ITW Africa 2024 featured strategic inputs from the most senior decision-makers in the digital infrastructure ecosystem.
Visionaries from the telecoms, data centre, tower, and power industries equipped attendees with the knowledge to drive their business forward.
With a General Delegate Pass, you can attend ITW Africa and Datacloud Africa at the Radisson Blu.
The Access All Areas Pass includes these events, plus TowerXchange Meetup Africa and the Digital Infra Power Summit at the KICC.
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2024 and 2023 were some of the toughest years for the African telecom tower industry on record. TowerXchange has assembled the four largest tower owners in Africa to discuss what’s next for growth, strategy, technology and performance heading in to 2025 and beyond.
Building and operating in the era of cloud computing is a constantly changing task. Ramping up of hyperscale presence and expansion of colocation facilities around the continent mean there are new opportunities for partnership to meet increased consumer demands, but the race is on to deliver. Big questions remain around the reality of capacity requirements, which companies will be building at scale, and how. This panel will discuss the following:
Macro turbulence, currency exchange shocks, interest rate hikes and ramped inflation has inflated costs of capital and shaken up the sector. In this current climate, how do towercos need to rethink their operational strategy, maximizing returns on every drop of invested capital and squeezing out every drop of efficiency from their networks?
Data centres are proven catalysts for economic development across the continent, however there is a problem. Africa accounts for 15% of the world's population, and yet only ~1% of data centres globally are situated on the continent. With the market anticipated to reach a valuation of $5 billion by 2026, tremendous growth is expected, but how is this potential being realised? This session will explore:
Data centres are the most promising asset class, owing primarily to the enourmous demand – there will never be enough data centres in Africa. However, the current economic environment has seen investments come off the boil. The session will explore how clever and patient capital is crucial to data centre expansion:
East Africa is quickly becoming one of the continent’s most developed regions with strong GDP growth leading to rapid economic and social development. We explore how innovative strategies, collaborative approaches, and transformative technologies are driving demand for towercos in existing and new markets across Meetup Africa’s new home region.
Various subsea and terrestrial fibre projects are providing direct and dependable connections to and between data centres, enabling low-latency use cases, and in turn ensuring intra-continent data exchange and storage. Coupled with the carrier-neutral model, a thriving ecosystem of local and international data centres and carriers interconnecting and exchanging traffic is growing, but is it growing quickly enough? This session will explore:
Towercos own 50% of towers in Africa with plenty of room for growth, but an update in carve-outs could indicate a shift in MNO strategy towards retaining value creation. Challenging conditions are also putting pressure on smaller towercos to either exit or merge to generate scale; where will the next wave of M&A come from?
Despite Africa’s mature tower market, tenancy ratios are varied and below European and US averages. How are towercos preparing their portfolios to drive free cashflow and organic tenancy growth through colocations?
With the data centre market in Africa poised to grow at an unprecedented rate, getting it right when it comes to location is paramount. Navigating partnerships for invaluable local insights, the nuanced choice between greenfield and brownfield, and seizing opportunities to positively impact communities present strategic challenges. Ensuring scalability, understanding geographical factors, and navigating land leasing intricacies further complicate the terrain. The panel will explore:
Africa needs around US$500bn in investments to achieve universal broadband access. Despite this gap, the downward economic cycle has made it hard to attract investment to the continent despite the huge infrastructure gap. How can the tower industry compete for a slice of the pie, and how do investors see opportunities?
By 2050, Africa is expected to have up to seven megacities with most of the population living in urban environments by 2033. With increasing urbanization combined with growing demand for access to connectivity and new technology, how does urban network design need to change to meet Africa’s urban coverage needs?
As data centre demand increases and becomes more complex, construction timelines are stretching, with builds taking up to 50% longer than planned. In order to deliver facilities designed to cope with the anticipated computing demands driven by AI, streaming, and cloud services, as well as meeting sustainability and CSR requirements, there's an imperative to build quicker and far more efficiently than before. This panel will address the following questions:
Kenya's data centre market is predicted to reach $434 million by 2027, according to Arizton – how is this growth being achieved?
There are an estimated 40 to 50 live edge compute servers in Africa, and this is projected to increase by a factor of 10 in the next couple of years. The requirement for local data storage and the growth of time-sensitive applications such as Mobile money, telemedicine, and agritech are among the drivers fueling this edge requirement, demanding the processing of large volumes of data where the consumers are located. This session will discuss:
This session is invitation only and accessible to towercos, MNOs and sponsors
Increased costs, depressed revenues and the pressure of greening the network is placing greater demand on tower networks to become as cost effective and efficient as possible. What technologies, tool and solutions will help drive the industry forward to minimize capex, opex and GHG emissions?
Join one of 6 open-format interactive discussion roundtables with a host of industry experts held under Chatham House rules.
1B: Country spotlight: South Africa
Sandile Msimango, CEO, IHS South Africa
Alan Parry, CEO, Orion Tower Company
1C: Country spotlight: DRC
Yannick Mvudi, Executive Head: Energy, Vodacom DRC
1D: Regional spotlight: West Africa
Belgacem Chriti, CEO, Amane Towers
Koffi Fabrice Djossou, Senior Expert Digital Economy, West African Development Bank
1E: What makes a true ESCO?
Gabriel Bou Gabrael, GM ESCO Division, IPT Powertech
Oliver Benham, Telecoms Operations Lead, Crossboundary
1F: Fixed Wireless Access: the next big towerco tenant?
