Blockchain breakthroughs in Africa signal enterprise adoption readiness

Technological breakthroughs such as blockchains and distributed ledger technologies are digital infrastructures that enable innovation. Businesses across the globe are already benefiting from blockchain-based technologies which are predicted to create over $3 trillion in business value by 2030 according to Gartner.

Despite the huge potential, CIOs overestimate the capabilities and short-term benefits of blockchain technology to help them meet business objectives which creates unrealistic expectations when it comes to assessing offerings from blockchain platform vendors and service providers. 

Companies such as IBM were early adopters of blockchain. “We have used it now to solve issues with the management of our supplier ecosystem and, most recently, we are working to use the technology to improve the way in which we onboard and manage the suppliers we work with (known as the Trust Your Supplier),” said Anthony Butler, IBM’s leader and CTO for blockchain services in Africa and Middle East. 

Aligning blockchain projects to fit the overall business strategy of an organisation is key for companies looking to pursue blockchain-based implementations. “We are led by the market and we will build whatever capabilities we need in order to address market demand.  We see a lot of companies now wanting to implement blockchain networks at scale so helping them with this, as well as the associated business challenges, is a core part of our strategy.

“We are seeing customers who look to us, the general contractor, for convening blockchain networks across different countries, industries, and technologies,” Butler said. 

There are also increasing opportunities to create even more value by applying AI and IoT to blockchain networks. This is also an area of focus for companies like IBM. For example, integrating sensors with a blockchain network to gather real time and immutable data on the temperature and conditions under which a product has been transported through a cold chain; or using AI to make predictions based on the data that is sourced via the blockchain network. “There are many emerging cases now and our research organisation is focused on what comes next so we are looking at the implication of quantum or how technologies such as crypto-anchors can be used to further strengthen supply chains with blockchain for example,” Butler explained.

The role of Cloud in implementations of blockchain solutions for African enterprises

African based companies are making blockchain technological implementations. “We completed the Cranberry Cognitive Operational Management Engine which provides the most relevant real-time business service and operational data to the relevant individuals and business units across all service levels of client organisations through interactive dashboards,” said Stin Mulunda, CIO at Cranberry AB. The company has delivered a future-proof business management system which will run optimally 24/7 by leveraging all aspects and elements of data and the environment to ensure an accurate understanding of current realities and how to enhance the future. “We are now able to provide businesses with: 

• A single version of the truth through the implementation of smart contracts and the Business Node Consensus Ledger (BNCL);
• Real-time and predictive SLA compliance with bottleneck and business node identification;
• Customer, human resource, provider and operational trend analysis.

The scalability and reduction of total cost of ownership as energy consumption, system upgrades, hardware and software updates as well as infrastructure expert remuneration costs are axed from business expenses upon migration to cloud. The other benefit associated with cloud-based infrastructure is the myriad of software solutions which are compatible with an environment with the option to deploy remotely. “Agility and service optimisation have become an essential trait for survival for businesses in every sphere of the economy, this has led to the mass adoption of enabling technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and IoT which are all fundamentally cloud-based (distributed infrastructure),” said Mulunda. Cloud platforms such Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and AWS offer businesses the ability to leverage world-class infrastructure, artificial intelligence capabilities as well as blockchain and IoT solutions.

Cloud, automation, AI, machine learning, blockchain and advanced analytics are just some of the innovations being speedily implemented worldwide to combat business disruption. “The Cranberry Operational Engines’s machine learning and natural language processing algorithms provide organisational correlative analytics on all events, transactions and interactions across all business units and their underlying internal and external resources,” said Mulunda. “The business interaction module harnesses node data to calculate the business proficiency of all business units, individual human resources, and client interactions to provide business leaders a full view of the organization’s performance against set objectives, SLAs and targets at any given time. This brings the unprecedented possibility to observe and predict current and future organisational efficiency, achievements, profitability, client sentiment, and customer experience by creating a seamless flow of information across internal and external business environments as is the case with a client such as Pick n Pay, thereby future-proofing of every aspect of an organisation’s operations.”

“We’re currently in the final phase of the development of our neural analytic dashboards which will harness the Engine’s machine learning capabilities to provide executives with accurate real-time organizational correlative analytics,” Mulunda explained. These dashboards are programmed to analyse the most important/relevant metrics and KPIs to provide summarized intelligence on all events (i.e new customer vs returning customers, human resource punctuality vs revenue vs expenditure per province, store type, etc).

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