51��West Africa Archives - 51��Africa News Center

Cybercrime is an Existential Threat to West Africa’s Economic Growth

Titilayo Adewumi, Regional Sales Director: West Africa at SAP — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 07:14:36 +0000

While organisations across West Africa work to recover from the economic impact of the pandemic, the global cybercrime industry is going into overdrive.

An increasingly sophisticated cybercrime industry is launching a range of attacks aimed at organisations and critical infrastructure. Such attacks are growing in volume and sophistication, putting our collective economic recovery at risk at a time when organisations invest more heavily in digital technologies.

Global attacks on Internet of Things devices, for example,��, and cost organisations untold amounts of revenue and disruption to their business operations.

One study found that��, a huge 72% increase over the past five years. The growing digitisation of industries across the region, and the increasing power of the tools at cybercriminals’ disposal, mean the cost of such attacks is likely to grow even further over the coming years.

In short, cyberattacks are posing an existential threat to the economic recovery of the West Africa region.

Cybercriminals set sights on oil and gas ‘whales’

The oil and gas sector is central to the economic fortunes of the West Africa region. In Nigeria alone,��, and revenue from petroleum exports contribute 86% of total exports revenue.

Upstream revenue for oil and gas in the region is expected to register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.7% between 2020 and 2025, while��over the same period.

Worryingly, cyberattackers are ruthlessly targeted the global oil and gas sector. A 2017 study found that 68% of companies in the sector had experienced at least one compromise that had resulted in the loss of information or a disruption in their operations in the past year.

In a recent example, cybercriminals successfully shut down the Colonial Pipeline,��. In another example, ExxonMobil revealed it blocks more than 64 million emails, 139 million internet access attempts and 133 000 other potentially malicious actions��.

The economic consequences of a successful cyberattack on this critical sector can be devastating to a region already suffering collateral damage from the pandemic. The situation calls for a radical rethink of how organisations across the region – and across industries – bolster their defences and protect against cyberattacks.

Attacks on ERP systems growing

As the nerve centre of modern intelligent enterprises, ERP systems are increasingly targeted by cybercriminals. Attackers know these systems run business-critical applications and house sensitive information, so any data breach could provide access to information they can later use in the service of a range of cybercrime activities.

As these systems increasingly shift to the cloud and integrate a growing suite of business applications, the opportunities for cyberattackers increase too.

The amount of transactional data in typical ERP systems, for example, represent a veritable gold mine to cybercriminals. So does the information about vendors, suppliers and partners – the more cybercriminals know about the internal operations of a business, the easier they will find vulnerabilities to exploit.

�ճ��, which was announced in 2019, is Nigeria’s most comprehensive data protection law and is set to transform how organisations collect and process data in the country. Organisations should look at shifting their attitudes to security and treat it as a critical business imperative for both compliance and better protection against attack.

Taking steps to securing West African enterprises

A risk-based approach that is endorsed by the board and focuses on protecting the organisation’s key assets is needed. Organisations need to get a holistic view of their security risks and then implement solutions and processes that help secure and protect data, applications, systems and end-users.The best defences typically includes both technical security and transactional monitoring – in real time – to allow security teams to take accurate and appropriate action to keep systems operating and data safe.

Integrating an Enterprise Threat Detection solution for example gives insight into suspicious activities in an organisation’s ERP and other business-critical applications. This allows organisations to identify breaches as they occur and react in real time to neutralise any dangers.

A real-time data platform can help efficiently analyse and correlate log data to help security teams understand what happened within an application, database, operating system or network component, and improve how the organisation scouts for cyberattacks across its most valuable IT assets.

The importance of ERP systems to the effective running of West African enterprises makes them prime targets for cyberattacks. 51��has worked with enterprise security leaders around the world to develop tools that seamlessly integrate with ERP systems and help protect an organisation’s critical data assets from cyberattacks and data breaches.

Organisations across the region need to recognise the threat that cybercrime poses to their operations, their reputations, their employees and their partners. Business leaders, their security teams and their technology partners need to urgently implement new controls or risk becoming the latest victim in a rising tide of highly damaging – and increasingly sophisticated – cybercrime.

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As West Africa Starts Vaccine Rollout, What Role Should Technology Play?

