Why data is the key to Africa’s next leapfrog moment

The continent’s digital future will be shaped by data strategies that turn complexity into opportunitya

In Lagos, a street vendor takes payments through a mobile app instead of cash. In Nairobi, a startup founder pitches to investors halfway across the world on a video call. In Cape Town, farmers uses real-time weather data to decide when to irrigate their fields.

Africa’s digital economy is already moving fast, powered by fintech innovation, a young, mobile-first generation and a wave of global investment.

But for every leap forward, there’s a challenge waiting around the corner. Patchy infrastructure can slow down progress. Regulations shift from country to country. And the flood of raw data often raises a bigger question: How do you turn it into something meaningful?

For Chief Data Officers (CDOs), this is both exciting and intimidating. That’s because they’re responsible for building solid data foundations that allow their organizations to keep experimenting until they hit on the next big thing that could unlock growth.

So, how should they approach this challenge, and what should they look out for?

Infrastructure and data challenges are pervasive

Every organization wants to make smarter, data-driven decisions. But in practice, the road is rarely smooth.

Infrastructure remains a major constraint. While fiber rollouts and data center investments are expanding, organizations that operate in rural or cross-border markets still deal with patchy connectivity, high infrastructure costs and legacy systems. This makes moving to cloud-native analytics or AI far harder than it looks on paper — how do you make the cloud work for you if you can’t reliably connect to it?

And even with the right infrastructure, data quality remains a concern. Too often, the problem is not how much data an organization has, but whether it is usable and trustworthy. Imagine trying to build a business strategy when your customer records are duplicated, every department guards its own silo, and the data formats never line up.

A further complication is that most enterprise data is unstructured or semistructured — voice recordings, WhatsApp threads and scanned documents are difficult to analyze with legacy data-processing tools. And traditional data warehouses were never designed for this kind of volume or complexity.

Shifting regulations add more complexity

On top of the technical hurdles comes regulation. Compliance is no longer confined to national data-protection laws such as South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act or Kenya’s Data Protection Act. African organizations, particularly in financial services, are now expected to align with global regimes such as the EU AI Act, which introduces stringent requirements for transparency, governance and accountability in AI.

For CDOs, this adds even more complexity: How do you innovate with data and stay compliant when the goalposts keep moving?

And then there’s the human element. Demand for skilled data engineers, AI specialists and governance professionals far outstrips supply. Assembling the right team quickly becomes even harder than picking the right tools.

The result? A landscape full of opportunity — but also one where the distance between vision and reality can feel impassable.

The data opportunity in Africa is vast

But here’s the thing: If we only talk about the hurdles, we miss the real story. Africa isn’t just playing catch-up — it’s leapfrogging. Think back to mobile money. What started as a workaround for limited banking access completely transformed financial inclusion, pulling millions into the digital economy and setting the stage for fintech innovation.

The same potential exists in how African organizations approach analytics today.

With smartphone use expected to reach nearly 90% of the continent’s population by 2030, the sheer volume of consumer data is skyrocketing. Imagine a bank that doesn’t just offer broad “student” or “business” accounts but tailors financial products to the exact spending habits of each customer. Or a retailer adjusting their stock in real time because the data shows demand for umbrellas in Kampala after a sudden rainstorm. The result? More loyalty, deeper engagement and customers who stick around for the long haul.

And it’s not just about customers. The ability to analyze data also holds enormous promise for supply chain resilience. In industries as diverse as agriculture, healthcare and manufacturing, greater logistics visibility can eliminate bottlenecks and improve forecasting. In markets where margins are thin and operational risks high, these are game-changing gains.

Perhaps most exciting of all is the prospect of GenAI-powered innovation. From customer service in multiple languages to AI-driven risk scoring for microfinance, the applications are both wide-ranging and deeply local. With global spending on GenAI forecast to reach $97 billion by 2027, Africa has a chance not just to adopt these tools but also to shape them for its own needs.

• ALSO READ → Turning data into dollars: Make ROI a reality — in real time

A partnership for smart data solutions

The question then is not whether data will matter, but how you can unlock your organization’s potential responsibly and effectively. The answer lies in building data architectures that can adapt and scale based on shifting demand while supporting robust governance.

This is where NTT DATA’s partnership with data-cloud specialist Snowflake, now also in South Africa, becomes significant. Instead of a bank juggling dozens of disconnected systems — customer records here, payment data there, compliance reports in a completely different silo — all these fragments come together into one source of truth with the Snowflake AI Data Cloud. No more data duplication or delays caused by bouncing files back and forth. Instead, analytics, machine learning and compliance reporting all run on the same version of your data.

Equally important, the platform is designed for unstructured and semistructured data. Contact center transcripts, social media interactions and even scanned legal contracts can be analyzed alongside structured financial data to paint a much richer picture of the business. For CDOs trying to build AI-ready organizations, this is a game changer.

Add to this built-in governance and security, along with NTT DATA’s expertise in data and AI strategy, migration and governance, and you gain both the technical agility to innovate and the regulatory assurance to withstand scrutiny.

• ALSO READ → Data readiness: Your first step to agentic AI success

A defining moment for CDOs

The role of data and analytics in business has never been greater, and CDOs will play a pivotal role in shaping the direction of the business. The decisions you make today about infrastructure, governance and adoption will determine whether your organization remains competitive five years from now.

At the heart of it all is trust. Can you trust the quality of your data? Can you trust the governance frameworks keeping it secure and compliant? Can you trust your AI systems enough to explain and defend their decisions when regulators — or customers — come knocking?

At the same time, adoption matters. Data strategies succeed only when they are embedded in organizational culture. Teams across the business must feel empowered to access, use and act on insights.

The temptation with GenAI and other headline-grabbing technologies is to chase novelty. The real opportunity lies in applying these innovations responsibly, solving business problems that matter and creating lasting value.

• ALSO READ → Mining data insights: South Africa’s breakthrough moment

Take the leap with data and AI

The African data landscape is undeniably complex but also rich with opportunity. The hurdles are real — fragmented infrastructure, shifting governance — but so is the potential. With the right platforms in place and the right partners by your side, those challenges can be turned into catalysts for transformation. 

For CDOs, the takeaway couldn’t be clearer: This is a once-in-a-generation moment. How you build, govern and scale your data foundation now will determine whether your organization helps shape Africa’s next wave of growth and innovation.