent of the country’s annual market revenue, according to recent statistics from the Kenya Association of Pharmaceutical Industry.
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xperts say something must be done because, apart from the huge financial losses, counterfeit drugs directly affect the health of Kenyans. Enter technology which has been a major disrupter in the Kenyan economy, though some medical professionals wonder if maybe things might move too quickly. What’s in store for the medical sector? One prospect is MyDawa, which promises to connect people with medicine that is guaranteed to be real, said Tony Wood, managing director of the company. “MyDawa is an e-commerce platform, or an m-commerce platform and I suppose if you want to put a label on it, it’s probably somewhere a cross between Amazon and Uber. As Uber does, it simplifies that supply chain it puts you, through an app, directly in touch with the taxi driver. That is what we want to do; we are putting you directly in contact with the person who moves the product directly into the country,” Wood said in an interview with CIO East Africa. “We don’t necessarily want to disrupt the healthcare sector, but we certainly want to enhance it and I think that’s what our solution will do. It’s a mixture of products including; medicines, wellness products and food supplement; it’s a consumer driven solution that uses technology to provide a good price for products,” he added. Mr. Wood explained that MyDawa can ensure authenticity of products because the company is securing the supply chain end-to-end in a bid to take out inefficiencies and risks.
“We provide a consistency of price, a consistency of availability and a consistency of quality, and you will be able to authenticate that through this solution,” he said. “We are working with an international provider to make sure we have anticounterfeit labels; and then you can authenticate either by using a scratch-off panel and sending it through a short code or putting it into the application or mobile web or you can scan a QR code which will bring back a message that will tell you it’s a genuine product,” he added. The startup is constantly adding products and Wood looks forward to a major addition: what he calls an e-prescription capability that lets doctors prescribe medicine directly into the app. “At the moment if you get a written prescription from your doctor, what you do is you just take a picture and upload it on the app so that our qualified pharmacists can transcribe it and place it in the cart for you,” he said.
WHAT ABOUT SECTOR READINESS? During the roundtable forum, Dr. Nelly Bosire, a member of the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board, pointed out that even though technology in the medical field is welcomed and arriving rapidly, there are still some challenges when it comes to collaboration among different groups within the healthcare sector. “A lot of the people who are bringing technology to the medical field are not medics,” she said. “The medics need to catch up, and they cannot catch up if they’re isolated; it is very important that these technologies are embraced in the space of all groups working together so that the technologies can work across all of them,” she said. Apart from the problem of isolation within the sector, Dr. Bosire also pointed out that poorly trained staff, ignorant patients, inadequate policies and poor sector regulation could also be a problem when trying to implement such technologies in the Kenyan health sector. Giving her closing statement, Dr. Bosire went on to offer her own solution to these problems: “You need to empower the doctor when you come up with new technologies.”
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CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
PICTORIAL
INAUGURAL AFRICAN CLOUD SUMMIT ATTRACTS REGION’S
TOP TECH LEADERS
CIO EAST AFRICA’S INAUGURAL AFRICA CLOUD SUMMIT, HELD IN NAIROBI ON 15 AND 16 MARCH, BROUGHT TOGETHER MORE THAN 200 CEOS, CIOS AND OTHER HIGH-LEVEL TECH WORKERS FOR TALKS, PANEL DISCUSSIONS AND ONE-ON-ONE MEETINGS. THE EVENT, HELD AT THE RADISSON BLU, WAS SPONSORED BY MICROSOFT, LITTLE, IDG AND THE KENYAN GOVERNMENT.
Andreas Fruhen, director Technical Operations, M-KOPA
Ben Mann, IBM COO, Sales and Distribution
Time for conversations fostered productive dialogues.
Personal meetings gave attendees the opportunities to create partnerships.
IT professionals gathered in Nairobi for talks and discussions. www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
John Galligan, senior director, Government Affairs - Microsoft
Ben Roberts, CEO Liquid Telecom Kenya
Bidco's CEO Vimal Shah
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PICTORIAL
Juliet Maina, associate Triple OK Law
Kunle Awosika, Microsoft general manager
Panel discussions fostered open-ended conversations.
Sujith Kumar, product manager, Cisco 18
Steve Njenga, CIO, Barclays Bank, Kenya
The event, at Nairobi’s Radisson Blu, drew over 200 East African IT professionals.
Nyimbi Odero, advisor, Ministry of ICT
Joseph Mathenge, Group CISO Airtel CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
BY DR. HERBERT TURYAGYENDA
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NAIROBI, DAKAR MEETINGS DRIVE PUBLIC-SECTOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION CONTINUING ITS COMMITMENT TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION THROUGHOUT AFRICA, MICROSOFT HOSTED HIGH-LEVEL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS, SELECT INNOVATORS AND COMPANY REPRESENTATIVES – WHO DISCUSSED PLANS TO BRING CLOUD-BASED SERVICES TO GOVERNMENTS – FROM ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA AT TWO-DAY EVENTS IN NAIROBI AND DAKAR.
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articipants at the gatherings in early March focused on determining how the public and private sectors can collaborate and leverage cloud-based technologies to address some of Africa’s greatest challenges. With sessions dedicated to sectors including health, agriculture, transport, taxes and justice, attendees had the opportunity to discuss opportunities, challenges and best practices, and assess how technology can best support and strengthen African infrastructure and economies. In my role as the regional director and medical officer of a digital health company working in many countries across Africa, I had the honor of participating as a Microsoft partner in health in both the East and West African events. Each country and each sector approach innovation and technology differently, but several common themes and issues ran through the events regardless of region, focus, or current technology stage. Cloud computing is facilitating technology uptake Cloud computing is driving the digital transformation globally, and in Africa, it is profoundly changing the way innovators, companies and sectors do business. The cloud is enabling more affordable, efficient, and accessible solutions which is critical especially for the public sector in Africa. At the events, Microsoft announced plans to offer cloud hosting services for governmental e-services across agriculture, transport and health, which would create cost savings for State agencies, with no need for costly physical equipment.
www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
Cloud-based technologies are offering new ways to do business and expand economic opportunities. For the cloud to ensure positive impact, we need a trusted, responsible and inclusive cloud. All organizations should seek security, privacy, transparency and compliance, but these are especially important for governmental organisations. So how was the security of the cloud addressed at these public-sector events? Security is essential for cloud platform adoption by governments
Security of the cloud is a real concern and a pressing issue for government adoption of cloud services. Most reputable cloud solution providers invest heavily in security and are far more secure than people realize – and generally far more secure than the alternative of on-site servers. As a digital health company, we at access.mobile International prioritize security and rely on Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure Azure to keep data secure; by developing our technology on a trusted cloud, we are able to reduce costs and improve accessibility. But Mic-
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TREND LINES rosoft also announced plans to continue to enhance the security of its cloud platform to boost adoption by governments. Robust and real time data is relevant across sectors Data can help elucidate the most complicated issues and drive informed decision making. Cloud-based technologies allow for complex data processing and storage needs and can deliver real time analytics. The value and importance of data was clear across sectors at the event – health, transport, agriculture, taxes and justice – and highlighted in the presentations of many innovators. Many government services are still primarily paper-based so the transition to digital solutions will start to build valuable data; insights drawn from that data will drive the next wave of efficiencies and impact governments and their citizens. Inclusion is needed to decrease the digital divide
The value and importance of data was clear across sectors at the event – health, transport, agriculture, taxes and justice – and highlighted in the presentations of many innovators. While the digital transformation offers tremendous opportunities across sectors and for the economy as a whole, it has the potential to deepen the digital divide. Innovators, enterprises, governments and large IT institutions like Microsoft should work to ensure that digital dividends and benefits are shared. To this end, Microsoft has aligned its corporate strategy with the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Government officials at the event sought to un-
derstand how the cloud would impact their constituents. And all of us need to continue to ask: How can we better engage our communities? Technology and innovation are changing the landscape across sectors in Africa. ICT infrastructure continues to expand along with skills development and the entrepreneurial ecosystem, suggesting true growth for Africa in the digital age. While narratives like “Africa rising” have yet to be realized, there is much promise in the digital environment. How governments and the public sector embrace technology and foster innovation will influence each sector and the broader economy. As is commonly said, “technology makes it possible, people make it happen.” The digital transformation is underway and it is time to embrace technology, innovate and work together to build an inclusive and beneficial ecosystem. Dr. Herbert Turyagyenda is the regional director of access.mobile International
PUTTING THE SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN INNOVATION Innovation is forging its own identity across Africa - where an exciting new generation of African start-ups are developing solutions and services for African problems. Find out more in Liquid Telecom’s latest innovation report.
