NEWS
Control Risks reveal the top five business risks
for southern Africa
C
ontrol Risks has identified the following
as the key risks facing businesses in
Southern Africa in 2018:
• Political instability in South Africa:
Competing factions will drive policy
uncertainty and political instability, with
President Jacob Zuma likely to step down
before the end of the year.
• Political transitions, generational
change: Anticipating and preparing for
how recent presidential transitions will
affect business is essential for success in
2018 and beyond.
• Reputational risks in noisy political
environments: 2017 saw a series of
high-profile corruption scandals in South
Africa. Protecting reputation – and
understanding what might compromise
it – has never been more important.
• Large-scale cyberattacks against
infrastructure: 2018 could see the
likes of WannaCry, NotPetya and
BadRabbit recur, but in a more powerful,
targeted and disruptive manner.
National infrastructure systems are
particularly at risk.
• New threats in Mozambique: Major
final investment decisions have
been taken on liquefied natural gas
projects in northern Mozambique,
signalling a likely increase in
foreign investment. The influx of
money and foreign workers will
disrupt social structures and raise
expectations of change.
Control Risks’ Senior Partner for
southern Africa George Nicholls
comments: “The transitions in
Zimbabwe and Angola in 2017,
elections in Mozambique in 2018, and
factionalism within South Africa’s ruling
African National Congress (ANC) once
again remind businesses in the region
of the importance of gaining a clear
understanding of the impact of such
uncertainty on their risk environment.”
George Nicholls, Control
Risks’ Senior Partner for
southern Africa
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MainOne becomes Nigeria’s Microsoft Azure
ExpressRoute connectivity partner
M
ainOne, West Africa’s leading
communications services company
and operator of the premier Tier III
data centre, has announced its official
listing by Microsoft as an ExpressRoute
connectivity provider for Nigeria. The
listing follows MainOne’s launch of its
Cloud Connect product and successful
delivery of the Microsoft ExpressRoute
service which connects large enterprises
in Nigeria to Microsoft’s Azure Cloud.
With this recognition, MainOne will
continue to offer private, high-speed
connections for customers to Microsoft
Azure, thus improving the performance
of their enterprise applications and cloud
infrastructure services.
Speaking on the achievement, Funke
Opeke, Chief Executive Officer of MainOne
says the growing migration towards cloud
services globally informed the company’s
Cloud Connect solution, which guarantees
predictable and reliable private connections
www.intelligentcio.com
ranging from 50Mbps to 10Gbps to cloud
services. “We have noted that Nigerian
businesses have a lot of their IT workloads
in the public cloud offshore due to the
agility and ease of onboarding that it offers.
However, unless large enterprise users put
in place private connections, performance
suffers over the public Internet. This
service directly addresses that connectivity
challenge and comes on the heels of
MainOne’s earlier selection as a Microsoft
Cloud Service Provider.”
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