The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and TradeMark Africa (TMA) (www.TradeMarkAfrica.com) today inked a strategic collaboration geared towards improving trade facilitation, opening transportation corridors, and promoting economic integration within West Africa. The collaborative agreement aims to enhance the use of digital technologies to improve trade efficiency, reduce trade barriers at border crossings, and foster a conducive environment for business operations throughout the region.

Dr. Omar Alieu Touray, President of the ECOWAS Commission, and Amb. Erastus Mwencha, TradeMark Africa Board Chairman, formalised the agreement during a signing ceremony in Nairobi, Kenya, on the sidelines of the African Development Bank Group 2024 Annual General Meeting (AGM).

TradeMark Africa will bring experience from the Eastern, Southern, and Horn of Africa regions, and aims to expand support to enhance trade corridor infrastructure and connectivity, improve compliance of traded goods to international quality standards, as well as strengthen structures to empower women and youth in trade. The two organisations will also develop and implement climate resilience and mitigation strategies to promote more environmentally friendly and sustainable trading practices.

Dr. Omar Alieu Touray stated, “The partnership with TradeMark Africa is a strategic step towards achieving the economic integration goals of ECOWAS. By leveraging TMA’s expertise in trade logistics and capacity building, we can address pressing challenges at our borders and improve the transit environment. This partnership sets a robust framework for prosperity that will benefit all member states and strengthen the business landscape in West Africa.”

Amb. Erastus Mwencha expressed his enthusiasm for the partnership, stating that the signing of the agreement is a significant milestone for TMA as it is keen on expanding its trade facilitation efforts to West Africa, with an emphasis on the Abidjan-Lagos corridor and interlocking routes. “This collaboration marks a significant milestone in our efforts to streamline trade processes across Africa. By partnering with ECOWAS in adopting cutting-edge trade facilitation techniques, we aim to reduce overall trade costs and enhance the competitiveness of West African economies on the global stage. Our goal is not just to facilitate trade but to catalyse sustainable economic development that benefits all stakeholders in the region,” said Amb. Mwencha.

Speaking at the same function, Dave Beer, TMA CEO, commented: “We are pleased to collaborate with ECOWAS in supporting further advances in trade facilitation. Our joint efforts will make a tangible difference in the lives of millions by boosting trade efficiency and creating new opportunities to propel economic prosperity in the region and continent-wide.”

TMA’s goals align with those of ECOWAS in areas of trade, transport, and regional integration, with both organisations supporting integration as crucial for increased prosperity.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of TradeMark Africa (TMA).

About ECOWAS:
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is a regional economic community that was established in 1975 with its headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria. It was set up with the objective to promote economic cooperation and integration, leading to the establishment of an economic union in West Africa to raise the living standards of its peoples, and to maintain and enhance economic stability, foster relations among member states and contribute to the progress and development of the African continent.

Member countries making up ECOWAS are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d’ Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Senegal, and Togo.

The Vision of ECOWAS is the creation of a borderless region where the population has access to its abundant resources and can exploit same through the creation of opportunities under a sustainable environment.

For details, visit: https://www.ECOWAS.int/

About TMA:
TradeMark Africa (TMA), formerly TradeMark East Africa, is an Aid-for-Trade organisation that was established in 2010, with the aim of growing prosperity through increased trade. TMA operates on a not-for-profit basis and is funded by: Belgium, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Canada, Denmark, the European Union, Finland, Mastercard Foundation, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

TMA’s headquarters are in Nairobi, Kenya. Operations and offices are in: EAC Secretariat – Arusha, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somaliland, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

TMA works closely with regional intergovernmental organisations, including the African Union (AU), the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, the East Africa Community (EAC), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), national Governments, the private sector and civil society organisations.

In 2022, TMA set up a catalytic finance fund, Trade Catalyst Africa (TCA), that will pilot commercially viable projects for creating trade infrastructure (both physical and digital) as well as increasing access to Trade Finance for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

For details, visit: https://www.TradeMarkAfrica.com/

OVHcloud (www.OVHCloud.com/fr/), the European leader in cloud computing, will be taking part in GITEX AFRICA Morocco 2024 (www.GITEXAFRICA.com) in Marrakech. On this occasion, the Group is announcing the first opening of a Local Zone on the African continent, with operations scheduled to begin in Rabat in the coming months. This news demonstrates OVHcloud’s commitment in Africa to offer trusted cloud solutions.

Launch in Morocco: a key step in the deployment strategy of Local Zone in Africa

The announcement was made official with the signature of a partnership between Maroc Datacenter, a specialist in the construction and operation of data centers in Morocco, and OVHcloud. This strong partnership will also see Maroc Datacenter support OVHcloud to tailor its offerings on the Moroccan market. In addition, OVHcloud announces further deployments, including the opening of Local Zones in South Africa, Kenya and Tunisia for 2025.