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ith nearly 200 million people between the ages of 15 and 24, Africa has the youngest population in the world. This figure is set to double by 2025, ushering in a new generation with the potential to understand and solve pressing social and economic challenges by harnessing the power of digital innovation Across each sector, start-ups are unearthing new ways to do business. From finance and energy through to agriculture and healthcare, entrepreneurs are developing solutions, services and platforms that are helping to refine the supply chain and drive efficiencies. In the process, they are creating a better flow of information across the entire region, which is empowering businesses and consumers to make more informed and accurate decisions.
the start-up scene is little over five years old, and requires careful nurturing over the coming years. Funding and access to other critical resources is required to support start-ups who have little to no previous experience in the market. While governments and academic institutions will also have a valuable role to play, particularly in attempts to engage with those living under the poverty line.
entrepreneurs, funders, market watchers and start-ups, the report identifies what is needed to better support start-ups and help them grow their business across the region and beyond. While many start-ups focus on developing solutions for urban areas, a growing number are turning their attention on how to tackle problems in rural regions. An estimated 65% of sub-Saharan Africa’s labour force works in the agriculture sector, which accounts for one-third of the region’s GDP, according to the World Bank. At the same time, rural areas are home to some of Africa’s poorest communities.
High-speed, reliable connectivity underpins innovation, and the rollout of new networks is an important enabler for start-ups and the advancement of digital services. It is why Liquid Telecom is releasing a new report dedicated to showcasing the region’s latest innovation and talent, which it supports through Africa’s largest independent fibre network.
Increasing agricultural productivity is therefore critical to lifting large numbers of rural households out of poverty. The report also explores how technology and innovation can play an important role in supporting Africa’s agriculture sector by empowering farmers with information that can help drive efficiencies and ultimately increase yield and profit.
The report includes analysis of the region’s key innovation hubs, and in particular Solution identifies the potential of Kenya, Ivory Its is starting to shape the way people Coast, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa. interact in the region’s rapidly growing Together known as the KINGS countries, urban areas, while bringing untold benefits these five countries share an estimated to underserved rural communities. Success 324.4 million mobile subscribers and 177.7 million internet subscribers, They face many challenges. But for E insightful case studies into ALOGUoffer DIand African start-ups every challenge is the development of the African tech also an opportunity – insufficient power innovation narrative. supplies? Hello solar energy. No access to formal financial services? Welcome What makes an African tech mobile money. Limited access to mobile start-up broadband? Enter SMS-based solutions. g torintick?
The story bof on icommunications Distri ut and innovation
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Knowledge
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CIO Advertorial April 17 AH EDIT.indd 1
Business model
The world is still waiting with anticipation to see the emergence of Africa’s first “unicorns” (start-up companies valued at over $1 billion). It is a story that is capturing the imagination of the business community at large, as these start-ups are poised to bring serious disruption to the market, while potentially changing consumer behaviour forever.
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With Africa’s start-up ecosystem still at such an early stage of development, access to fund and other critical resources are needed for it to make the next crucial steps. Through a series of interviews with
To download and read the full Liquid Telecom’s African Innovation Report 2017, visit www.liquidtelecom.com
Funding
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Launch!
WTH
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Profit
17/03/2017 16:16
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Building Africa’s digital future
FEATURE
BY TOM MACAULAY
HOW TO USE DATA SCIENTISTS AND MACHINE LEARNING Working with data scientists requires an alternative approach to business in which logic overrules creativity
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achine learning has become a buzzword in business technology but the implications of applying it are often overlooked.
"The major problem is that data science is science itself, and businesses aren't very well accustomed to using scientific methods of decision making," said Jane Zavalishina, CEO of machine learning and data analytics specialists Yandex Data Factory. The company emerged as a spin-out from multinational technology corporation Yandex, the operator of the largest search engine in Russia. In December 2014, Yandex extended the capacity in data science it developed to support this core product into providing machine learning-based services for industry applications by launching the Yandex Data Factory. The company emerged as a spin-out from multinational Yandex - the operator of the largest search engine in Russia - in late 2014. It provides machine learning and data science services to create predictive models for things such as targeted advertising campaigns and determining stock orders for shops. The Yandex Data Factory team establishes its findings through a process of experimentation, and its success can only be judged once the experiment concludes. "When you delegate some work to your employee, ideally you expect more or less a complete level of results," Zavalishina explained. "But it works differently with data scientists, because with data science you cannot expect guaranteed results."
Failure will be a legitimate outcome of any data science project and this is a prospect business managers must accept.
What makes a data scientist tick? Working with data scientists requires an alternative approach to business in which logic overrules creativity and reality trumps belief. In other words, it depends on fact and logic rather than imagining what could be possible. It'll be a struggle, then, to task data scientists with questions that they fundamentally consider meaningless. "It sounds like division by zero, it doesn't make sense," said Zavalishina. "The problem is you can't make them do this; you cannot motivate people to divide by zero. They start thinking you're probably an idiot, which doesn't make your work with them better." They need to understand the project and believe that it makes sense. If they are approached to use machine learning to improve systems, for example, they will need enough data to measure meaningful results. "A lot of decisions in business are made by intuition, that's why there is no need to measure everything in regular business," said Yandex Data Factory COO Alexander Khaytin. "But then when it comes to a data science project or to communication with data scientists you can't just tell them, 'do this stuff, I feel it's going to be good.' It doesn't work."
Asking the right questions Predictive analytics modelling relies on algorithms that tend to be far more complex than more traditional statistical systems. They can be difficult to explain. The retail industry often uses data science to better predict stock replenishment requirements for weekly item orders. The results can amaze, but there are so many factors to take in that the process itself is often hard to communicate. "It's just impossible to explain to someone who cannot grasp data complexity, but because it cannot be explained, you cannot decide how good it is just based on your common sense or business intelligence," said Zavalishina. "You need to make sure that you
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CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
FEATURE know what it is you want to improve, and how you measure results. "It's not creative. It's specifics and what it tried to predict or optimise. It's like dealing with mathematicians. You ask the question and then you will receive exactly the answer to this question." If your question is wrong don't expect the right answer. It's a surprisingly common problem, as companies often lack thorough planning on their objectives and the measurement of assessing them. "We were working with this big retail company and the asked us to build a model which would predict how much of each and every item will sell the next week," Zavalishina recalls. "We tried it with one item, but the problem was they realised that [the prediction] is practically no use for them." Their model was precise, but the company was ordering its product in packages of six rather than as individual items. If the prediction called for seven items next week, they would need to answer a different question. Should they buy one or two? It may appear a small change, but it meant they had started at the wrong place. The model became entirely different, because the parameters for optimisation had shifted. Data science requires careful planning. The company received the right answer, but should have asked a different question.
Failure on the route to success The optimisation model provided to another retailer suggested that the expensive and unusual products they rarely sold weren't worth ordering at all. The decision was mathematically logical, but that doesn't mean it made business sense. Such items can be crucial to the shop's identity and customer base. "You are pretty much guaranteed that with your first data science project or machine learning project you will need to get back and rethink what the metrics are and what the goals are," said Zavalishina. Yandex usually recommends customers begin with projects that are very specific and short, to avoid the risk of a longterm investment in a project that could have meaningless results. This method allows companies to make piece-bypiece improvements across the board. www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
Another company had their own system to determine which customers were sent certain offers. Yandex would use the recommendations of a statistical model produced by a machine learning algorithm to determine how a random slice of the customer base was contacted. The rest of the customers were contacted according to the previous system, and the company then compared the conversion rates of offers into sales. The only problem was that the offers were sent to the control group on Friday and to the experimental group on the weekend. The diverse patterns of behaviour at the different times of contact made any comparison meaningless. Business managers often ask Yandex whether they should take courses in machine learning or data science to understand how the technology could benefit their organisations. "What we usually answer is actually no, it doesn't make any sense," said Zavalishina. "It won't make you data scientists, so it won't really help you. If you want to be able to apply the technology in your work, you are much better off learning the scientific method and measuring and experimentation. Basically, we need a more scientific approach in the business if you want this technology to bring results."
Accepting uncertainty Businesses need to embrace the scientific culture. Negative results don't mean the work has failed, they only prove that the optimisation didn't work. The responsibility within the corporate structure is another challenge. Yandex was once approached by a client hoping to optimise its advertising spending. The algorithm developed promised the same level of response while saving 20 percent in costs. Implementing the results proved more challenging than attaining them. The staff responsible for this project were paid bonuses based on their plans and decisions behind what they should buy to achieve optimal results. "So now they have this model, which provides them with recommendations, and mathematically it is proven that the recommendations were better, but the problem is it's their responsibility," Zavalishina said. Data science projects acknowledge for the different responsibilities and priori-
ties that can exist in the same business. This team was expected to implement a model that could result in cuts to their bonuses. "When it comes to a scientific approach it's much more rational, much more measurable, and this can be quite a conflicted situation," added Khaytin. "The usual decision-making purpose is going to be at least disrupted. For example, an expert can tell you 'I have an intuition, I have an idea, it's going to be that way'. In our hands you have some data science tool, some data science project and it's totally different, there is no intuition, there is no place for it." Integrating business and scientific approaches is a complicated process that requires patience and understanding. Yandex also worked with a steel manufacturer on optimising the balance behind the mixture of materials used in the production process. The quality was improved by increasing the quantity of a certain substance, but the more of this substance that was added the more expensive the production. Yandex used historical data to make an accurate model of how best to balance the quality and cost of the mixture, returning with a recipe provided by a machine learning algorithm. "This recipe often doesn't make sense to them," said Zavalishina. "They look and say 'no it won't work, I cannot do that, I'm not accepting this, I'm doing something different.’ "The funny thing is it will bring better optimisation, but on the other hand you have the experts' [preferences], so how do you deal with that? They are basically not using 80 percent of your recommendations. "We came up with a solution, which would be another algorithm that looks at the recipe we provided, and on top of that builds the prediction of how probable it is to be accepted by that trader. So we optimised the recipe so they became a bit a less optimal from a strictly mathematical point of view, but much more probable to be accepted by humans." Fears have long been expressed that artificial intelligence could destroy humankind, but the marriage between man and machine learning remains at the foundation of data science. Tom Macaulay is a writer for Computerworld UK 25
COVER STORY
BY JEANETTE OLOO
Michael Mbuthia
Details how KBA-IPSL creates interoperability in banking
INTEGRATED PAYMENTS SERVICE LIMITED STARTED TO TAKE SHAPE IN 2012 BECAUSE OF A GAP IN THE MARKET: FOR BANKS TO INTEROPERATE THEY NEEDED A COMMON PLATFORM. ESTABLISHED BY THE KENYA BANKERS ASSOCIATION, IPSL OFFICIALLY STARTED OPERATIONS IN NOVEMBER 2015.
