Business software firm SAP is injecting $500 million into its African operations.

The investment is planned to help up-skill 10,000 IT consultants in Africa by 2020 and accelerate SAP's growth across the continent via its hubs in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Angola and Morocco.

SAP officials on Tuesday said the company views Africa as one of its fast-growth regions, while the firm says it has over 1,300 customers across the continent.

SAP added that it has 700 SAP employees in Africa but that it plans recruiting up to 250 more staff by 2015.

The company also plans opening an office in Angola and Morocco in 2015, and expanding its partner ecosystem and the SAP(R) University Alliances program in Africa.

Part of the announcement also included that "SAP Africa is now taking responsibility for SAP operations across 51 African countries, including Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and Mauritania."

"The African market is unique in its growth potential and readiness to innovate," said Robert Enslin, member of the executive board of SAP SE and president of global customer operations, in a statement.

"The SAP Executive Board strongly believes that now is the right time to take our engagement and commitment to expand in Africa to the next level," said Enslin.

Pfungwa Serima, CEO of SAP Africa, said in a statement, "SAP Africa has more than 20 years of experience successfully operating on the continent."

"SAP Africa is leveraging its established presence and valued ecosystem relationships to immediately commence execution of this plan across the four key pillars that we believe will drive the greatest growth and impact for the continent."

SAP has further said that its key focus areas in Africa are on accelerating industry growth in energy and natural resources, utilities, public sector, financial services and telecommunications in the core countries of South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Angola and Morocco.

Research firm Gartner has noted that SAP was the enterprise resource planning (ERP) software market leader in 2013 with sales of $6.1 billion, Oracle was second with $3.117 billion and Sage third with $1.5 billion.