After many quarters of successive decline, Egypt's enterprise hardware market rebounded and grew 4.7% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2014, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC).

The research firm made the note in its EMEA Quarterly Server and Disk Storage Systems Tracker, which found that the Middle East and Africa (MEA) enterprise hardware market remained in a passive growth.

According to the IDC the enterprise hardware market comprises of servers and external storage.

The market expanded a sluggish 3.8% in the third quarter of 2014 to $522.9 million, with much of the growth spurred by infrastructure deals within the oil and gas, telecoms, and government verticals, says the IDC.

"Although Egypt is still awaiting a state of permanent stability, enterprise spending is picking up, particularly in the banking and telecommunications segments," said Swapna Subramani, research manager for systems and infrastructure solutions at IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey.

Subramani added, "We expect to see positive investment fervor in the country, with optimistic growth forecasts bringing the country up to its pre-crisis investment levels within the next couple of years."

Meanwhile, North African countries Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia witnessed a decline of 11.6% year-on-year, a drop in both server and external storage shipments.

The market suffered from heavy administrative constraints, very long decision periods, unexpected delays, and a lack of visibility on the execution of pipeline projects, said the research firm.

And South Africa's enterprise market also continued to decline in Q3 2014, registering a 5.6% slump in enterprise hardware shipments.

Declining customer affordability due to the Rand's depreciation was the major reason for the slowdown, according to the IDC.

The South African market has also become mature in terms of enterprise systems adoption, meaning growth opportunities are becoming limited, the IDC noted.