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heir efforts have raised some interesting questions: How’s IPSL been finding and addressing gaps in the banking system and where do things stand? Mr. Michael Mbuthia, chief information officer of KBA-IPSL shared insights regarding his work as a CIO for a company in which he and his team have commissioned systems from the ground up, what he is doing with KBA-member 26
banks and the new platform that has banks talking to each other. You could call him the Bank Whisperer, but he insists that he relies on team of 20 people who are dedicated and passionate. Mr. Mbuthia related that he’s been in the banking industry for 14 years, with his longest job, of 8 years, at the Co-operative Bank of Kenya. He credits his
success to good colleagues and superiors who shaped his professional career, most notably Rosemary Githiga, company secretary at Co-operative Bank, “an exemplary leader and mentor.” A parent and a husband, he said, “I take the work area of my life a bit seriously and over and above that, just to unwind I do a few things like I run every day; I try to put in 10 km every day at Geoffrey’s and I’ve also done boxing every Saturday for the last six years.” CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
COVER STORY
We are excited because it is not just about technology; it’s also about changing how people transact and hopefully also it will change lives.
ways: I’ll have to go to the bank, cash it out and give it to you or I’ll have to draw a cheque or send it through a wallet. If you look at the options, going to withdraw cash, there is a risk of being mugged; writing a cheque there is the T+1 to clear, leading to time constraints. While sending it to a wallet is still a good process, it goes through an intermediary, but if you really have the platform you can pay directly,” he said.
He noted that this role, unlike other CIO roles, has been built from the ground up rather than being a position in which he worked with an already-established infrastructure.
PesaLink is a platform that allows banks to talk to each other through the use of mobile phone applications or unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) codes, though each bank is allowed to customise and integrate PesaLink onto its own mobile banking platforms.
He’s been involved in setting up comms links and setting up the PesaLink platform, among other challenges. The technology part is easy, he said, adding that real process comes in getting banks onboard, going through various test cycles with banks and integrating with the Central Bank, a critical stakeholder. Whatever he might bring to perhaps a relatively challenging CIO position, there’s more than enough going on and coming up that it takes his “extremely gifted technical and operational staff” to make it all happen, Mr. Mbuthia emphasised.
PesaLink
The inter-banking money transfer service allows customers to send money from one bank account to another in real time. The platform enables customers to send as little as Ksh 10 to as much as Ksh 999,999. It’s free from Ksh 10 to Ksh 50, with a charge of 11 shillings for larger transactions. “We have taken a piece of technology that can do a lot more,” said Mr. Mbuthia. “What we have done is expose that
technology across to banks, allowing banks to talk to each other. This has never been done before. Forgetting about technology, we are trying to address the fundamental issue in the industry and the issue is cash.” There are considerable prospects for success, he noted. “If 90 percent to 93 percent of transactions are cash, it means that we have a huge basket of opportunity to leverage off of and actually that is what we are targeting. So our basic principle is to integrate all the banks in a seamless technology and then provide payments at a real time for us to move money to you.” The effects are substantial, Mr. Mbuthia said. “We are excited because it is not just about technology; it’s also about changing how people transact and hopefully also it will change lives. Imagine if you are somewhere in a hospital and you want to pay for an emergency medical treatment. You call all your relatives who say they have the money, but how do I get it to you? The beauty with us is that our values are between zero to a million. I can actually send you a million shillings directly to your account. Imagine the opportunities.” When PesaLink was launched in February, only 12 banks had been approved
“It really has been more of a CIO on steroids,” he said. “That has been my job, as well as mentoring the team, carrying them across, just making sure everyone has the right role. We are also running a shift system because banks would want to call us anytime and get any support that they would need. It is very enjoyable, apart from the long nights and early mornings.”
On IPSL’s role IPSL provides technology-based payment solutions for banks at subsidized rates. This brought out the need to offer banks a much more convenient platform; that was the first premise. “The second premise was to address the issue about cash, because what would happen is that if I want to give you money right now I have to do it two www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
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COVER STORY by the Central Bank of Kenya. Mr. Mbuthia confirmed that 10 more have already been approved to participate. Mr. Mbuthia demoed the platform oneon-one to reaffirm that PesaLink is fully operational. He used the Co-operative Bank app and PesaLink to send this reporter a small amount of cash, which arrived immediately.
Security Keeping everything secure was a focus from the first day and an integrated part of the system, not something bolted on, Mr. Mbuthia said. “At the very beginning we started by actually asking ourselves, ‘Are we going to build an infrastructure that will be absolutely secure?’ because in banking, we all know that it’s all about trust and book entries. Those book entries are what we need to protect because you’ll go to a bank and now withdraw your cash. So what we’ve done is very rigorous audits, external audits with external service providers, and also we’ve built security technology around the product. We’ve built security on top of security on top of security,” Mr. Mbuthia said. Michael noted that the company does quarterly, rolling audits around the systems; aims to roll out ISO 27001 as a standard and acquire the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), a proprietary information-security standard.
Competition Addressing the question of whether PesaLink is designed to take on the electronic-payments market that’s dominated by telecom-operated mobile money platforms, Mr. Mbuthia noted that experts say 10 percent of the transactions in Kenya are done on digital devices, which is to say that nobody is tapping into the other 90 percent. “We actually don’t think there is an aspect of competition,” he said. “We are not even thinking about competing with anyone. We are looking to target the 90 percent that is cash-based, convert it out of cash and with that further the agenda on digital payments and the rest. 28
“We are actually trying to remediate a gap that is in the industry and make the payments a bit faster. This reduces the timelines and the higher values we handle also helps. We are really just trying to give efficiencies to banks, the cheque side, making those transactions shorter in terms of timeframes and also reducing cracks in the industry.”
Blockchain and cloud Technology keeps on changing and offering new opportunities, Mr. Mbuthia pointed out. There’s been global buzz about blockchain, which intrigues him. “I think blockchain technology is one of those exciting technologies in the industry that are coming up,” he said. “Not many people have gotten a grasp of what it is because from what I know is that it’s same concept to what we are doing in that you book entries in a ledger.” “Blockchain means you have a bigger ledger where everyone can post and has visibility, but from an industry perspective you know the operability of such a kind of technology has to be tested first, address all the underlying concerns – what if money gets lost? Who manages to track that and refund it because if you compare that technology and what we are doing, for us CBK has a lot of oversight on our operations, so with blockchain who has the oversight on all those operations?” There’s some way to go with blockchain, but Mr. Mbuthia would be happy to lead the way. “It is an excellent technology, but it has to be really tested before it is actually operationalized in this kind of context. I would want to be the first guy to roll it out, though. I’d relish that opportunity.” Focusing on what was once an exotic, new technology that’s become accepted, cloud-based computing, Mr. Mbuthia said IPSL has been active in pushing services to the cloud whenever it’s possible. “We have deployed a lot of our services like email services to the cloud and anything that is required to be on-premises, like the server computer for the application, we have made them resident here.
I think blockchain technology is one of those exciting technologies in the industry that are coming up.
Other aspects that we are looking to put to the cloud are CRM and the Desk Hub 2. We have a semblance of it on the cloud, but we now want to fully automate that. What that does is, it reduces the operational cost and you don’t have to get an Exchange administrator just sitting here managing mailboxes; we have managed to outsource that problem to someone else,” Mr. Mbuthia commented.
