Vodafone and Project Kuiper, Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite (LEO) communications initiative, today announced a strategic collaboration through which Vodafone and Vodacom plan to use Project Kuiper’s network to extend the reach of 4G/5G services to more of their customers in Europe and Africa.

Vodafone and Vodacom plan to use Project Kuiper’s high-bandwidth, low-latency satellite network to bring the benefits of 4G/5G connectivity to areas that may otherwise be challenging and prohibitively expensive to serve via traditional fibre or microwave solutions. Project Kuiper will connect geographically dispersed cellular antennas back to the companies’ core telecom networks. This means Vodafone and Vodacom will be able offer 4G/5G services in more locations without the time and expense of building out fibre-based or fixed wireless links back to the core networks.

As part of the collaboration, Amazon plans to partner with Vodafone to roll out Project Kuiper’s high-speed broadband services to unserved and underserved communities around the world. The companies are also exploring additional enterprise-specific offerings to provide businesses with comprehensive global connectivity solutions, such as backup service for unexpected events and extending connectivity to remote infrastructure.

Margherita Della Valle, Vodafone Group Chief Executive, said: “Vodafone’s work with Project Kuiper will provide mobile connectivity to many of the estimated 40% of the global population without internet access, supporting remote communities, their schools and businesses, the emergency services, and disaster relief. These connections will be complemented further through our own work on direct-to-smartphone satellite services.”

“Amazon is building Project Kuiper to provide fast, affordable broadband to tens of millions of customers in unserved and underserved communities, and our flexible network means we can connect places that have traditionally been difficult to reach,” said Dave Limp, Amazon’s senior vice president for devices and services. “Teaming with a leading international service provider like Vodafone allows us to make a bigger impact faster in closing the digital divide in Europe and Africa. Together we’ll explore how we can help our customers get the most value from expanded connectivity, particularly in areas like residential broadband, agriculture, education, healthcare, transportation, and financial services.”

“At Vodacom, our purpose is to connect for a better future, and we work every day to bring more people in Africa online,” said Shameel Joosub, CEO of Vodacom Group. “Collaborating with Project Kuiper gives us an exciting new path to scale our efforts, using Amazon’s satellite constellation to quickly reach more customers across the African continent.”

Vodafone, Vodacom and Project Kuiper will begin deploying services in Africa and Europe as Amazon’s production satellites come online. Amazon is preparing to test two prototype satellites in the coming months before starting to deploy production satellites in 2024. Amazon expects to begin beta testing Project Kuiper services with select customers by the end of 2024, and Vodafone and Vodacom plan to participate in that testing through this collaboration.

Digital technologies have created new spaces for interaction and enabled new ways to connect, share experiences, work and build communities. It is estimated that by 2030 in Sub-Saharan Africa alone more than 230 million jobs will require digital skill sets. The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector has always been a male-dominated industry. In 2022, it was estimated that women made up only 27% of the tech industry. Even more alarming is the mere 6% of women in app development.

Unfortunately, this digital divide is exacerbated in Africa, and countries with historic or systemic socio-economic empowerment. As one of the fastest growing industries globally, it is concerning that women, who make up 50% of the workforce, make up less than 30% of ICT workers in Sub-Saharan Africa.

IYF’s digital empowerment program, Skills for Success (S4S), has been addressing this gap, giving students the opportunity to enroll in a variety of ICT courses certified by Google, including professional certificates in IT, UX Design, Data Analytics, Project Management and Digital Marketing & E-Commerce. Currently, 80% of the program’s enrolled learners are women.

Thus far, over 3000 people have enrolled in the S4S program, with more learners being onboarded as the programs expands. What has set S4S apart from many other educational ICT program is its holistic structure, which not only attends to hard skills required in the ICT sector, but also soft skills such as constructing a CV, and base-entrepreneurship skillsets, designed to provide students with the tools required to launch their own businesses. This push towards entrepreneurship addresses another socio-economic inequality – the lack of women-owned SMMEs. Women own only 36% of all small businesses worldwide, a figure that is amplified in lower-income countries.

