Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, minister of communications and digital technologies.

Cloud technologies can contribute meaningfully to South Africans’ lives by assisting the public sector to improve service delivery, education, healthcare, innovation in space and the achievement of national goals through digitalisation and fourth industrial revolution solutions.

This emerged during an executive webinar on cloud technologies as an enabler for digital transformation, hosted by AWS as part of a new series of events focused on digital transformation in government. You can still register for the series here.

Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, Minister for Communications and Digital Technologies, said the COVID-19 pandemic had leapfrogged the country, bringing a positive impact whereby people have stopped seeing digital transformation as a nice to have, but as essential as any other utility. With this in mind, she said: “Quality Internet has to be available to all. We believe cloud can help us bridge the digital divide, and we have to make sure that all South Africans can participate meaningfully in the digital economy.”

AWS stressed that digital transformation is not only about the technology, it is about leaving nobody behind and skilling them for the future, and it is about creating a digital economy that is sustainable for the people of South Africa now and in the future. AWS has created more than 7 000 jobs and has contributed around R1.2 billion to support and invest in South African SMEs. AWS had also spent R155 million on upskilling thousands of young pupils to focus on both new technologies and soft skills development. AWS is bridging the digital divide through accelerating digital transformation, driving the digital economy and skilling people for the future of work.

AWS said digitalisation and 4IR technologies now means that businesses can focus on their core strategies and leave the technology to the likes of AWS. Organisations reinventing themselves, and emerging innovators, need to focus first on their businesses, the problems they want to address, the processes they want to automate and their customer touch points. The heavy lifting of the technology can simply be left to hyperscalers like AWS.

Ian Lester, Founder & Chief Executive at Beyond, echoed this view: “Organisations need to understand that technology isn’t the limiting factor. It is available, affordable and can do anything you can imagine and more. If we are bold enough to imagine how to solve important problems, the technology exists to enable it.”

Tebogo Leshope, COO of SENTECH, a state-owned entity, said the cloud was the foundation of digital transformation: “Digital transformation is essential for any ICT business – without it, we won’t survive,” he said. “The cloud is the bedrock and platform for innovation, and it can be used to develop new capabilities in the spur of the moment.”

Some good examples of where AWS is meeting these objectives is GovChat, South Africa’s largest citizen engagement platform, with over 5.5 million users and announced having processed more than 300 million messages to date. GovChat enables citizens to engage government services enabled through AWS technology. Some uses are to track social grant applications, instead of our elderly standing in queues from early hours of the morning. The system also provides COVID-19 track and trace and reports municipal faults in real-time. GovChat leveraged the AWS Cape Town Region, ensuring that the sensitive data of citizens stayed inside the South Africa and is completely secure.

Another healthcare example is Praekelt, a South African non-profit organisation that reaches over 30 million people every month with its services, leveraging AWS. COVID-19 revealed that most countries were ill-equipped to communicate with their population. Praekelt recently assisted the South African National Department of Health to disseminate vital COVID-19 healthcare information, support and services, reaching over 20% of the population in five different languages. AWS gives them the scalability and reliability to ensure access to their suite of programmes for more than one million people a day. Following the success of these services in South Africa, the World Health Organisation (WHO) then implemented this solution in other countries translating the relevant information in over 20 languages, highlighting the power of using AWS.

Other similar innovations in South Africa in the Education and Space market segments were noted, where AWS is enabling these businesses to focus on innovative new business models, while AWS enables the technology, ensuring data security and data sovereignty is maintained.