“We are delighted to enter a partnership with OVHcloud Group, a global player and the European leader in the cloud. The launch of a Local Zone in Morocco will contribute to empower the kingdom digital ecosystem by offering innovative cloud platforms and provide public and private organisations with cloud services offering guarantees of data sovereignty and low latency. We are glad OVHcloud has chosen Morocco as the first country on the African continent to launch the Local Zone and has placed its trust in Maroc Datacenter. We would like to thank Orange Morocco for supporting us in this launch by providing its national and international connectivity capabilities.” says Abderrahmane Mounir, Chairman of Maroc Datacenter.

As part of its global growth plan in the Cloud market, OVHcloud aims to open up to 150 Local Zones by 2026. Based on innovative technology, Local Zones enable the Group to deploy infrastructures as close as possible to its customers, using Edge Computing principles, to serve new international locations in just a couple weeks. In addition to the Local Zones previously opened in Brussels, Madrid, Marseille, Prague, Amsterdam, Zurich and Dallas, the new Local Zone in Rabat offers Moroccan customers new opportunities to access the Group’s Public Cloud services, with reduced latency and local data hosting.

Thanks to this, Moroccan customers will benefit from the unique offering of OHVcloud for an open, trusted cloud, with data located as close as possible to the user. The data, hosted within the geographical limits defined by local regulations or security policies, allows customers to be confident: which proves essential for a number of industries, including consulting, financial services and healthcare.

Workloads with latency-sensitive services, such as real-time analytics, e-commerce websites, CDNs for streaming video and catch-up, and cloud gaming, will benefit from the Local Zone proximity for increased response times for a better user experience. For most customers, OVHcloud Local Zones offer single-digit millisecond latency times, enabling use cases such as high-performance gaming from the Cloud with very low latency.

‘Today’s launch of the first Local Zone in Rabat is an important milestone in OVHcloud’s relationship with Morocco and confirms the Group’s ambition to extend its offering to organisations operating in Africa. From now on, companies and institutions will be able to take advantage of the Local Zones to rely on more secure, faster and more efficient services, facilitating the digital transformation of the Moroccan ecosystem before moving on to serve new locations on the continent. Known as one of the main technology hubs in Africa, Morocco is a strategic market for us, with specific features needs and high requirements, particularly in terms of data sovereignty.’, said Caroline Comet-Fraigneau, Vice-President for France, Benelux, Africa and the Middle East at OVHcloud.

From the Local Zones, organisations can take advantage of Public Cloud features such as Compute, Block Storage and the network with a local public IP. Additional services will be offered in the coming months, including access to Object Storage and Managed Rancher Service for Kubernetes management, in multi-cloud environments.

OVHcloud’s new Local Zones are also ISO/IEC 27001 certified, in addition to the requirements of ISO/IEC 27017 standards, specific to the cloud services industry and ISO/IEC 27018 for the protection of personal data. These certifications ensure that businesses can deploy services in an OVHcloud environment to meet the highest security standards.

A dynamic community of customers and start-ups

With more than 6,000 customers already in Morocco, OVHcloud is strengthening its ties with the local ecosystem. The Group is also demonstrating its intention to accelerate its support to Moroccan start-ups (several dozen of which, such as Omniup and Digishare, are already part of the OVHcloud network- Startup.OVHCloud.com/). As a reminder, the OVHcloud Startup Program offers its members a wide range of commitments, including development advice, tailored technical support and no-obligation cloud credits to help them launch new projects and accelerate go-to-market timeline.

Availability

Available this summer, the Rabat Local Zone will enable Public Cloud services to be deployed directly from the OVHcloud customer interface.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of GITEX Africa.

Media Relations:
Florian Senlecq
Communication and PR media.france@ovhcloud.com
+33 (0)6 61 80 84 29

Ressources:

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About OVHcloud:
OVHcloud is a global player and the European leader in the Cloud, operating more than 450,000 servers in 43 data centres on 4 continents for 1.6 million customers in over 140 countries. Spearheading a trusted Cloud and pioneering a sustainable Cloud with the best price-performance ratio, the Group has for more than 20 years relied on an integrated model that gives it complete control of its value chain: from the design of its servers, to the construction and management of its data centres, via the orchestration of its fibre-optic network. This unique approach means that OVHcloud can independently cover all its customers’ needs, while enabling them to benefit from the virtues of an environmentally sound model, with frugal use of resources and a carbon footprint that is among the best in the industry. Today, OVHcloud offers state-of-the-art solutions that combine performance, price predictability and complete sovereignty over their data, enabling them to grow with complete freedom.

Following a series of attacks during the Invest in African Energy forum in Paris this May, environmental group Friends of the Earth has attempted to justify their actions at the event – a forum which sought to increase investment in African energy and bolster Africa’s economic development. The group stated that it is an “illusion” that developing oil and gas will lead to development in Africa, despite stating that the Global North has used African resources to develop for decades.

Friends of the Earth Africa explained to Rigzone that, “Fossil fuels have been extracted from different parts of the African continent for more than 60 years, mostly for export to serve the countries of the global North.”

