‘Africa Has the Fastest Growing Mobile Market Place In the World’

Head, Middle East & Africa Global Service Provider Sales, Cisco System, Mr. Paolo Campoli, has projected that with the high mobile phones presence and internet connections in Nigeria and the world at large, there is a potential to create additional value to the global economy. He spoke with Mary Ekah at the just concluded annual Africa.com conference held in Cape Town, South Africa

Cisco has been a part of the Africa.com annual event for years now. Can you shed more light on what the company has achieved thus far from participating?

There is an increased level of pragmatism in conferences like this. Last year, there were a number of discussions on technology enablers. It was the first edition, last year software, networking, IoT and digitisation were discussed in plenary sessions. The early discussions we had were how to monetise those technologies. The other things we see are the telecom businesses requiring massive scale. There is much more focus on creating things that have competitive cost base rather than just technology and alliances that are allowed to scale up in terms of cost, reach the market and speak to innovation.

There also have been a lot of topics raised from regulations asking specific questions in the African market, participants saying that there is a need to regulate for Africa specifically. Having a localised event that looks at what Africa is trying to do rather than the rest of the world because the challenge here is different, the speed of change is different and the opportunities are huge.

Recently, you launched the Cisco connected roadway solutions that helps with traffic congestion in Dubai. Are you looking at doing it in Nigeria too?
The technology brings a certain amount of capability but it is what you do with the data that actually control things around it. Understanding the people, when the traffic flow is at its peak and changing the traffic light is a simple thing to do. Changing the traffic flow accordingly is important and you can change when the busses are going to run and if there is an accident, change their routes even though there are not very many routes from Victoria Island to the airport, but we believe that bringing a certain intelligence to how people move around, how you find parking spots, where is the availability of parking, giving people the information of how long it is going to take to get from point A to point B improves peoples’ lives. So it is not as straightforward as it may seem. The data about people’s traffic flow is really important. Maybe, some companies will want to change the start and end day of their working days to reduce traffic flows. There are lots of things that could fall into that.

Also having an architectural approach will definitely assist in alleviating the traffic jams. These things do not happen spontaneously, there needs to be some level of structure. In Nigeria, there are three dominant mobile operators we could get assistance from; we also need assistance at government level to get a better view on what it means to digitalise the country specifically for smart transportation, and smart automotive traffic management. What are the pillars? Pillars are not only from a policy perspective but also from an architectural perspective.  Data is equally important to give a clearer picture on the level of distribution needed and then creating an eco-system because many of these applications will be very local so you don’t get applications that are the same for every country.

The behaviour of drivers, end users and the ability to consume those applications is very local. When you see what happens in the device environment on android where you have an eco system of local application developers, I think we believe for IOE specifically on self-driving cars and traffic management – enabling a local eco system of application developers will be very crucial. Our office in Lagos is probably my favourite Cisco office because it looks over the harbour and you can sit and watch those big container ships coming in and out all day.

When you think of connected transport you automatically think of the road transport but we have got some great examples. For instance, the port of Hamburg where the port road manager can monitor road traffic, incidents are detected automatically and the port road manager is alerted to coordinate with other authorities. Data that is used to improve analysis of the environmental situation in the port area is also provided.  Having an integrated approach to the business will provide huge benefits, as it will help provide information about delayed container ship coming into the port causing traffic jam and a whole lot of problems. Integrated security is a big thing as well. We can certainly help with security, healthcare, and education, lots of things that are very relevant to Nigeria.

Are there any new innovations specifically for West Africa, particularly Nigeria?
What we are trying to do is to take the overall thinking of where the IoE is going and tailor that into specific areas like education, for example. We would tailor our overall education capability for the requirements and the different types of connectivity in the more remote populations that are in existence. We are looking to take best of IoT and tailor it for the African market. Another thing is that Cisco is looking to build this next generation engagement module with service providers, offering them the best of technology but then work with the local companies to tailor that to the market place.

That is a big change from when we previously would have just a simple box shipped with standard software. We are looking at how we can tailor those solutions to fit with the local market place. If you look at the roadmap of innovations, there is a specifically good fit for Nigeria from Cisco. Things have been happening in the last few months, especially looking at enterprise and SMEs.

  It is all about having an agile platform that connects SMEs in Nigeria and that the businesses are growing rapidly is not structured in terms of category association. Having the ability to be fast in the mark with the lower cost base is paramount. We acquired a company called Meraki about a year ago that allows us to have a low touch into SME. We deliver very affordable access points that are all provided from the cloud. It is an easy way for service providers to basically offer many services in real time to market SMEs.

The entire modernisation of infrastructure to 100 gig per second in terms of transport is another very good fit for Nigeria. The cost of transporting traffic has to decrease at a pace of 15-30 per cent in terms of transporting one megabyte of traffic; so the entire migration of traffic is a very good example, then affordable IoE connectivity. We have specific Wi-Fi solutions for stadiums in high-density areas in Lagos and key cities that are allowed to have rapid deployment of fractions of the cost base. I think innovation in radio transport, how you move faster from SME enables you to manage security and connectivity. These are three things that we solve through various service providers in Nigeria.

