AFRICA’S BIG DATA HUNT BEGINS

Data have become a major asset for businesses, as effective and proper analysis of business generated data is needed to reach the forefront of any industry.

Africa is the world’s second-largest and second-most-populous continent, so you could imagine that across the continent, both homegrown businesses and multinational companies are turning to big data to inform their growth strategies. Big Data has already begun to transform how businesses in Africa operate, most significantly in the financial and e-commerce sectors.

Big Data is not limited to size; it is an avenue to have an idea about new and emerging types of data and content, to make your business more agile, and to provide solutions that were previously considered beyond your reach.

In the mobile revolution, it has enable tracking of customers behavior through different social media platforms and has also lead to 960m mobile subscriptions on the continent whereby creating a new information about consumer spending habits.

Also it has brought about a certain partnership that has been fruitful between the telecommunication industries and different sectors in the communities most especially the bank because it has created an insight for valuable customers to know what is happening in the banking sector.

Chief data officer at Barclays Africa, Pieter Vorster; “There are three, four or five times more cell phones than bank accounts, based on the population that exists in African countries, so there’s a really enabling technology and enabling relationship (between telcos and banks).”

Data’s are created even more when the cost of data storage goes down because cloud computing was not adopted. It is very important that company store there data remotely and access it through the internet because as cloud computing capacity increases, so will data-rich financial transactions.

Coca-Cola’s general manager for East Africa, Ahmed Rady; “Big data is going to be relevant only if we’re able to use it in a timely manner,”

According to Rady; “What we’re finding today is data relevance expires much faster than it used to in the past. If it takes you too long to find what you need to find from the data, it stops being relevant.”

Some people those not see big data as a silver bullet for development problem but many are realising more and more that data is an asset you can use with the help of technology.