The program has been rolled out in three African countries – South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, receiving positive responses from enrolled learners and graduates, who have embraced their newfound IT skills and entrepreneurial learning. A female Nigerian learner spoke on the course’s effect saying, “I have strong desire to share the knowledge I’ve gained with others, with a particular focus on empowering females through the transfer of these valuable expertise.”

International Women in Cyber Day (1 September) draws awareness to the gender gaps in the ICT sector and recognises the need for more diversity in the industry. The IYF is not only committed to proliferating this awareness, but more importantly, actioning sustainable change in the sector through S4S. Inequities in ICT knowledge and employment is not something that will be fixed overnight, but change will only come through methods that empower those interested in pursuing ICT with an accessible, sustainable and practical program that has a tangible impact.

And we are already seeing the results of the Skills for Success program, to date more than 1200 livelihood opportunities have been documented as well as a marked increase in the job security and earning potential of graduates. S4S’s achievements are undoubtedly changing the gender landscape of the ICT sector in Africa and moving the needle further towards a more equitable economy.

Importantly, there is a butterfly effect to S4S program. Forbes recognised that 60.2% of gender diverse companies reported increased profits and productivity, suggesting that companies that embrace gender equity are ultimately more likely to succeed, and more likely to bolster economies. With S4S providing an accessible pipeline of women learners into the ICT industry, the effect is not only the empowerment of women, but the growth of the ICT sector, whilst providing solid foundations for a strengthened economy.

As the understanding that data insights can drive leadership and innovation gains traction, businesses have become increasingly data focused. While data collection is nothing new, the reality is that many organisations have no idea what data they have, where it is located and how it can most effectively be leveraged. This scenario has become even more complex as businesses migrate to the cloud, creating more disparate data sources, duplication and data sprawl that can make gaining insights from data impossible. The key to solving this challenge is data classification, as part of an overall data management strategy, in order to gain control over data and enable it to be leveraged to drive business value.

What are we doing with data

Without a data strategy, data is often collected indiscriminately, and with more and more data sources, including a growing number of sensors, connected devices and more, data volumes have increased exponentially. Lack of centralised control also means data is often duplicated multiple times.

This leads to rapidly accelerating data storage costs, which are increasingly problematic, particularly regarding cloud migrations, where costs are directly related to volumes. In addition, data cannot effectively be used for analysis, which means it cannot drive proactive decisions or add value.

Dark data like this is a burden, a cost, and a potential liability, rather than the strategic asset it could turn into. Businesses need to understand what data they have, where, why and what they can get out of it, otherwise they cannot leverage it for insight, and run the risk of falling foul of increasingly stringent laws around data.

Containing the sprawl

To use data as an asset, it is vital to proactively understand what data we need and what data we have, consolidate data sources, ensure that there are no duplicate copies of data, and have a strategy for extracting the data.

Critical to the ability to contain data sprawl and turn data into information, the business can utilisedata classification. Effectively categorising data helps businesses understand not only what they have but also what is important, how to prioritise data, and how to ensure that critical data types and locations are effectively identified and protected so that the risk around them is understood.

When data is classified correctly, data retention strategies are more effective, analytics is more impactful and data storage is less costly, because duplicates can be identified and weeded out and only data that is needed is kept. This also allows for far more effective insight and intelligence. Data classification should go hand in hand with data management and form a key part of the data strategy.

Working together

Data is not an IT problem, it is a business problem, because business needs to drive the decisions around what data must be used for, before IT can act as an enabler in delivering this. Business needs to understand what applications are generating what data and what information they require to drive decision making. Only then can IT and data management come together with business, to deliver the systems that will drive data classification in line with business requirements. Effective data management and classification relies on a central repository for accessing information, a single overview, and a single pane of glass for dealing with data to prevent sprawl.

All of this requires expert skills, which are typically in short supply and difficult to obtain in-house. Having the right data management partner can be invaluable, particularly as businesses migrate further into the cloud. Data costs can quickly spiral with a cloud-first approach, but with a classification strategy up front, these costs can be contained. A data management specialist will help businesses to identify the pitfalls, ensure that a well-designed strategy is in place and that data can be consolidated and managed from a single pane of glass with as few tools as possible. This will help to mitigate risk, minimise cost and ensure data is compliant and available for the essential analytics that drive business insight, innovation and intelligent decision making.