Advice to CIOs “I think the journey for a CIO is usually very interesting, full of challenges, but I think if you enjoy the journey, the work becomes easier. Sometimes you end up focusing too much on the journey and the issues that you get so you end up not enjoying the journey. Challenge some of those perceptions that say you have to go through partners to get a service. I have managed to challenge that and what that allows is that you eliminate the middleman. That allows you go directly to the service provider so you reduce some cost. “CIOs are also known to work too much, some of them, so that life-work balance is very key. For me, I try to put in 10 km every day. Sometimes I manage 10 and sometimes I mange 5. But what happens is, it is not the distance that I would want to cover; it is getting myself out of the office at the end of the day, going running and when you get to the house you have recharged. You’ve changed the mindset. Sometimes when I leave the office with a really stressing issue, I go run for 10 km and get answers. Most of the answers I get, I usually get when I am running so that helps. “Just try to get a work/life balance to help manage the work exigencies and the pressures that come with being a CIO. Most of the time it is not easy.” CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
BY LILIAN MUTEGI
IT AND LEADERSHIP
Mr. Kennedy Chinganya, the managing director at MTN Business, is not a new name in the industry; he’s worked with companies from IBM to Microsoft and established himself as an African leader who pioneered various multinationals’ growth across the continent.
FROM WORKING AS A CHARTERED ACCOUNTANT TO LEADING A PAN-AFRICAN BUSINESS, MEET
Kennedy Chinganya, MD MTN Business www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
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IT AND LEADERSHIP rector, which I did, so I took over that as a full-time job in 2016.” Roles evolved over the years, away from finance-oriented positions and toward business-based responsibilities. “When I joined the ICT industry I was more of a Finance individual. I think working for multinationals changed me from being an accountant into being a businessman. At IBM, my roles were not accounting-functional roles; they were more finance-advisor roles and that exposed me not only to number-crunching, but to discussions around business growth. By the time I was moving to Microsoft I had lost touch with the accounting world.” Mr. Chinganya said.
A look into MTN
If you look at where MTN is as a GSM organization, I guess it is so clear to everybody how voice is battling and for us to differentiate ourselves, I guess MTN can play a critical role beyond GSM on how we support corporates.
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n accountant by profession and a native of Zambia, Mr. Chinganya walked us through his two-decade journey in the industry, his role at MTN Business and his key tenets of success. “I have been in the ICT industry for close to twenty years now,” he recalled. “I started my journey at IBM through Lotus Development, which was a subsidiary of IBM, back in 1997 in their Finance Department. I am a chartered accountant by profession and I belong to the Chartered and Certified Accountants in the UK. “In 1999 we got integrated and joined IBM and I stayed in IBM for close to 11 years. I held various positions in IBM.” Working for Big Blue provided a wealth or opportunities, Mr. Chinganya said, as the company expanded its operations in Africa. “I was part of the team that was with IBM when they opened their office in Ghana, in Angola and even when they were transforming IBM Kenya from an offshore business to an onshore business. “I was part of the team that was super-critical when it came to IT outsourcing. The biggest contract we ran was a submarine contract that was about 30
$145 million; I was the person behind the transition, transformation and state of that contract.” Mr. Chinganya became the Finance Group head of IBM before he left for Microsoft. He worked there for four years with roles spanning controller for Enterprise Business in South Africa to marketing and operations officer. In 2011, he left the giant company to join MTN. “Why did I move to MTN while I was with the multinationals for many years? My main interest was, how do I make myself relevant in the ICT sector across Africa and also how do I improve MTN footprint from enterprise perspective?” he explained. “A lot of people know MTN as a GSM company. I joined MTN as general manager for the Finance Group level specifically for enterprise; I was to look at what we needed across our footprint, from MTN’s perspective, to the enterprises. Three years after I joined, the group management decided to send me to Kenya to take over as a managing di-
MTN was started in South Africa more than 20 years ago with an aim of connecting emerging markets through mobile communications services and later ICT solutions through connectivity, communication, collaboration and cloud solutions. “If you look at where MTN is as a GSM organization, I guess it is so clear to everybody how voice is battling and for us to differentiate ourselves, I guess MTN can play a critical role beyond GSM on how we support corporates. This is important because we have a solid footprint across Africa. MTN operates in 24 countries across Africa and the Middle East and probably 19 of those countries are in Africa. That’s one element. Most of the countries we work with cross geographies and MTN is well-positioned to be able to save these customers in those countries as you have the suppliers. And this reason saw the birth on the enterprise side of MTN, which is MTN Business,” Mr. Chinganya said. MTN Business Kenya, a wholly owned entity of MTN Group and was acquired from UUNet, an ISP company, and rebranded in 2010. “Out of our 24 countries MTN Group has operations in, 21 have mobile business and three of them do not have mobile business: Kenya, Namibia and Botswana. Where there is mobile, the company has the business split in two: Consumer Business Unit and Enterprise Business Unit. Where they do not have mobile, we only have EBUs,” he said. CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
IT AND LEADERSHIP “If you look at enterprises today, all enterprises need connectivity. Yes, fibre is one of them, but it does not end there. There is global MPLS, probably one of the few that can connect you from Europe to the tip of Africa. We offer dedicated internet and our datacenter capabilities, from core-location, to Infrastructure as a Service, to managed services and you can go further to get cloud services, as we are Certified Microsoft Cloud Solution Partners. You can easily buy a cloud service from MTN Business Kenya today.” Services offered include Office 365 and the company has plans to re-launch MTN Easy Accounting, a cloud-based solution targeting SMEs.
Role as MD “As an MD at MTN, I have customers in Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan. My typical role is to ensure that operations of these organization are successful through people capability, infrastructure capability and partnerships,” Mr. Chinganya said. On infrastructure, he’s focusing on how to revamp it. “This is one of the things I have been working on. I refreshed the entire core-network. We have put in over Ksh 700 million investment on infrastructure and we will be putting in more money,” he said. “A huge chunk of the investment went to our hosting facility. If I am going to keep sensitive data in my organization where will I keep it? Our datacenter was nearly reaching its capacity; out of the 24 racks, 19 were full. We built we built a tier-3 datacenter that we will commission later this month which will have scalable space of up to 70 to 80 racks.” MTN has over 47 data centers across the 24 countries where they have a presence, which, according to Mr. Chinganya, helps them drive data sovereignty – a significant issue in most countries. “If I look at where the market is headed today, every entity is squeezed when it comes to IT spending. Not every organization can afford IT skills; we call ourselves IT experts and we should be able to advise our customers on the best IT solutions they need. For us to do that, addressing issues around the infrastructure should be key,” he added. www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
On partnerships, Mr. Chinganya said it’s hard to overstate their value, noting his firm’s work with Microsoft and Accenture. “There is no way I will succeed to give my customers the solutions they need without partnerships. I identify partners with unique skills that I do not have and we can work together.”
A day in his life Mr. Chinganya described himself as a 24/7 operation – because he runs a 24/7 network operations centre. “I am in the office before 8 am and off at 7 pm. The first few hours of my day are on catch-up through emails. After 8 am I go through my external meetings and meet with my customers later in the day. One thing I do every Monday is sit with all the heads of departments. Through these meetings I seek to achieve four key objectives: How do we ensure the revenues are profitable? What are you doing toward a step-change to customer experience? How do we ensure that as employees we are able to deliver towards the step-change to customer experience? Lastly, how do we ensure we run a sustainable business?” he said. On making his way up the ranks and earning higher-level positions, Mr. Chinganya pointed out that he was driven by getting to understand his environment and role as an employee, determining if he has the right skills to deliver on his role and how to upscale. “Formal education is good but there is a lot of internal learning that you have to do,” he added. His second focus: teamwork: “You can be brilliant on your own, but without teamwork it becomes quite hard to move a needle in the right direction.”
Key milestones “When I joined, I found the team had done a great job with fibre around our three metros, in Nairobi, Kisumu and Mombasa. What I did with the CTO was look at ways of monetizing the fibre. First we chose to close the rims; this means if fibre is cut, the customer will automatically be on the other route,” he said. He also focused on ensuring that longtime customers received good care. “I found customers who were loyal to us for years, but were hosted in a core-location that needed to be upgraded. I started working on that and our new core-location platform will be in place by end of March,” he added.
Conclusion Mr. Chinganya’s vision is that in five years, MTN Business Kenya will have grown its footprint to become a preferable ICT partner for any organisation. On what excites him as a leader Mr. Chinganya explained that IoT is one space he’s looking into. “The vision of the connected world, that excites me, and I look at our infrastructure and know there is data out there that needs to be converged. I look at IoT and think about my role last year when we worked on machine-to-machine platforms. This is where the world is headed. With IoT, it is going to an aggressive, ongoing innovation. Everyday something new will come up. As a leader, I am now tasked with ensuring that my people remain relevant and innovate. It is a matter of time and the internet will be free so what will we sell?” 31
STARTUP CORNER
BY BARAKA JEFWA
NAIROBI INNOVATION WEEK HIGHLIGHTS OPPORTUNITIES FOR AFRICAN STARTUPS Nairobi Innovation Week, which enjoyed support from domestic and international companies and organisations cast a bright light on endless opportunities for African startups.
