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One of the main reasons is the lack of electricity and trust.
COVID-19 has made great adjustments to the way the world works, learns and does business: imaginable adjustments over the Internet and virtual infrastructure.
But without power there is no Internet. The entire virtual ecosystem is largely based on reliable and affordable electrical energy, from home Internet connections to the base stations that support cellular networks and knowledge centers that purchase Internet content. This means that countries with a weak electricity infrastructure, which were already struggling to compete in the new virtual economy, face pessimistic customers in a post-employer crash world where Zoom, Dropbox and Google Classroom are the new ones or the school.
Sub-Saharan Africa, where virtual transition has long been touted as a means of overcoming classical infrastructure, is vulnerable to delays. Chronic demand situations in the electricity sector, such as low electrification rates, peak costs and appalling reliability, have had a significant effect on the region’s virtual competitiveness.
And COVID-19 is already expanding this hole throughout the region. Lack of electricity, for example, compromises Kenya’s ability to implement its distance learning initiative, while home professionals face common Internet outages due to a weak-strength network that has been affected by heavy rains, vandalism and technical containment issues. Even South Africa, which has so far the largest force capacity on the continent, will struggle to force critical cellular knowledge for WhatsApp’s undeniable calls once its dramatic “download” program of planned cuts across the country is restored after the lock ends.
The gap between the Internet and electricity in sub-Saharan Africa will only widen in an increasingly virtual post-COVID world, unless the demanding situations of the force formula are resolved. This vicious circle in the link between food and the Internet is more productive illustrated through the knowledge centers that are at the center of the Internet infrastructure: centralizing the storage of knowledge, computer strength and network equipment. Data centers stimulate the power of force in the virtual eco-formula through devices and concentration processes, however, as such, they are large consumers of force with maximum sensitivity to adjustments in the load and reliability of electrical energy. In fact, electricity accounts for two-thirds of its operating loads.
Demand for more knowledge centers based in Africa is expanding dramatically to meet the continent’s growing Internet use with low latency and broadband connectivity. Africa’s knowledge center industry is expected to be successful at 600 megawatts by 2020, and this expansion represents a projected capital investment of more than $1 billion in the region. In particular, local African companies, along with Vodacom/Safaricom, MTN, Rack Center Nigeria, Africa Data Centers and Teraco, are at the forefront of this developing industry, with more than 95% of the capacity of the region’s knowledge centers. But without reasonable and reliable power, no knowledge centers will be built in Africa, wasting a super economic opportunity.
And the intermediate development of physically powerful knowledge, activities with great knowledge needs, such as remote work, virtual classrooms, video transmission and knowledge analysis, especially needed in the COVID-19 era, will begin to collapse. And sub-Saharan Africa will begin to see a slower expansion in its generation industries. No power, no virtual transformation.
The same points that make knowledge centres as challenging energy approaches as usual in sub-Saharan Africa also deserve to make them the catalyst for new approaches that can still begin to fill the continent’s energy deficit.
Governments and stakeholders in data and communications generation (ICT) and energy sectors will need to capture the moment and come together to solve the energy and Internet link challenge in sub-Saharan Africa.
Governments will need to place the strength of the solution at the heart of Africa’s virtual transformation. The data and communication technology departments target their colleagues in the Department of Energy and emphasize, “No strength, no virtual transformation.”
And governments will need to help and empower their local utilities to build network capacity, the general fitness of our electrical systems, invest in transportation and distribution infrastructure, and build reliability. At the time of the existing pandemic, governments want to recognize the energy and ICT sectors as responses to the existing crisis and as blocks of long-term resilience.
Data centers can also drive the solution, offering huge opportunities for collaboration between ICT and energy sectors on how and with what load energy is delivered to the region.
They can be a new source of strong long-term profits for the many utility companies that are in monetary difficulties and crave solvent customers. Data centers will offer utility companies a new category of reliable large-scale electricity consumers, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, who consume energy during “off-peak hours” at night, which is wasted.
In addition, knowledge centers can actually improve the technical quality of the network, either through their own investments or in partnership with utilities. Often, knowledge centers will pay for the local application to build high-capacity substations and power lines at their sites, a public infrastructure that will then gain advantages for other customers.
In addition, many intermediate consumers of global knowledge require renewable or low-carbon energy. This provides a voluntary consumer aligned with the government’s mandates to stimulate renewable energy production. Recognizing that virtual infrastructure can benefit from the expansion of the entire electricity sector, utilities in sub-Saharan Africa can expand rapid methods to attract “anchored ICT consumers” through accelerated power connections, aligned price lists, and renewable energy availability.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made the nation more dependent on the virtual economy and has revealed that sub-Saharan Africa is preparing to provide cheap, reliable and abundant energy to the economy to move forward.
This lack of preparation is only about the fitness emergency in the region. This is the economic emergency facing the region if policymakers prioritize a strong partnership between the ICT and energy sectors.
No electricity, no Internet, no virtual transformation. And there is no way to make sub-Saharan Africa more economically competitive in a world that is recovering from COVID-19 where the virtual is intentional and unambitious.
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American Arab Scientist
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