Once upon a time, post-independence, IBM - American multinational technology company must have had the foresight to build a Silicon Valley in Nigeria, a country with a relatively high population density and heart of the African economy. The IBM Education Centre was then established at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
African Students Train at I.B.M. Centre in Ibadan, Aug. 15, 1964
This is a group of 50 young Africans are now training in Nigeria to be the vanguard of the computer age on that continent. The men, from seven African nations, are the first students at the IBM World Trade Corporation's African Education Centre at the University of Ibadan.
This was the first of its kind and well before the creation of the research centres in Kenya and South Africa of today.
Nearly 60 years on, African countries may have matured on par alongside world class Silicon Valleys such as in Shenzhen in China, or in San Jose, USA. I am not so sure that the IBM centre in Ibadan is existing, last time I checked. Either way we need new beginnings!
This pandemic situation should sensitize the enablement of digital structures not seen before in Africa. Mathematical modelling and real time data analysis has largely helped the control and spread of Covid-19 in the developed countries. Besides, assorted biomedical research improves medical management and such used in Genetics and genome sequencing, DNA sequencing for Cancer diseases research and so on. These will constitute the scientific intelligence to further advance health care in Africa.
With the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Block Chain (BC) and mature Cloud computing techniques, we now ought to be able to build suitable Data analytics platforms for medical and social benefits.
Machine Learning (ML) and AI development are revealing new insights that would have never otherwise been observed if left to existing analytical human models. These capabilities are revealing understandings in customer engagement patterns and behaviours, operational performance and, in some domains, insights and management of regularity governance and compliance.
Data generation will drive Data analytics and Data Centre value with Edge Computing.
Edge Computing occurs in Micro Edge Datacentres.
Enterprise server clusters created in Edge Data Centres can produce the Compute and Storage power necessary for Data analytics services.
Besides the tagline of this note, being Datacentre saving lives, I think the broader issue is that we need to begin to innovate the digital business models of the future so as to improve lives.
The new digital business model requires to prepare foundations of advanced technology adoption which is no more a luxury.
I once came across a research note which revealed that a person could generate 10s of TB a day by 2025. With Social Networking rampant, the use and reliance on data will transform several industries and their verticals, and with Edge Datacentres to facilitate this transformation.
An increase in Data analytics adoption will stimulate this dimension of digital transformation and should create more Edge Datacentres I believe. The peculiarity of African social infrastructure distribution, population density and resources possess a challenge for centralizing Datacentre operations hence why Micro Edge Computing could resolve. Some Data analytics workloads require proximity to the data sources with near zero Network latency.
Multi-lateral business models will add the creation of facilities which includes solutions for: -
- Physical Security - Drones, CCTV Surveillance
- Business Marketing
- IoT and Telecoms
- Local Government news
- Traffic and Crowd management
This is written to sensitize a variety of minds into building a hub for this dimension of digital transformation required for our African countries.