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ed by the University of Nairobi and held there from 6 to 13 March, the event – which featured notable tech-related announcements – brought together a diverse collection of people to foster an entrepreneurial spirit, particularly among young people. Set against a backdrop of the university’s youthful energy, the third annual Innovation Week hosted activities including boot camps, hackathons, startup competitions and exhibitions, along with opportunities for startup creators to talk with seasoned entrepreneurs and investors, thanks to the university’s partnerships. Those partnerships are essential to the success of the event and the school, an official said. “At University of Nairobi we are committed to provide the thought-leadership and coordination to as many partners as we can and work together to solve specific challenges. We are therefore inviting partners to join our strategic-partnership category of the university and the Nairobi Innovation Week,” UoN Vice Chancellor Prof. Peter Mbithi said at the event’s opening ceremony. “Strategic partners are contributing, not only by funding Nairobi Innovation Week, but more importantly by their support to build in-kind and attract partners and other resources.” The University’s public- and private-sector partnerships provide occasions for entrepreneurs to secure investments or form partnerships with governments and corporations, he added. To help boost startups’ chances of attracting funding, Innovation Week included what ride-sharing company Uber called UberPITCH. The contest gave entrepreneurs the chance to present their ideas to investors – during 15-minute Uber rides. And there will be help for people trying to build their companies with help from bank loans, the African Development Bank announced at the event.
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The firm said it will help young startup entrepreneurs in Africa get loans by taking on their risks when they borrow from banks. “We are going to work to try and help de-risk these entrepreneurs; we are not going to give them money,” Gabriel Negatu, the bank’s East Africa director general said during a speech at the event. “The idea is to encourage banks in Kenya to give them money and for us to take the risk. Should this guy or young lady not pay for the loan, then we will step in and pay that loan, so the bank assumes a very small amount of risk.” During his keynote, Barclays Bank Kenya MD Jeremy Awori spoke of a startup that worked with the bank and made history. “Last September, our parent company, Barclays Africa Group Ltd, in partnership with Barclays PLC, completed the world’s first trade-finance transaction using blockchain technology; this was a trade between Ireland and the Seychelles and was based on a new technology developed by a company called Wave, which is an innovative startup company that went through the Barclays accelerator program,” he said. “For us, therefore, Nairobi Innovation Week fits into our existing business strategy and it’s why since its inception three years ago, we have chosen to partner with the university to deliver this important program. We view it as opportunity to support our youth.” Amid the strong local and regional support, there were also programs, conversations and activities by the embassies of Finland, Israel and Korea. Finland’s participation included a stop by the CodeBus, which officials said connects “African and Finnish innovators in tech and education to organise creative coding workshops for youth in 10 African countries.” CodeBus Africa, part of Finland’s 100th-yearof-independence celebration, is a 100-day adventure into creative technology and youth empowerment, the embassy said. Innovation Week, which will be held next year from 5 to 9 March, also featured the Innovation Fair, a collection of booths set up by about 100 companies and organizations including startups from a number of countries. CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
BY BYRON CONNOLLY
WOMEN IN TECH
Jamila Gordon: THE CIO WHO ESCAPED THE SOMALI CIVIL WAR Somalian-born senior tech executive Jamila Gordon owes her life to her quickthinking father. Just before the Somali Civil War broke out in 1991, he had the foresight to move the family out of Mogadishu before they would have faced certain death at the hands of armed rebel forces looking to overthrow the Barre regime.
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WOMEN IN TECH Counting on a new life Upon arriving in Australia, Gordon began a nine-month course in English at a TAFE college in St George, Sydney before moving to the Gymea campus to complete a diploma in accounting. She dreamed of attaining a university degree after meeting a girl who got a job at the Australian Taxation Office. “I came from a culture where women didn’t work so to watch this young woman finish university and get a job at the ATO was inspirational. I wanted to be exactly like her.”
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he Somali Civil War had not quite started but my father was a smart person and realised that if he didn’t get us all out, we would all be killed, and he was absolutely right. Every person who didn’t get out of [Mogadishu] at the right time was killed – relatives, friends, neighbours, people I knew –because they didn’t react early like my father did,” Gordon told CIO Australia. Prior to the outbreak of war, Gordon spent her days working in her father’s shop, counting how much money he had earned and spent each day. She took responsibility for the family very early in her life, even as six-year-old living in the Somali hinterland with no running water or electricity. Before the family moved to the coastal city of Mogadishu due to drought, Gordon, the eldest daughter, was responsible for running the household and looking after her brothers and sisters. “My mother had 16 children, two died young and I was the second oldest. I was expected at a very young age to help my mother,” she said. Her family was poor but she remembers fondly a childhood full of kindness and happiness. “I also remember it being a beautiful place – it’s sad to see people from the Western world looking out now thinking it’s all doom and gloom. But if there are no wars and you don’t have anything threatening you … I remember it being good.” Despite escaping imminent war, Gordon’s resilience would be tested as 34
her family became scattered around the world as refugees. At 18 years of age, she ended up in neighbouring Kenya with distant relatives she had never met before. Gordon’s father was orphaned when his mother, given to her grandfather as a gift, gave birth to him when she was 13 years old and ran away. “She ended up on the border to Kenya; she remarried and had a couple of kids. One of her sons was in Mombasa – my father’s step brother who I had never met and through this process, we found him,” said Gordon. Gordon spent just under a year in Kenya during a period she describes as the hardest time in her life. “I was in limbo, I had made a lot of good friends, but the Somali relatives really didn’t want me there because they didn’t have enough money or means to take care of the young woman who didn’t have anywhere to go back to. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. I was moved between different houses with relatives and friends, mainly Kenyan friends,” she said. Despite facing incredible odds and separated from her birth family, Gordon admits her “life was probably saved again,” this time by an Australian backpacker who got her out of Kenya and to Australia, where they married. “When I got here the first thing I wanted to do was learn English. I had some exposure to the language in Kenya. In Australia I would talk to people and they would walk away because they couldn’t understand what I said. My English was very limited,” she said.
Gordon studied a Bachelor of Accounting at La Trobe University in Melbourne and this is where she found her passion for programming and IT. “I had one programming elective and I fell in love with it. A lecturer at the university said ‘you’re obviously good at programming, just follow your passion.’” In 1995, Gordon’s obvious ability to cut code landed her a role as a software developer at QSP Software, a job that involved working outside Australia. To score her first role, she was required to sit a logic and algorithm test. She scored 100 percent. An opportunity to travel the world in this role was music to Gordon’s ears. “All my life I wanted to travel. When I was at university, I watched my friends go on holidays and I never had the means to do it,” she said. QSP sent Gordon to its research and development base at Gateshead, England, and shortly afterward to London where she customised and configured the company’s software for British Gas. She also spent time in Dubai doing similar work at Emirates Airlines. Gordon returned to Australia after being headhunted by a QSP Software customer, the insurance company GIO. She was employed as an applications lead inside the company’s asset management division before moving to Deloitte between 1998 and 1999 to lead a team that was implementing SAP and PeopleSoft ERP suites for its customers. Gordon was headhunted again, this time by IBM Global Services where she hired as a senior project manager between 1999 and 2001. She spent the next six years at Big Blue in senior program delivery roles, working on beCIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
WOMEN IN TECH half of Solectron Manufacturing in Nice France; AXA Insurance in Paris; and ABN Amro Bank in Amsterdam. It’s fair to say that at this point, Gordon’s command of the English language had improved significantly. People abroad felt she could be understood much better than locally born Australians. “I went to Budapest with IBM and I took my Australian team with me to do a high profile software implementation. The Hungarian people would say, ‘we understand her, how can you all be Australian? She speaks very clearly and you guys speak with your mouth closed,’” Gordon said.
Life experience By 2007, Gordon’s deep understanding of IT and the mechanics of business landed her the role of group chief information officer at Qantas. She joined Qantas at a time when the national airline wanted someone who could partner with the business, had a strong understanding of IT and understood how vendors worked internally so the organisation could extract as much value as possible from its IT investment. At the time, Qantas had engaged IBM to provide infrastructure, Telstra for network services, Tata for front-facing applications and Satyam (now Tech Mahindra) for its backend applications. “I ticked all those boxes because that’s what I had been doing.” While at Qantas, Gordon oversaw the installation at the airline of the next-generation Amadeus software-asa-service platform for customer service and check-in, a world first. Gordon and her team initially implemented the platform at Perth’s domestic and international airports as a test bed before it was implemented across larger cities such as Sydney and Melbourne. Gordon spent almost six years as CIO at construction giant Leightons before moving to her current role as director and CIO at GetSwift, an ASX-listed logistics software outfit with a presence in 57 countries. GetSwift’s wares enable users to automatically dispatch, track and manage the delivery of goods and mobile workforces. Founder Joel Macdonald built the system to provide companies with real-time visibility over their fleets and the ability to notify customers with live www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
During her long and varied career, Gordon said she has refused to put up with a poor work environment and discriminatory culture. Still, she has been lucky enough to work in many environments where she is not judged due to her gender or country of origin. tracking updates. These were aspects of last-mile delivery that he couldn’t see inside his own online business, Gordon said. “This is the space where global organisations of the future are being born. This organisation within the last 20 months has seen phenomenal growth,” she said. “We have just powered our one-millionth delivery.” Gordon said any organisation that needs to deliver items to a home or business will benefit from using the platform. “They can use it right from the cloud and we have all the APIs created. Our largest client typically wants the platform customised to their specific needs so our platform is really getting improved innovations coming from the customer. There are also innovations and insights that we are generating based on the data that we are collecting. We are constantly refining our algorithm,” she said.
