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Over 20 Top IDC Leaders to Attend 2nd W/Africa CIOs Summit

Stephen Elliot, Vice-President of IT Infrastructure and Cloud practice, Mark Walker, vertical market and Insights research and consulting practice at MEA and Lise Hagen, research manager for software and IT services in South Africa, are among over 20 top executives of the International Data Corporation (IDC) that will attend IDC CIOs summit holding for the second year in West Africa.
IDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets.
The Company has been helping IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community makes fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy.
Apparently, more than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries worldwide.
For more than 51 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives.
Addressing a pre-event press conference in Lagos on Monday, Bola Adisa, country manager, International Data Corporation (IDC), said that scheduling of the top shots in the Company to attend the Summit presupposes the importance IDC attaches to West African IT market.
Adisa reasured that the West Africa CIOs Summit, now second in the series, will take place at the Oriental Hotel, Lagos on May 13 – 14, 2015.
The Summit represents the largest social gathering of CIOs in West Africa, numerous local ICT vendors join a host of major global giants to present their unique insights into the latest trends shaping tech adoption across the region, while a variety of senior line-of-business executives will also be on hand to offer that all-important non-IT perspective.
This year’s edition will run under the theme ‘Where IT Meets Business’ and will drive home the importance of closely aligning IT and business functions at a time when organizations across the region are faced with the challenge of implementing emerging products and services while simultaneously trying to improve operational efficiency.
The event is expected to attract more than 150 CIOs, technology decision makers, and government advisors from across the region.
According to the IDC Country Manager, “West Africa CIO Summit will provide thought provoking and actionable insights to CIOs and Senior ICT Executives through a mix of end user presentations and case studies giving CIOs the opportunity to hear about the latest global trends, learn from ICT best practices and become involved in general discussions with colleagues and peers during the dedicated networking breaks.
“Delegates will meet IDC’s chief research officer, chief analyst, and more than 20 international and regional practice heads, who will be on hand to provide valuable insights and analysis to leading ICT vendors, technology buyers, and end users during the event. The CIO Summit also provides unrivalled access to peers and colleagues through numerous intimate and private group discussions.
“The annual CIO Summit continues to grow from strength to strength and plays an important role in both shaping and reflecting opinion across the region’s continuously evolving ICT sector. IDC recognizes that the ability to rapidly correlate IT project spending with critical business priorities is essential, with CIOs increasingly required to demonstrate the business value of their projects and embrace the strategic benefits their businesses are striving to achieve. Against this backdrop, the West Africa CIO Summit 2015 will explore the need for IT plans to encompass strong business metrics alongside the existing IT-related metrics that typically examine application delivery in isolation”.
He added that, to ensure the very latest technologies are covered at the West Africa CIO Summit 2015, IDC has partnered with some of the world’s foremost ICT players, including EMC and Vodacom as Summit Partners; Dell, Sunnet Systems (in co-partnership with IBM), SAP, and Oracle as Platinum Partners; Netapp and MTN Business Nigeria as Gold Partners; Magic Software and FVC as Exhibit Partners; and Winnigroup as a Lunch Partner.
He said that it pleases IDC to announce the introduction of five unique, informative workshops based around its IT Executive Programs. Designed to help today’s time-constrained IT executives make more effective technology decisions, these sessions will serve up timely discussions on mitigating technology risks, maximizing the effectiveness of IT investments, identifying and capitalizing on new IT opportunities, and implementing cutting-edge tech solutions that are tightly aligned with overall business objectives.
“We are quite hopeful that this year’s event will generate interest and talkability amongst our stakeholders,” Adisa said, while expressing confidence on partners support to make the event a huge success.
News
INTERPOL Report Shows Cybercrime is West, East African Most Dominant Security Concern

Cybercrime has emerged as a dominant security concern across Africa, with more than 30 percent of all reported crimes in Western and Eastern regions linked to cyber activity, according to the newly released 2025 Africa Cyberthreat Assessment Report by INTERPOL.
The report, based on data from African member states and private sector partners, reveals that two-thirds of surveyed countries describe cybercrime as constituting a medium to high share of total criminal cases.
This highlights how cyber-enabled criminal activity is evolving rapidly across the continent. The report identified alarming spikes in scam attempts, with some countries witnessing a 3,000 percent increase in suspected scam notifications in the past year.
Neal Jetton, INTERPOL’s Cyber Crime Director, warned that the threat landscape is evolving faster than enforcement responses.
“This fourth edition of the INTERPOL African Cyber Threat Assessment provides a vital snapshot of the current situation, informed by operational intelligence, extensive law enforcement engagement, and strategic private-sector collaboration.
“It paints a clear picture of a threat landscape in flux, with emerging dangers like AI-driven fraud that demand urgent attention. No single agency or country can face these challenges alone,” Jetton stated.
In the past year, suspected scam notifications rose by up to 3,000 per cent in some African countries, according to data from Kaspersky, one of several private sector partners that work with INTERPOL’s cybercrime directorate
Online scams, particularly through phishing, are the most frequently reported cybercrimes across the continent. Ransomware attacks and Business Email Compromise (BEC) incidents are also increasing, particularly in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt.
“Ransomware detections in Africa also rose in 2024, with South Africa and Egypt suffering the highest number, at 17,849 and 12,281 detections respectively, according to data from Trend Micro, followed by other highly digitised economies such as Nigeria (3,459) and Kenya (3,030),” it stated.
Incidents included attacks on critical infrastructure, such as a breach at Kenya’s Urban Roads Authority (KURA), and on government databases, such as hacks of Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the report stated.
News
GSK to Slash Cost of Malaria Jab to Less than $5

