CIOs in Africa Play a Central Role in Defining New Business Models

Half of the CIOs in Africa said their organization has changed or is in the process of changing their business models, and the CIO will have a pivotal role to play, according to Gartner’s annual survey. It has found that 63 percent of CAPCIO respondents in Africa are taking a lead role or are heavily involved in the decision to change business models.

The survey also revealed that IT has a paramount role to play in the change. “For 90 percent of CIOs in Africa IT is very or extremely important to business model change,“ said Tomas Nielsen, research director at Gartner.

The 2019 Gartner CIO Agenda Survey gathered data from more than 3,000 CIO respondents in 89 countries and all major industries, representing approximately $15 trillion in revenue/public-sector budgets and $284 billion in IT spending. Sixty-two CIOs from Africa were surveyed, representing $4.4 billion in IT spending.

The shift in business and operating models means that CIOs must secure a new foundation for IT. Globally 33 percent of organizations are scaling and harvesting the results of digital business, while in Africa only 21 percent of CIOs are at that stage. CIOs in Africa have some inroads to make in order to compete with their global peers. To help them move their digital initiatives from tentative experiment to massive scale they need to adopt a new secure foundation for their IT efforts.

Thirty percent of CIOs in Africa placed digital as their No. 1 business priority for the remainder of this year and next year. Business growth (23 percent) was named as the No. 2 business priority. “This ranking shows that CIOs in Africa are making digital an integral part of their business strategy and planning,“ said Nielsen. “They clearly want digital fueled growth in 2019. Digital is not nice to have, it’s mandatory. The investment in digital is increasing, and digital continues to gain currency across the economy in Africa.“

Forty-eight percent of CIOs in Africa are accountable for cybersecurity, while it is the responsibility of 20 percent of the Board of Directors in Africa. “Cybersecurity is one of our hygiene factors,“ said Nielsen. “It has to work. CIOs get no thanks when it does, and when it fails spectacularly enough, they can lose their jobs.“ Cybersecurity has already been deployed by 49 percent of CIO respondents in Africa and 33 percent of them will deploy it in the next 12 months.

While cybersecurity is the top digital technology deployment among CIOs in Africa, disruptive technologies are reaching a tipping point. Conversational platforms were ranked in the No. 2 position with 15 percent of CIOs in Africa who have already deployed it and 13 percent who will deploy it in the next 12 months.