Never let it stop you During her long and varied career, Gordon said she has refused to put up with a poor work environment and discriminatory culture. Still, she has been lucky enough to work in many environments where she is not judged due to her gender or country of origin. “I don’t want to go back and play a victim, but what I have learned is not to put up with it. If people don’t recognise strong performance and give you opportunity, you need to proactively start looking and leave,” she said. Focusing on building internal and external personal and professional networks, not getting emotional at work and not taking things personally are also important, she added.
“My background early in life has helped me with this. It’s also really important as a woman to avoid negative stereotypes that are unfair and almost never apply to men while being conscious of your personal brand,” she said. Gordon agrees that more women need to be involved in STEM subjects, but there also need to be environments where women are given an opportunity to thrive, including making it right to the top. “The way I see it is that it’s a great opportunity for companies like ours, where we have genuine inclusion and a dynamic environment where it’s all about talent and a diversity of people doing brilliant work. “Diversity isn’t just the right thing to do, it drives better business outcomes. Over time, businesses that allow a ‘boy’s club’ culture will lose the war for talent,” she said. She describes her own journey rising up the IT and digital ranks as “wonderful” despite facing some “pretty awful behaviour along the way.” “There’s literally nothing that can happen in business that can even compare to the challenges I faced early in my life. I have had my fair share of push back on my career and I’ve recognised when it’s happening and never let it stop me," she said. "When I’ve had setbacks I’ve always been able to put them in perspective … I always make sure no matter what that I am on top of my brief and I understand my space. But I really do want to see things change to a point where women can genuinely play on a level playing field with men.” Byron Connolly is the editor-in-chief of CIO Australia 35
ANALYSIS
BY JENNIFER LONOFF SCHIFF
8 CH AL LEN GES THAT KEEP CIOS UP AT NIGHT Experts discuss major issues facing IT executives at financial-services companies and elsewhere.
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eing the CIO is harder than ever in today’s data-driven, hacker-plagued digital world. In addition to making sure the organisation’s systems are operating smoothly at all times, there are nonstop technologyand compliance-related challenges, issues that could cost their organisations millions – even billions – of shillings. Here are eight of the biggest challenges, the ones keeping IT executives up at night or at minimum giving them major headaches.
Data security “Security and risk management are high on the list of concerns that keep CIOs and CTOs up at night, especially at the rapid rate that the threat landscape is evolving,” said Josh Crowe, CTO, Sungard Availability Services. “They constantly mull over whether their customers’ assets and data are secure, and even question the security measures protecting their own IP. The speed at which hackers are finding ways to infiltrate technology can mean near constant reevaluation if they are remaining sufficiently vigilant.” “Security is the thing that keeps me up at night,” said Michael Thorne, CTO at Bristlecone Holdings. “Nothing else compares. It is never done. The minute you think you're secure, you're at risk again. Being on top of it is nearly impossible. To gain some traction though, I make sure I'm following what's happening with data security and understand the flaws exposed, I stay up to date on developing
tech, and, most importantly, I share information among my peers in groups that promote shared insights to enhance security across the board.”
Data breaches According to a recent Vormetric Data Threat Report, Financial Services Edition, 90 percent of financial services IT executives surveyed said that they felt vulnerable to data threats – and 44 percent had already experienced a data breach. “Increased focus in the areas of data and cybersecurity means that CIOs and CTOs need to appreciate that even in the absence of a data breach, failure to adequately assess and respond to cyber security risk can lead to downgrades in regulatory ratings and potentially punitive action by a regulatory agency,” said Craig D. Miller, a partner at the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.
Insider threats “Given that the vast majority of information loss comes from insider threats, creating a security-pragmatic culture that allows the business to operate at maximum efficiency but in a way that is still secure represents one of the greatest challenges facing [financial services] CTOs,” said Gerry Stegmaier, partner, Intellectual Property, Information and Innovation group, Reed Smith.
Cyber ransom threats (ransomware) “Cyber ransom is one of the fastest-growing security concerns around the globe,” said Carl Herberger, vice president of security solutions, Radware. “Every day, ransom tactics are used to target both individuals and companies around the world, and the potential harm can be devastating, shutting down network access, encrypting one’s files and more until a payment is made,” he explains. Dave Packer, vice president, Corporate and Product Marketing, Druva, as well as many other IT executives, agrees. “If they [aren’t] already, [financial services] CTOs and CIOs should be losing sleep about cyber extortion and company data being held for ransom,” he said. “CNN reports that ransomware events are expected to collect $1
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CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
ANALYSIS billion in 2016, with researchers seeing a 3,500 percent increase in the criminal use of net infrastructure to run ransomware campaigns. It's not a matter of if a company will get hacked, it's when,” he said. To combat cyber ransom threats, financial services CTOs and CIOs need to “understand the current threat landscape and potential attack vectors,” said Herberger. And they “should be taking preventive action to ensure all data is safe, secure and backed up,” said Packer. “It's literally a matter of business life or death.”
Aging IT infrastructures and IT spending cuts “Many [financial services] organisations continue to rely on IT infrastructures that are built on outdated components and are running with vulnerabilities,” said Joseph Pagano, practice advisor, Financial Services, Cisco Digital Transformation Group. The challenge for financial services CIOs and CTOs is to “figure out how to update and proactively maintain infrastructures in order to mitigate security risks and keep adversaries at bay during a time when boards of directors are asking IT to further cut budgets to help meet ROE targets,” he said. “How can CIOs help their firms save money while enhancing operational risk management and cybersecurity capabilities?” “Companies have invested heavily in advanced technology, from firewalls to SIEM tools, but they’re often forced to prune data due to cost and scalability limitations of tools,” said Don Brown, cofounder & CIO, Rocana. “That means they often can’t shed light on events that happened months ago, putting them at risk of attacks that lay dormant for weeks or months. To sleep well at night, IT leaders need… solutions that allow them to collect all data from all sources and keep it accessible and searchable in real-time for advanced forensics.”
To sleep well at night, IT leaders need… solutions that allow them to collect all data from all sources and keep it accessible and searchable... “The Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and anti-money laundering compliance [in particular] has taken a toll on CIOs and CTOs for years,” said Larry Larmeu, managing director, L2 Digital. “Banks have to comb through transactions for possible fraud and report them to the federal government. Some banks have over 1,000 employees dedicated to this alone,” he reports. “New data analytics capabilities are lessening the burden for some banks, but some have legacy systems that are difficult to integrate with these big data processing platforms.” And the BSA is just one of many regulations financial services have to comply with, with new regulations being proposed on a regular basis. Case in point: Governor Andrew M. Cuomo of New York has proposed a first-ofits-kind regulation that would require “banks, insurance companies and other financial services institutions regulated by the State Department of Financial Services… to establish and maintain a cybersecurity program designed to protect consumers and ensure the safety and soundness of New York State’s financial services industry.” Specifically, the regulation would require “regulated financial institutions to establish a cybersecurity program; adopt a written cybersecurity policy; designate a Chief Information Security Officer responsible for implementing,
overseeing and enforcing its new program and policy; and have policies and procedures designed to ensure the security of information systems and nonpublic information accessible to, or held by, third-parties, along with a variety of other requirements to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information systems.”
Data silos “According to a [recently] released survey of financial industry executives (including many CIOs and CTOs), it seems clear that cooperation between departments – or a lack thereof – is often the source of many headaches,” said John Choi, director of Operations, Liferay. “These leaders want to present a seamless, omnichannel user experience to their customers. However, 56 percent of respondents said access to IT resources is an obstacle, while 46 percent said the fact that different business units own different parts of the customer lifecycle was the primary barrier to addressing the lifecycle in full.”
New technology (business disrupters) “As the number of disrupters in the financial-services space continues to rise – Venmo, blockchain-based payment systems, et cetera – more CIOs and CTOs ask themselves if what they offer, or plan to offer in the near future, will allow them to keep pace or outpace the competition,” said Crowe. “Mobile banking and remote check deposit are old news. The need to unearth and deploy new technologies and systems that will better serve and streamline their customers’ experiences is now of paramount concern for maintaining long-term business viability.” Jennifer Lonoff Schiff is a contributor to CIO.com
Compliance with government and industry regulations Companies, especially those operating in the financial services sector must comply with a host of government and industry regulations. And adhering to these regulations, as well as keeping abreast of new regulations, often falls to the CTO or CIO. Citing just one example in the USA, an expert noted that the processes can be complex, time-consuming and mandatory. www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
37
OPINION
THREE CHALLENGES FOR THE WEB,
ACCORDING TO ITS INVENTOR BY SIR TIM BERNERS-LEE
OPINIONS ABOUT THE INTERNET ARE ABOUT AS NUMEROUS AS FLIES AND WEBSITES, BUT IT’S WORTH IT PROFESSIONALS’ TIME TO READ WHAT THE MAN GENERALLY RECOGNIZED AS THE INVENTOR OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB HAS TO SAY ABOUT IT. RECENTLY, SIR TIM BERNERS-LEE HAD OCCASION TO RELATE “HOW THE WEB HAS EVOLVED, AND WHAT WE MUST DO TO ENSURE IT FULFILS HIS VISION OF AN EQUALISING PLATFORM THAT BENEFITS ALL OF HUMANITY.”