Titilayo Adewumi, Regional Sales Director: West Africa at SAP — Fri, 07 May 2021 08:09:35 +0000

After more than a year of lockdowns and disruption caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, African countries are preparing for the most ambitious vaccine rollout in human history.

All eyes are now on the ability of countries to secure, import and distribute the vaccines effectively. This will require investment into local supply chains and a concerted effort by governments and health organisations to build trust with local populations to ensure every person that needs a vaccine is able to receive one.

In late February, Ghana became the��to receive a shipment of vaccines from the Covax initiative when 600 000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine arrived. Telco operator MTN Group donated a further 165 000 doses and the Indian government 50 000 more, but the country will need significantly more to adequately cover its 31 million citizens.

In early March, Nigeria followed when it received 3.9 million doses. The country plans to vaccinate 40% of its citizens by the end of 2021,��. An e-registration portal has been made available where all persons 18 years and older are able to register in the government’s attempt at an efficient and orderly scheduling of vaccination when more doses are available in the country.

However, immense challenges remain to sufficiently vaccinate the country’s more than 200 million citizens. In fact, the entire region has much work to do to build trust, enhance local and regional supply chains, effectively engage citizens and implement an effective vaccination rollout.

Building trust through citizen engagement, supply chain enhancements

Details are still scarce around how precisely the vaccine rollout will be implemented in West Africa. A recent study found��in the vaccination plans of five West African countries: only 31% of respondents said they trust their government ‘somewhat’ or ‘a lot’ to ensure the vaccine is safe before it is offered to citizens.

Governments need high participation rates from citizens if their vaccine rollouts are to be successful. This requires that they increase trust with citizens by understanding citizen sentiment throughout the rollout and then quickly respond to and manage any issues that arise.

The scale of governments’ vaccination rollouts is unprecedented, which means that current systems and processes are too slow and inflexible to facilitate the vaccination rollout at scale. When one considers the complexities of phased rollouts, multiple doses, and reporting, it is essential that governments leverage technology to streamline data collection, transfer and analysis to speed up rollouts.

At a supply chain level, the distribution and administration of vaccines at the scale of COVID-19 is a monumental challenge. There is much at stake because disruptions in the supply chain can prevent the delivery of the vaccine and further impact public trust.

Delays are paid for with human lives and push out the prospect of herd immunity. Reacting quickly to unexpected interruptions is key and is only possible if the entire supply chain, from procurement to production and delivery, is managed end-to-end.

According to the World Health Organisation’s��, African countries have an overall score of only 33% preparedness for rolling out vaccines to their populations.

Bolstering the supply chain and building trust with citizens will be crucial to the effective vaccination of populations in the West Africa region.

How tech can support vaccine rollout in West Africa

Emerging, emerged and established technologies all have a role to play in the region’s efforts at vaccination. For example, trying to identify which people require vaccines with some attempt at prioritisation could leverage data, data mining, data science and patient segmentation based on various demographic, risk profiling and patient history information.

To track vaccine distribution across the region, a combination of technologies including blockchain, analytics, integrated scanners, location tracking tags and mobile apps could provide a framework to show relevant subsets of information to different supply chain stakeholders.

In terms of patient engagement, self-service appointment booking, customer experience platforms and patient feedback capture using apps and non-contact in-clinic kiosks can help to determine how well practitioners are fulfilling their duty. Similar platforms can be leveraged to focus on employee experience, offering insight into the mental wellbeing of frontline healthcare practitioners and reducing the risk of burnout.

Looking ahead, machine learning and streaming analytics could help identify irregular patterns in data that talk to issues within procurement, production, logistics or financial audits. IoT, 5G, LoRa (Long Range networks) and edge computing allows a vast array of use cases to be realised, where sensors can determine the conditions in which stock is being made, stored or shipped, and to allow critical response to be actioned before major incidents arise.

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced unprecedented challenges to the world, and West Africa is no exception. As the region readies itself for the vital process of vaccine distribution, it is critical that there are no unwarranted delays or disruptions. This will also give citizens the confidence that the medicines they are getting are safe and efficient. Technology can play a valuable supporting role to ensure West Africa’s vaccine rollout is a success.

