Nigeria and Kenya lag behind globally with regard to Big Data implementations because of their immature cloud markets, according to research conducted by the International Data Group on behalf of IBM.
Big Data refers to the collection of large and complex data-sets that are difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional processing applications.
Increasingly, the likes of financial firms and even telcos are looking to Big Data in a bid to help boost their productivity and drive up profits.
According to a global 2013 Microsoft commissioned survey, 90% of countries around the world have a budget for Big Data, about half (51%) are in the middle of a Big Data solution, 72% have started planning the process and 13% have Big Data up and running.
But these figures are lower in Kenya and Nigeria, says the IDG.
In the survey -- which was conducted with companies in Kenya and Nigeria that have over 100 employees -- just 34% of firms surveyed in Kenya and 46% surveyed in Nigeria said they are in the planning phases for Big Data projects.
In both African countries, 12% of respondents said they have a Big Data pilot scheme in operation while 14% of Kenyan firms and 10% Nigerian firms surveyed said they have implemented a Big Data project.
40% of firms in Kenya and 32% of firms in Nigeria said that they have no Big Data plans at all.
For firms that use Big Data in these two countries, business transactions, emails, log data and social media were the top sets of data analysed across both markets, according to the survey.
Lack of cloud market maturity
But the report adds that most respondents interested in using Big Data planned to do so using in-source methods, indicating that the concept of cloud computing is unpopular, or that “the cloud service market is not yet mature enough to offer Big Data services.”
Of the Nigerian respondents, 56% said they fully in-sourced their Big Data operations, 40% partially outsourced these operations, while 4% fully outsourced these operations.
In Kenya, 46% said they fully in-sourced Big Data operations, 46% partially outsourced and 8% said they fully out-sourced
“Cloud services lack maturity in these markets for the same reasons which IT (often) lags across the continent,” Kathryn Cave, the editor of IDG Connect International, has explained to ITWeb Africa.
“These are largely down to a lack of stability in the power supply, on-going issues with network infrastructure latency, problems with maintenance and security of data centres, along with a lack of data protection laws,” Cave has told ITWeb Africa.
Gareth Mellon, senior industry ICT analyst at Frost & Sullivan in South Africa, further explains why infrastructure is a key factor holding back the take up of cloud and subsequently Big Data services in countries such as Nigeria and Kenya.
“True cloud-based solutions require a degree of essential infrastructure that is not always assured in Africa, the foremost concerns being reliable connectivity and electricity. In both Kenya and Nigeria, companies often need to provide these services themselves, hence the reluctance to outsource solutions, whether cloud or Big Data. More general fears regarding data security also add to this restraint,” Mellon told ITWeb Africa.
“At a general level, both cloud and Big Data are also held back by a lack of market awareness and the business case for the adoption of these services is not always clear. In addition, existing African data sources (e.g. property ownership details) are either unreliable or difficult to access, adding an additional cost to users.
“Finally, as is the case elsewhere, a lack of specific skills is evident. This is true not only at the technical level in terms of individuals who can build suitable solutions or undertake appropriate analysis, but also at a management level with respect to how the solutions inform decision-making.
Big Data skills gap
The IDG, meanwhile, also highlights a Big Data skills shortage in its research study.
The IDG in its report refers to research from McKinsey, which says there is a shortage in the US of 140,000 to 190,000 people with analytics expertise and 1.5 million managers and analysts who are sufficiently skilled to make decisions based on the analysis of Big Data.
Despite Africa’s skill shortages, though, Nigeria and Kenya are moving to better train staff to handle Big Data, says the IDG.
“Nigerian respondents reported that training was more advanced than in Kenya, with full training completed by 30% of Nigerian companies but only 16% of Kenyan companies,” reads the IDG report.
“Over half (58%) of Kenyan respondents said that no Big Data training had yet been conducted, compared to Nigeria where only 34% remained untrained. This could in part be accounted for by Nigeria’s greater enthusiasm for in-sourcing which may require more trained staff,” says the IDG.
The IDG report concludes that “Big Data is coming to Kenya and Nigeria but it remains early days.”
The report further ends off by saying that education is key to these two countries unlocking their potential to benefit from Big Data.
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