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oday marks 28 years since I submitted my original proposal for the world wide web. I imagined the web as an open platform that would allow everyone, everywhere to share information, access opportunities and collaborate across geographic and cultural boundaries. In many ways, the web has lived up to this vision, though it has been a recurring battle to keep it open. But over the past 12 months, I’ve become increasingly worried about three new trends, which I believe we must tackle in order for the web to fulfill its true potential as a tool which serves all of humanity.
We’ve lost control of our personal data The current business model for many websites offers free content in exchange for personal data. Many of us agree to this – albeit often by accepting long and confusing terms and conditions documents – but fundamentally we do not mind some information being collected in exchange for free services. But, we’re missing a trick. As our data is then held in proprietary silos, out of sight to us, we lose out on the benefits we could realise if we had direct control over this data, and chose when and with whom to share it. What’s more, we often do not have any way of feeding back to companies what data we’d rather not share – especially with third parties – the T&Cs are all or nothing. This widespread data collection by companies also has other impacts. Through collaboration with – or coercion of – companies, governments are also increasingly watching our every move online, and passing extreme laws that trample on our rights to privacy. In repressive regimes, it’s easy to see the harm that can be caused 38
– bloggers can be arrested or killed, and political opponents can be monitored. But even in countries where we believe governments have citizens’ best interests at heart, watching everyone, all the time is simply going too far. It creates a chilling effect on free speech and stops the web from being used as a space to explore important topics, like sensitive health issues, sexuality or religion.
It’s too easy for misinformation to spread on the web Today, most people find news and information on the web through just a handful of social media sites and search engines. These sites make more money when we click on the links they show us. And, they choose what to show us based on algorithms which learn from our personal data that they are constantly harvesting. The net result is that these sites show us content they think we’ll click on – meaning that misinformation, or ‘fake news’, which is surprising, shocking, or designed to appeal to our biases can spread like wildfire. And through the use of data science and armies of bots, those with bad intentions can game the system to spread misinformation for financial or political gain.
Political advertising online needs transparency and understanding Political advertising online has rapidly become a sophisticated industry. The fact that most people get their information from just a few platforms and the increasing sophistication of algorithms drawing upon rich pools of personal data, means that political campaigns are now building individual adverts targeted directly at users. One source suggests that in the 2016
US election, as many as 50,000 variations of adverts were being served every single day on Facebook, a near-impossible situation to monitor. And there are suggestions that some political adverts – in the US and around the world – are being used in unethical ways – to point voters to fake news sites, for instance, or to keep others away from the polls. Targeted advertising allows a campaign to say completely different, possibly conflicting things to different groups. Is that democratic? These are complex problems, and the solutions will not be simple. But a few broad paths to progress are already clear. We must work together with web companies to strike a balance that puts a fair level of data control back in the hands of people, including the development of new technology like personal “data pods” if needed and exploring alternative revenue models like subscriptions and micropayments. We must fight against government overreach in surveillance laws, including through the courts if necessary. We must push back against misinformation by encouraging gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook to continue their efforts to combat the problem, while avoiding the creation of any central bodies to decide what is “true” or not. We need more algorithmic transparency to understand how important decisions that affect our lives are being made, and perhaps a set of common principles to be followed. We urgently need to close the “internet blind spot” in the regulation of political campaigning. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the founding director of the World Wide Web Foundation, which was created to “advance the open Web as a public good and a basic right.” CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
OPINION
IF THE TIMING ISN’T RIGHT FOR CLOUD, CONSIDER A MANAGED SERVICE APPROACH INSTEAD BY INIEL DREYER
WITH SO MUCH HYPE AROUND ITS ATTRACTIVE BENEFITS, ORGANISATIONS MIGHT BE FEELING THE PRESSURE TO MOVE TO THE CLOUD. WHILE SUCH A BOLD STEP MIGHT APPEAR LUCRATIVE, IT’S IMPORTANT TO CONSIDER TIMING.
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he reality is that not all businesses are ready to migrate their infrastructure, applications and software to a cloud platform. This is not a mind-set issue – these organisations generally are not change-resistant, but it’s not necessarily the right time for change of that magnitude. Perhaps these organisations recently invested in on-premise infrastructure and software or they’re in highly regulated industries dealing with sensitive data. In the meantime, some organisations are left with the challenge of running ICT infrastructures and processes in-house with inadequate internal resources to manage and support their systems. In some cases, software purchases’ upfront costs have severe effects on budgets. In those cases, organisations need to look at ways to reduce IT costs and complications without moving to the cloud. A managed service can be an answer, allowing businesses to enjoy benefits often thought to be associated only with cloud platforms while they get back to brass tacks and focus on generating revenue.
Consider the timing There are many reasons why an organisation might not be set to make the move to the cloud, including the fact that some business applications in use today were not engineered with the cloud in mind. That makes it tricky to be sure the move will deliver the exact same experience and security that come with an on-premise approach. There are also considerations of security, organisational capacity, workplace culture and market maturity that need to be ironed out before the cloud can become a priority, even in the face of pressing budgetary concerns.
A different approach Managed services is a strategic method of cutting costs and boosting operational www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
performance. By effectively unburdening the support and management of certain ICT infrastructure, applications and software onto an expert, organisations can benefit from access to far more collective experience and knowledge than an internal IT department or resource would have. A managed services provider steps in to manage and assume responsibility for providing services, either proactively or as the service provider determines that such services are needed. The organisation benefits from predictable IT support costs, billed on a subscription basis. Adopting such an approach makes sense, particularly when it comes to tasks like data management, backup and disaster recovery. A data loss would be disastrous for any organisation, which makes information management, backup and disaster recovery the ideal task to outsource to the experts. Handling these tasks in-house comes with the risk that individuals entrusted with the task do not have sufficient skills; there is also the chance that a fatal mistake could be made. By outsourcing these information management tasks, issues related to cost, quality of service and risk become subject to a contractual agreement. This means organisations will benefit from high availability and security, as determined by service-level agreements (SLAs), along with access to the
Managed services is a strategic method of cutting costs and boosting operational performance.
service provider’s engineers and technical architects. Managed service providers also offer flexibility and scalability, and can be built to integrate with on-demand utility storage, back up and network services, making it possible to rent such services on a pay-per-use basis.
Benefits of managed services If the peace of mind that comes from entrusting data management and disaster recovery to the experts is not enough of a benefit, the cost implications should be an eye-opener. Managed services can offer the lowest fixed cost of ownership, as much as 30 percent to 50 percent less expensive than hiring a dedicated internal team. Managed service providers pass on economies of scale to their clients; operations are automated and efficient to the point that their data-management and disaster-recovery experts can be shared between multiple clients, which lowers costs while freeing up internal client resources. Before managed services, businesses without internal dedicated staff would only address ICT issues on a break/fix basis. As the technological landscape has transformed and we’ve evolved to digital business models and interactions, issues like data security and disaster recovery have become more important. As a result, businesses are coming to the realisation that there’s more to IT than fixing things as they break. By making use of managed services for information management, data backup and disaster recovery, businesses will continually have access to new and updated technology, as well as guaranteed levels of expert, reliable service. This gives organisations assurance protected critical data and operational processes, without needing to move to cloud until they’re ready. 39
OPINION
ACCENTUATING ARCHITECTURE BY DELANO KIILU
ONE OF THE LATEST OLED TV SCREENS TO BE PRODUCED IN 2017 HAS A W DESIGNATION. APART FROM SETTING YOU BACK SEVERAL THOUSANDS OF US DOLLARS, THE SIGNIFICANCE IS HISTORIC IN SCOPE: THE W STANDS FOR WALLPAPER. YES, IT’S THE WORLD’S FIRST WALLPAPER TELEVISION, THIN ENOUGH TO HANG ON THE WALL AND INDEED FLEXIBLE ENOUGH TO ACTUALLY BEND AROUND CONTOURS. YOU CAN HANG IT IN ROOMS WITHOUT WINDOWS AND CREATE REALISTIC EXTERIOR VIEWS.
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hat does this mean? Quite frankly, while technology seemed to be galloping away at a steady rate, it looks like the horse has taken the bit in its mouth and decided to go absolutely ballistic. The burst of ingenious technology is not limited to the front office. In the data center, things have also changed quite dramatically. What this means is that the challenge has moved away from what we previously termed as technology adoption. The greater challenge now is technology absorption.