Navi Naidoo, Board Member, NuRAN
1G: Regulation and corporate governance in Africa
Charis Jenkins, Senior Governance & Regulatory Affairs Manager Africa & Asia, SBA Communications
Mark Lavi, Head of Legal, ATC Kenya
Generative AI demand has ballooned, and the impact on the industry is clearly illustrated by Nvidia's announcement that their data centre revenues have risen over 400% on last year. Specifically for the continent, it is projected that AI will contribute an estimated $1.2 trillion to GDP by 2030, but applications are compute intensive and power hungry. In order to get it right and reap bottom-line benefits, data centre operators need to design and build for the future. This forward-thinking panel will navigate the challenges and share how to enable and harness the transformative potential of AI for sustainable growth in Africa:
Tough macroeconomic conditions, low ARPUs and escalating network costs have put pressure on capex and opex for towercos and MNOs. This panel discusses how towercos and their customers need to come back to the table to renew their relationships.
Lack of clarity on national (renewable) energy generation and transmission investment plans, incomplete grid infrastructure maps, barriers to private generation and lengthy interconnection processes are just some of the key policy and regulatory challenges cited by African digital infra owners. As governments look to attract investment and close the digital divide, how can energy frameworks and markets be improved to support digital infrastructure rollout:
The ITW Africa Keynote Chat Show welcomes a rotating cast of the most influential figures from across the continent’s connectivity ecosystem. Each of our guests will share their perspectives on our ever-evolving industry; expect predictions aplenty and insights into the priorities of the leading executives in our space. Topics up for discussion will include:
Towercos have proven themselves as effective partners for MNOs to manage their passive tower infrastructure needs, but as technology evolves and operator CAPEX is stretched, where can towercos provide additional benefits beyond macro towers, keeping their customers happy and well-serviced?
Better quantification of the future shape and scale of Africa’s ICT ecosystem will aid energy regulators, grid operators and IPPs better prepare for meeting data centre and telecom network energy demands. This panel of experts will help paint a picture of how the energy demand is forecast to grow in Africa, where the growth will be felt, and what factors underlie these assumptions
Network-as-a-service is proving itself as a viable alternative to fixed-lease contracts for rural coverage, supporting the commercial use-cases and driving MNOs into remote areas. What role to NaaS providers see themselves playing in Africa’s huge infrastructure gap, and does NaaS have a bigger role to play outside of rural frontiers?
Grid connections, virtual PPAs, direct investment in large scale energy projects, opex and capex led on-site generation, minigrids and more, a host of different options are available to digital infra owners to meet their energy requirements.
As MNO coverage needs evolve, towers form one part of a variety of connectivity solutions from ground-based to stratospheric and satellite. How can these various actors collaborate to provide a holistic coverage solution for their customers, and will this be a partnership of cooperation or competition?
According to IFC and Google, Africa’s internet economy has the potential to contribute around $180 billion to GDP by 2025 – meaning an uplift of roughly $65 billion expected between now and this time next year. What is the shape of recent infrastructure investments, and will they be enough to close the gap and reach the potential? This session will explore:
This session is invitation only and accessible to towercos, MNOs and sponsors
An invitation-only session inviting MSPs to discuss how they are supporting towercos with their organic and operational needs, ensuring supply chains remain resilient and exploring new services to keep Africa’ towers running.
Currently 600 million Africans lack access to electricity, with distributed generation solutions required to address the challenge. Often located in remote areas lacking developed grid infrastructure, towers have the potential to serve as anchors supporting minigrid development, yet to date there has been limited deployment
Join one of 6 open-format interactive discussion roundtables with a host of industry experts held under Chatham House rules.
2B: Country spotlight: Kenya
Tom Muchiri, Country Manager Kenya, Atlas Tower
2C: Country spotlight: Tanzania
Tudor Samuila, Country Manager, Minara Tanzania
2D: Country spotlight: Ethiopia
Soumya Banerjee, Head of Infrastructure – East Africa, IFC
Joram Mwati, Civil Works Manager, Safaricom Ethiopia
2E: Country spotlight: Angola
Antonio Nunes, Board Member, ANTOSC
2F: Meeting Africa’s ever-expanding rural coverage demand
Morenikeji Aniye, Founder & CEO, Hotspot networks
2G: Optimizing Field Operations: Driving Cost Efficiency and Vendor Accountability with SCMS
Ankur Lal, CEO, Infozech
James Langat, Head - RNIO, Safaricom
All digital infrastructure owners are under pressure to go green from their customers, investors and own internal targets, but how feasible are different options and to what extent will the market move that way?
Cross-border projects are key to delivering interoperable, equitable, and open connectivity and bridging the digital divide. This requires collaboration and understanding of the varying regulatory, geographic, and cultural differences country-to-country. Investment also unlocks more fibre route diversity, and with more routes comes more competition, an environment conducive to faster digital transformation. The panel will explore:
What tangible improvements are digital infra owners generating through the application of better monitoring, analytics, automation and AI/ML
Encounter the future - A tour of NBOX1 Data Centre in Nairobi and also experience the world’s most innovative gin, distilled with Juniperus Procera from Kenya. Transport will be provided from Radisson Blu reception at 4PM promptly, & back from venue at 7PM.
Register your interest here: iXAfrica Data Centre Tour Registration (office.com)
Strengthening the bankability of Africa's digital infrastructure projects demands close collaboration among project developers, policymakers, financiers, and other key stakeholders. This workshop will bring these players together through a fireside chat, roundtables, and an open feedback session. The focus will be on exploring financing solutions, addressing regulatory challenges, and establishing best practices for investments in green and secure digital infrastructure, ultimately accelerating industry growth.
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