The manufacturers of the world’s first malaria vaccine are set to slash the price by more than half by 2028 to less than$5 per dose.
The manufacturers of the shot, known as RTS,S, said a phased reduction in cost would begin immediately, with an ultimate aim to reduce the price to less than $5.
The announcement could hardly come at a more critical moment.
Gavi, a major vaccination initiative which funds immunisations in the world’s poorest countries, is facing a major budget crunch.
In Brussels on Wednesday, Gavi’s replenishment event raised $9 billion to fund immunisation programmes over the next five years. While this sounds like a huge sum, it’s significantly less than the $11.9bn the group had been aiming for.
Governments around the world are cutting development spending dramatically.
The UK, for instance, cut its contribution to Gavi by 40 per cent in real terms, telling The Telegraph it was prioritising defence, while the US has pledged nothing at all.
Though America previously gave Gavi roughly $300m a year, the country’s new health secretary claimed without evidence that the organisation was ignoring vaccine safety.
The announcement from the British pharmaceutical giant GSK and Indian drugmaker Bharat Biotech will therefore be a relief to those trying to balance the books.
In a statement the companies said the price reduction demonstrated their “commitment to Gavi”, and was “driven by process improvements, expanded production capacity, cost-effective manufacturing, and minimal profit margins”.
By the time the price has fallen to below $5 per dose, a technology transfer agreement means Bharat will have taken over production, though GSK will continue to supply the adjuvant piece of the shot.
“For us, this is more than a cooperation, it’s a promise,” said Dr Krishna Ella, executive chairman of Bharat Biotech International Limited.
“By joining forces with GSK, and working closely with Gavi, and the WHO [World Health Organization], we are taking a real step toward closing the gap between vaccine supply and the urgent needs of children at risk of malaria.”
Each year, malaria still kills 500,000 people – the vast majority of them children aged five and under in sub-Saharan Africa.
According to WHO estimates, cases and deaths fell significantly between 2000 and 2015, but progress has since stalled.
Some have high hopes that RTS,S, as well as another vaccine called R21 developed by Oxford University, could prove critical in efforts to turn the tide.
In clinical trials, RTS,S reduced hospitalisations for severe malaria by 30 per cent.
But critics say the shot is too expensive and not as effective as existing tools, such as bed nets and antimalarials.
The reduction in price will bring it more in line with the cost of R21, which is priced at around $4 per dose.
Yet the cost will still add up, as both jabs require multiple shots. For RTS,S, this means four doses – the first three doses are given monthly, starting around five months of age, while the fourth dose is administered 15-18 months later.
Both jabs “provide reasonable short term efficacy – over about a year – so are a useful addition to other measures,” said Professor Nick White, a professor at the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit who specialises in malaria.
“In the past GSK had limited production capacity – one of the reasons the R21 was developed. So reducing the price will be good and the two comparable vaccines can fight it out in the market place.”
A spokesperson for Gavi said the alliance’s goal is to “create sustainable demand backed by predictable financing so that companies – like GSK and Bharat – can continue investing in technology transfer and other efficiencies that bring down costs, thus making critical vaccines more available and affordable.
GSK’s decision to lower its prices, the spokesperson added, is “an important step for the global malaria vaccination programme, and our ability to make this lifesaving tool more widely available to those who need it the most”.
Gavi plans to help fund RTS,S in 12 African countries by the end of this year.
Previously, GSK has said it will supply up to 18 million vaccine doses between 2023 and the end of this year.
The company plans to supply 15 million doses annually from 2026-2028, a spokesperson told Reuters.
News
Rack Centre Signs Collocation Deal with TelCables Nigeria

Rack Centre, West Africa’s Tier III carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre, has struck a collocation agreement with TelCables Nigeria, an Angola Cables subsidiary.
TelCables Nigeria is delivering its high-capacity network and cloud infrastructure, as well as four international subsea cable systems (SACS, MONET, SEBRAS, and EllaLink), directly into Rack Centre’s regional carrier ecosystem as part of the agreement.
According to Angola Cables, the move provides reliable, low-latency south-bound routes to Europe, the Americas, and Latin America, reducing the danger of future cable disruptions along West Africa’s coast and enabling next-generation cloud services across the continent.
“Our unique Africa – to – Latin America route via SACS, combined with MONET, SEBRAS and EllaLink, gives customers the lowest – latency paths to the Americas and Europe,” said Fernando Fernandes, CEO of TelCables Nigeria.
“Businesses in latency sensitive sectors: financial services, content delivery and real-time communications will experience faster transactions, reduced lag and an enhanced user experience.
“By hosting at Rack Centre we also localise Clouds2Africa resources, price them in naira, and remove expensive ingress/egress charges or FX exposure.”
Rack Centre said its 13.5MW data centre campus designed with its recently launched LGS2 facility that delivers a design PUE of 1.35 and powered from sustainable energy sources, already hosts 70+ carriers, ISPs and network operators.
Lars Johannisson, CEO of Rack Centre, commented: “Adding a global operator of Angola Cables’ calibre through TelCables Nigeria dramatically deepens our connectivity fabric.
“We can now offer 99.95 % SLA routes to more destinations, enabling enterprises, governments and cloud providers to meet performance and data-residency requirements while keeping traffic local.”
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