The greatest good that has come out of the current dynamic has been to the consumer in terms of the massive amount of leverage for acquisition and the numerous methods of uptake that are on offer, which beggar the imagination, from lease models to managed services and ultra-discounted combinations of solution platforms. 40
We’ve simply run out of the ability to absorb all the new platforms that are currently emerging and making mincemeat out of last year’s latest and greatest stacks that we so heavily invested in. The architectural aspect of future design is going to have to be designed around ultra-open standards in terms of design. The greatest good that has come out of the current dynamic has been to the consumer in terms of the massive amount of leverage for acquisition and the numerous methods of uptake that are on offer, which beggar the imagination, from lease models to managed services and ultra-discounted combinations of solution platforms. In this region, Mobile is once again taking on a new dynamic from a platform perspective. The ingenuity beginning to gradually emerge is based on a number of macro-economic factors primarily driven by the complete adoption of mobile money by the region’s markets. This has in turn spawned a new generation of massively mobile and instant-access-ready population of consumers. What that means is that depending on the agility of new platform architecture, individuals and organizations can reap huge benefits if they precisely target market entry, local customization and timing. The one thing that the region has struggled to accomplish is breaking into the global market with platforms designed here, which is a quandary considering the fact that tech is not limited by borders. In 2017 that is likely to change and the economic dividend will then begin to take effect and affect the livelihoods of those willing to invest in wider market thinking. Security still remains a major consideration across the board and there are now
The architectural aspect of future design is going to have to be designed around ultra-open standards in terms of design. increasingly higher threats through tools for sale online to those whose moral compass has gone astray. Typically, what drove new platform architecture in developed countries was access to vast amounts of very affordable and stable power, a factor we have not been able to adequately address at this juncture. Clean, stable and affordable energy opens many doors to developing countries, especially when it’s considered as a key item by risk teams for large-scale foreign direct investors. Then again, experience can be a good teacher; South Korea, Silicon Valley and Europe’s tech hubs serve as the best example of taking the power dividend. With Northern Kenya’s soon-to-be launched Turkana Wind Power project at 300MW, which incidentally is turning out to be the largest wind project ever undertaken on planet Earth, it looks like the narrative not only can but will change to the benefit of the many. What other vast untapped resources, digital, virtual and intellectual are lying buried slightly beneath the surface of our slowly waking societies? It was once said that nothing is impossible to he who believes. CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
OPINION
SEEK ALL THE CLOUD’S SUBTLE ADVANTAGES AND OPPORTUNITIES BY MARTIN MIRERO
WE NOW ALL KNOW THAT CLOUD STOPPED BEING A FAD A LONG TIME AGO. WE’VE GOT A LOT OF SERIOUS STUFF GOING ON IN THE CLOUD SPACE. AT THE RECENT AFRICA CLOUD SUMMIT, THE LEVEL OF PARTICIPATION ALONG WITH THE RICH CONTENT AND EXPERIENCE EVERYONE SHARED WAS A CLEAR SIGN THAT THE CLOUD’S COME OF AGE.
As CIOs, though, do we really know or clearly articulate why we are adopting cloud or are we peddling the sales-speak to our peers in the C-Suite: It will move capex to opex. It will help us save costs. We can focus on our core business.
have demanded that least common denominator.
While this is all well and good, these phrases have been bandied around so much that they morphed into marketing buzz. Perhaps we need to connect differently and come at this from a different angle. Below are some of the less touted – at least in framing – benefit of considering cloud adoption.
What holds back the pursuit of new ideas among entrepreneurs and large organizations is invariably time and money, or the lack thereof. If you wanted to design and test a new online or mobile product for instance, with the available on-demand cloud resources, new configurations can be up and running within hours or minutes, which helps reduce the overall turnaround-time. Moreover, costs are kept to a minimum as you only pay for what you need in the typical cloud offering.
Adopt best practice and successful business processes The most successful businesses out there are running on cloud - Google, Amazon, IBM, etc. They have built cloud architectures and an array of best practices, which we can adopt at the click of a button. Local and regional cloud providers have fine-tuned platforms and offerings to reflect key factors and constraints in our business environment. If we opt for one of their cloud offerings, we pretty much get this and a nice bundle of business processes we can immediately start running with. This helps enforce standards, enhance predictability and improve our execution capacity. In areas such as data governance, business continuity and disaster recovery, etc., we would likely have all these and a good ton more available in practice and in documentation because customers
On-demand cloud resources provide a way to try out new ideas ... www.cio.co.ke | APRIL 2017 | CIO EAST AFRICA
Agility and more flexibility to get into new business areas
Constant experimentation is fast becoming a strategic requirement for most organizations. It used to be that the R&D budget required to sustain such an operation would be an eye-watering figure. As more businesses become digital, the experimentation component is invariably around digital products or product lines. On-demand cloud resources provide a way to try out new ideas without significant investments in infrastructure, software licenses and supporting systems.
De-risk strategic and tactical shifts We do not have to take on the sizeable risk of assembling expensive hardware, sourcing premium skills from the job market and taking months to assemble it, just to learn that we bit more than we could chew, or that a simpler approach would have worked just as well. That is taking on too much risk. If only we could find a way to simulate a new business direction requiring new capabilities at minimal cost and try out different models with manageable
risk. Well, there's a near-perfect answer: the cloud landscape, and industry-specific cloud services out there that you can cherry-pick to simulate your new target and help work out any problems. A shift in business focus can be made quickly and with manageable risk. This also unlocks the following other associated benefits”
Smoother acquisitions/ mergers and business restructuring A great sticking point of many mergers is the months or even years, it takes to bring data and records from one system into another. Quite often the effort is abandoned. Government agencies alike are pained by this, especially when attempting to consolidate agencies or departments. Agencies today have workers manually coding information from one system to another. With cloud systems, the transition is much faster.
Uncover a new cloud business? As many organisations build out private clouds, they are establishing online services that not only can be delivered to internal users, but outside their firewalls, as well. In addition, organisations using third-party services are incorporating those services into their own bundles of offerings, which they can offer to customers and partners. Perhaps a market will develop for the cloud fabric you put together? These are just some of the less-touted business benefits of moving to the cloud. There’s no harm in throwing out a few of these to your business audiences so they can connect better with the cloud’s digital-transformation potential. 41
HARD TALK
BY ROBERT YAWE
Getting innovation into government
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ogether with the ICT Authority we were able to put together a diverse team that consisted of:
Eng. Stanley Kamau – Director of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) within the Treasury
The Nairobi Innovation Week took place in March and I was fortunate to be actively involved in some of the deliberations, one of which was on innovative procurement in government.
Mr. Danson Muchemi – Founder and Chief Executive of JamboPay and payment processing provider Mr. Crispin Odhiambo – Lawyer with experience in structuring PPP engagement agreements Mr. Dennis Gichangi – Director of Development for DewCIS Solutions and the CodePamoja initiative. The panel was well balanced to allow for a discussion to find a way to cut through the bureaucratic process of procurement without breaking any laws, bending allowed. From the title, it seemed like a session on engaging government in the procurement process; this was quickly dispelled by Eng. Kamau, who made it very clear that the government has looked for and continues to look for innovative ways, not creative, to deliver services as innovatively as possible. Cases in point were the Ol Karia power generation plants which started off as a PPP but metamorphosed over time into more innovative approaches and the Ketraco power-line project that was based on an EPC&F (your participation here is to go and find out the meaning of the acronyms) which allowed government to deliver on a solution, output, rather than a product, input. In the Ketraco project, the government procured delivery of power from point A to B at a pre agreed tariff; this eliminated the need for procurement of a power grid which would have been the traditional input approach, to a delivery of a service which is an output approach. Traditionally a government entity would come up with a development plan and then they would start the search for the funds after which the components would be procured creating a goods-supply culture and not a solutions-delivery culture. This is how they got into the quagmire of white elephant projects and cost overruns resulting in briefcase billionaires and stalled development across the country.
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Somewhere along the way, those hard working deep thinking bureaucrats found a way to deliver on the requirements without having to walk through the political patronage minefields. Thus was born PPP, EPC&F, insourcing and other innovative solution delivery vehicles. Crispin was able to explain to us how the use of external legal expertise assisted in giving the various vehicles the fuel to move, which shows how government has transformed from a behemoth to a lean efficient machine. The elephant has learned to tango. One of the unintended offshoots has been less wastage of resources and the demise of the cowboy contractor and briefcase supplier. This explains why there is a lot of noise about no money in circulation. What has actually happened is that the easy money government taps have been plugged. What came out strongly during the panel is that those in ICT purchased a straightjacket, got it well fastened then blamed government for this situation instead of taking the approach of the energy, motor vehicle and medical equipment providers. Dennis observed that the ICT industry needs to come together and put forward a common front to be able to work with government to provide homegrown solutions (not products), but I will not be holding my breath. You must be wondering what Danson was doing on the panel. JamboPay won the contract to supply the Nairobi City County with revenue collection services. Note that they did not supply them with equipment or software, but with a service. To many who are used to supplying products to county and national government, this seemed like a crooked deal from the high heavens but it was an output and not an input engagement. The problem the county had was not of equipment but of collection; what was important was the most effective offering. It got an efficient method to collect and account for revenue, the cost to them being pegged on the revenue collected. The final take-home, for me: Government has provided an enabling environment for the introduction of innovative solutions to its problems, but it is us who have refused to embrace the new dispensation. CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2017 | www.cio.co.ke
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