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Building Greater Sustainability, Climate Resilience in West Africa

Titilayo Adewumi — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 05:00:40 +0000

Across Africa, urban centers are rapidly expanding as the continent’s large – and growing – youth population seek better fortunes in the city. In 2020, Kinshasha was the world’s 17th-largest city by population size, and Lagos the 18th-largest. However, the astonishing rate of urbanization will soon turn Africa’s main metropoles into the largest in the world.

By 2100, , making it the world’s largest city, followed closely by Kinshasha with an expected 83.5 million people. Relatively small Niamey, the capital of Niger, will grow at an eye-watering pace from 2.1 million people in 2010 to over 56 million people by 2100.

This population growth will challenge governments and policy-makers to radically rethink their sustainability efforts. , with rising temperatures and changes in rainfall expected to lessen crop yields and production.

West Africa relies heavily on agriculture for both food security and economic growth. How the region tackles the twin challenges of scarce water supply and plastic pollution could give helpful insights into how we build greater resilience against the effects of climate change.

Protecting rare water resources

Cities and governments had to confront the likely impact of climate change on their populations following Cape Town’s near-miss with Day Zero – the day on which municipal water supply would have been switched off after dams supplying the city ran dry.

Researchers from Stanford University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that human-caused climate change made the Day Zero drought five to six times more likely. The researchers went on to say such extreme weather events could go from rare to common by the turn of the century.

There is tremendous urgency in building greater resilience for West African cities such as Niamey, where the entire population relies on a single water source. The Sahara desert is expanding due to the effects of climate change, and nearby Lake Chad has diminished by 90% since the 1960s.

To assist with its own water management efforts, the City of Cape Town has combined intelligent water infrastructure with data analytics to give decision-makers reliable and actionable information about the city’s water usage.

As urban centers across the West African region continue to expand at a dizzying pace, more use of technology could help conserve scarce water resources and help build toward greater sustainability.

The scourge of plastic pollution

Current estimates are that the human race has produced more than 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic, and this figure is growing at pace. The , roughly the weight of every person on Earth combined. At present rates, roughly .

Efforts to recycle plastic have also stalled. As of 2015, only 9% of the total volume of plastic waste had been recycled: 79% goes into landfills or ends up polluting the natural environment.

A key issue affecting the rate of plastic recycling is the cost: newly-produced plastic is cheaper than recycled plastic, thanks largely to the heavily-subsidized fossil fuel industry that can produce plastic cheaply.

According to Greenpeace, a kilogram of empty metal cans can go for in Nigeria.

An alliance of major plastic-producing companies called the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, which includes some of the largest petroleum and chemical manufacturers, have pledged $1.5-billion toward addressing the flow of plastic waste into the environment. Greenpeace estimates this corporate commitment is only 1% of the estimated $150-billion it will cost to clean plastics from the sea.

However, a new multi-stakeholder model piloted in Ghana could provide a useful blueprint for more effective plastics recycling and waste management.

��The story of Ghana’s waste pickers

In Ghana, between the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) and 51��is increasing visibility within the plastics supply chain with the hope of benefiting people, companies and the environment.

The project involves more than 2 000 Ghanaian waste pickers, and aims to measure the quantities and types of plastic they collect. Data is then analysed and matched to market-related prices paid throughout the value chain both locally and internationally.

This allows civic-minded companies to pay a premium for socially responsible plastics and provides waste pickers with the opportunity to earn fairer wages. Policy-makers can also use the data to determine optimal locations for recycling facilities.

Ghana generates an estimated 1.1 million tons of plastic waste every year, with only 5% collected for recycling. This new pilot project is currently running in several cities across Ghana, with hopes of expanding to the rest of the region and, ultimately, the continent.

In an encouraging sign, Nigeria became the fourth nation to join the Global Plastic Action Partnership after signing on at the recent Davos Agenda on January 27^th, 2021. Nigeria joins Indonesia, Ghana and Vietnam in with the establishment of the Nigeria Plastic Action Partnership.

Africa is predicted to suffer the most severe consequences from climate change of any continent. Changing weather patterns and shifts in rainfall are expected to drive human migration to major cities and put immense pressure on scarce local resources. By mobilizing the continent’s ingenuity and using technology to improve resource management can help countries achieve greater sustainability and resilience in the face of a rapidly changing climate.

Titilayo Adewumi is 51��Regional Sales Director for West Africa.

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51����West Africa Archives - 51����Africa News Center