The AITEC East Africa ICT Summit

The recently concluded AITEC East Africa ICT Summit held in Nairobi was a huge success. The theme this year was ‘We Have the Bandwidth. Now What?’

The summit attracted a wide range of exhibitors and attendees who included both local and international companies, individuals in the ICT industry, banks and other service providers who participated in the three conference streams viz; data security, cloud computing and mobile applications.

In marking the launch of the AITEC ICT summit, Mr. Paul Kukubo, chair of the Kenya ICT Board, highlighted the ICT board’s role and successes. He confirmed that the board had made huge strides developing the Kenyan ICT market. The ICT board’s efforts are set to reach a milestone when the Konza technopolis is operational. He envisaged Kenya being a leading ICT hub in the region especially with improved bandwidth, mobile penetration and the development of cloud services.

Julius Opiyo, Seacom Kenya’s Sales Manager East and North Africa described ICT as the backbone of the continents infrastructure and a vital component driving economic growth in Africa. He highlighted this through data that indicated that governments of the East African Community (EAC) governments were investing over US$400million in their respective national backbone infrastructure.

Delivering growth, managing risks and cost control.

Several innovative solutions were showcased. Corporate and SMEs participants were educated on the possibilities opened up by improved bandwidth and cloud services.
Temenos, a leading provider of versatile banking solutions presented global perspectives in enterprise level banking and how their services and those of their partners were able to deliver growth, manage risks and control costs for these institutions. As they described their solutions for the Banking and Micro-Finance sector, it was clear that cloud computing for banks and non-bank financial institutions was inevitable in the near future.

Subsequent sessions at the summit dealt with topics that ranged from ICT security solutions and trends, Business Intelligence, as well as insights as to how businesses can leverage readily available cloud applications. All these will go a long way in delivering sustainable financial services in emerging markets.

The AITEC East Africa ICT summit has successfully established itself as a ‘must-attend’ forum for individuals and corporate service providers within the ICT industry. Overall, it was an eye-opener for many local companies and many thanks to the summit organizers who did a splendid job in putting it all together.