Africa can write its own narrative regarding investment in artificial intelligence (AI) and secure its share of a projected $15.7 trillion in the AI global economic value chain.
So said President Ntuli, MD of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) South Africa, in an interview with ITWeb TV.
According to Ntuli, for the continent to benefit from AI, role players like the African Union (AU) can take the lead from Europe and foster collaboration between key stakeholders.
During the interview, Ntuli spoke about Africa’s ability to capitalise on AI, cloud computing services and data centre infrastructure development. He warned that much depends on the continent’s ability to collaborate, to stop procrastinating, use political will and take action.
He believes the AU can, and should lead by example.
“If you look at European countries, their advantage is they're able to work together through the European Union… they move faster because they're all singing from the same page. And that's what we want. If you look at the African Union and what we need to do, the intent is there, there is a political will. We need to move beyond the building blocks.”
Africa must leverage its strengths, he added.
“Looking at most of the developed economies, they already have built-in legacy infrastructure and if they are to move to the next layer naturally, they will have to ensure all that legacy tech, all that legacy innovation and all that creativity on the application side is taken care of because they've already made that investment. The advantage for Africa is we do not have a lot of legacy to deal with,” said Ntuli.
The continent also has scale on its side, he noted, raising the statistic that by 2050, one in four people in the world will be African.
Moreover, the fact that Africa does not have clearly defined formal policies governing AI in place, is an opportunity to define its stance on its own terms, said Ntuli.
Working with AI
Ntuli emphasised the importance of AI ecosystems in Africa, to enable the continent to benefit from this mega trend and spur job creation.
“Seventy percent of the share of this AI value chain will most likely be in China and North America. The uptake in value from AI, specifically in Africa, is projected to be between 1% and 1.5%.
“I see that as almost a 98% opportunity for growth rather than a 2% deficit. Certainly, from the discussions that we are having on a day-to-day basis with our customers and partners, people are really rethinking how they can take advantage of AI in terms of driving growth.”
According to Ntuli, the most mission-critical trend is data management and the use of cloud. “As a company at the South African layer, we’re well-positioned to take advantage of that through AI, hybrid cloud, as well as our networking portfolio.”
He stressed the importance of co-location and edge data centres in South Africa, describing them as critical, as discussion continues around data sovereignty and using these resources to remain globally competitive.
“Sovereign AI or sovereign data becomes critical because it's about building an ecosystem. If you're a consumer of technology, it limits you in terms of driving innovation locally. We also need to ensure our data is protected, so we need to put together policies that ensure data privacy and we've got control of our own data,” Ntuli continued.
Not just shifting tin
“Our approach is to obviously focus on the solution side to drive real tangible outcomes together with our partner ecosystem. We are starting to see a trend, specifically around customers that were first into the cloud that are now rethinking [this strategy] for a number of reasons. One of these is cost, another may be lack of control of the environment (or] latency in connectivity to the cloud.”
HPE South Africa is reliant on a strong channel and it is essential to the company’s operations, Ntuli explained.
“[The channel] is critical… first in terms of driving scale, but secondly in terms of driving real outcomes. Our core offerings are around how we enable partners to take our solution and build solutions on top of that… so, it is essentially moving from a reseller mode where you resell an HP server, but actually build your own solution on top of our platform – or on top of the Green Lake platform that you can then on-sell to the end customers,” he added.
Asked whether it is cloud driving sales, or AI that is shifting the needle in market demand, Ntuli believes AI is at the infancy stage. “I think what business users are battling with first, is to commercialise their AI investment. The CIOs [chief information officers] that I talk to have pressure coming from the board asking them to invest in AI. You have to have a strategy and a vision, and you need an AI strategy or AI tech to supplement that. It's not the other way around.”
Ntuli remains positive about SA’s drive behind AI and empowering the channel. He cited the country’s Presidency of the G20 as an example of the opportunity that lies before the country, to think strategically to progress from having a National AI Policy framework and integrating this into a strong, competitive and sustainable digital strategy.
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