What is your growth expectation for 2016 and any plans of making new investments in Africa?
We are investing in terms of four major pillars. One is skill development where we have an overall business architecture initiative called Country Development Agenda, which is based on these four pillars. One is enhancing skill set, educating people to become digital citizens of IoE. The second pillar has to do with creating a community of developers of eco-system partners basically allowed to create value on this new set of technology.

The third one is to create a highly customised set of go-to market channels that basically allows you to have a rapid deployment of innovation and technology very much tailored by each country, and the forth element of this architecture is of course the technology foundation layer. We are investing to create affordable access, analytics, mobility control points and the platform for IoT/IoE. The education is eco-system of partnership personalised, localised go-to market with the right channels to basically enable digital transformation. We will prioritise of course on a set of countries in Africa that have a combination of right demographics, which is pretty much in line with what you just mentioned.

In terms of the priority you just mentioned, what position is Nigeria?
If you look at our investment set of priorities, Nigeria is among the top five countries in Africa. I would say it is in position one or two depending on whether we look at the Telco business specifically or the entire business that Cisco organises with public sector enterprises and small medium business.

A report recently released by Cisco predicted that over 50 billion devices would be connected by 2020. What is Cisco doing with IoE with regards to giving it an African touch?
First of all we are in the business of analytics; so we are allowed to run analytics as a major service for IoE and IoT providers. There is a lot of demand to localise these data in countries, not transfer them across borders for data sovereignty.

We enable big service providers to create local clouds where those data can be stored, secured, respecting the country’s authority regime and requirement. The other element we are bringing to IoT, IoE is security architecture. Having everything addressable from sensors to street lights, these points can be subject to attack; so having a security architecture that allows you to understand what is going on, prevent and also contain security attack is fundamental when you move from a classical connectivity to IoT, IoE.

What are some of the services Cisco provides that SMEs can afford?
Meraki is an example. A Small Medium Enterprise today that has a mobile handset and the connectivity like DSL or 3G connectivity wants to start having a shared workplace to work with their employees when they are remote from the office or work with their business partners. They want to create a market place over a secure connection. 

What they are asking for is an affordable solution for connectivity Wi-Fi security in real time communication. Quite often, SMEs don’t have an IT manager. They have an owner and sellers, developers and administrative people; they don’t necessarily have an IT department.

So, they need something easy to install, something that can be plugged into any broadband connection or IT connection and be managed from the cloud. The third thing they request for is the ability to have a portal where they understand their security profile and quality of service. Now with Meraki, we have exactly that model-low cost entry price point, Wi-Fi access points, routers fully managed with provision from the cloud, plug-and-play for the SMEs. It is now affordable for an SME to create a virtual office or a small start-up office.    


Recently, a partnership between Cisco and Ericsson was announced. Can you shed more light on that?
Ericsson is a large global company working very much in the service provider space, and Cisco works across the service provider as well as the enterprise sector. Basically, we aim to provide a joint thought-leadership, end-to-end capability to our customers by giving them real end-to-end support service, including hardware and support services. We are working together on 5G evolution.

So, there are a lot of benefits to our customers while bringing together two of the world’s big players in a partnership where we will work together to move the business forward. The multi-faceted relationship will offer customers the best of both companies: routing, data center, networking, cloud, mobility, management and control, and global services capabilities.

Together we plan to deliver customer value by offering service provider customers an end-to-end product and services portfolio, and joint innovation that accelerates new business models. We will be creating the mobile enterprise experience of the future through highly secure technology architecture for seamless indoor/outdoor networks, and channeling the combined scale and innovation of both companies to accelerate the platforms and services needed to digitize countries and create the Internet of Things.

Are there some challenges you have encountered in the adoption of technologies like 5G in Africa so far?
The African market is unique in terms of the speed at which it is developing; we have the fastest growing mobile market place in the world in Africa. Fifty-two per cent of the devices that we term Internet of Everything (IoT) are actually here in Africa today.

Africa is leading the way and that fast pace of development has the potential to create some challenges because as we skip levels of evolution, there is a challenge to everybody to move forward thus creating security issues, lack of skills in the market place and everyone struggling to keep up with the space of change. At Cisco, we have got new things happening around connectivity, such as fibre, satellite, sub-marine cable but the market is driving this incredible pace of change and it is really a case of making sure that the skills are there to ensure that things are done properly. Skills and speed are great but skill and speed involves strategy or it could be a potential disaster.

There is also the matter of creating the skill set to take advantage of the IoT. In reality, the numbers of applications you can develop say in transportation, smart cities, waste management, and water management has just reached the limit of imagination. The problem is where to find the skills to develop, not according to standard models like programming a computer or device like a smartphone but also programming a platform that includes the network. Cisco has a programme in place, which is related to the existing institution of networking academy, supplementing with the notion of programme above networks. The ability to create skills is potentially a limiting factor if we do not have a strategy.

Another element is related to the process. Moving to digitisation is not only a matter of hyper-connectivity but also the ability to embrace a digital strategy. There is a realisation between companies and SMEs that today is a moment in time to make it happen because it is more affordable; the benefits gotten as an enterprise are much higher than in the past and there is an architectural approach that can lead to results. We have far more compelling reasons now than in the past.