This is true. They continue to explain that this has resulted in environmental degradation, gas flaring, negative health impacts, human rights abuses and more, all while 600 million people lack access to electricity and 700 million have no access to clean cooking solutions. This is also true, and yet, rather ironically, the group continues to demonize the development of oil and gas in Africa at a time when the continent is planning to utilize these resources to address its own energy access and clean cooking challenges.

As sovereign nations, African countries have the right and the responsibility to use their natural resources to improve the lives of their people. At the African Energy Chamber (AEC) – the voice of Africa’s energy industry – we are confident that we can, indeed, achieve this goal – despite blatant and spiteful attacks by foreign environmental groups. It is disheartening to see groups like Friends of the Earth pursuing actions that could jeopardize Africa’s oil and gas development all in the name of preventing climate change. Never mind the importance of natural gas to Africans; of its potential to grow and diversify economies; of the role it will play in alleviating energy poverty and bolstering clean cooking access; of the considerable time and resources that African governments have invested in making LNG projects possible.

“This is not the first time that non-Africans have attempted to interfere with Africa’s oil and gas industry. International organizations such as the World Bank, the International Energy Agency and private investors face pressure by environmental groups to stop financing African fossil fuel production,” states NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman of the AEC.

Natural gas, in particular, is set to transform African countries. Mozambique, for example, has placed gas-to-power at the very heart of its development plans. The country has over 100 trillion cubic feet of offshore gas reserves, with the 450 MW Temane power plant on track for production in 2024. Energy major TotalEnergies has also announced plans to supply 1,000 MW of electricity to South Africa from the Matola LNG-to-power project in Mozambique.

In North Africa, Algeria has used gas to not only power its economy, but also generate revenue that feeds into other industries across the country. The country is the fifth largest LNG producer globally and has used export revenues to develop its local power generation and transmission infrastructure. Power plants consume 40% of the country’s gas resources and the country enjoys an electrification rate of 99.8%.

Nigeria is on a similar trajectory. At over 200 tcf, the country has the largest gas reserves in Africa, with the share of gas in the domestic energy mix projected to increase to 57% by 2040. The $2 billion Egbin Phase II project is expected to come online this year, increasing output by an additional 1,900 MW at the 1,320 MW facility. Construction has also started on a 1.35 GW gas-to-power project, developed by technology company GE Vernova, while the Nigeria LNG Train Expansion project – a $5 billion development – will increase the Nigeria LNG terminal production capacity by 35%.

Angola is already taking concrete steps towards eliminating gas flaring – having endorsed the World Bank’s Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 initiative – and positioning natural gas as a key pillar of economic growth. TotalEnergies recently achieved FID on its Cameia-Golfinho gas field development, which is set to utilize a zero-flaring concept and supply gas to a combined cycle turbine to produce electricity for domestic use. Development of the Quiluma and Maboqueiro fields – the country’s first non-associated gas project – is also underway and will supply the Angola LNG facility.

Meanwhile, the Republic of Congo is finalizing its Gas Master Plan, which will provide a framework for harnessing natural gas both for domestic consumption and export. The country exported its first LNG cargo from the Congo LNG project earlier this year, and with 10 tcf of natural gas resources, is well on its way to monetizing untapped reserves. Yet, Friends of the Earth – a group which has also benefited from African resources – believes they know what is best for the continent. They believe that their solutions, and not the ones of Africans, should be adopted. They are proving time and time again that they have no qualms in dismissing African voices.

“Africa cannot be a continent where our budgets are left to donors. Every time we go begging to other countries for aid, the dignity of Africans suffers. What the AEC is advocating for – and will continue fighting for despite attempts by foreign groups to disrupt progress – is for all Africans to have the dignity of work, the ability to build better lives and to harness their natural resources to alleviate energy poverty. We want an Africa that not only develops but thrives, and leveraging natural gas is the only feasible path to achieving that goal,” added Ayuk.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Energy Chamber.

According to Kaspersky (www.Kaspersky.co.za) statistics, in the first quarter of 2024, the percentage of Industrial Control Systems (ICS) computers globally on which malicious objects were blocked decreased by 1.3 percentage points (pp) from the first quarter of the previous year – to 24.4%. In Africa the amount of malware remained almost unchanged, on a level much higher compared to other regions – 32.4% of ICS computers in Africa faced cyberthreats in the first quarter of 2024. In South Africa the figures are 23.5% in Q1 2023 and 25.5% in Q1 2024, Kenya – 28.1% and 30.5%, while in Nigeria – the figures grew from 25.3% to 28%.

In the first quarter of 2024, Kaspersky’s protection solutions blocked malware from 10,865 different malware families of various categories on industrial automation systems. The African region is over-exposed to threats spreading via the Internet, which are the most common initial-access tools for cyber attackers. The region also leads in charts of malware spread via removable devices (5.6% of ICS computers faced it, compared to the global figure of 1.13%), which is the other way for cyber attackers to try to bypass the safeguards at the perimeter and to spread within the internal infrastructure.

Malicious objects that are used for initial infection of computers include dangerous Internet resources that are added to denylists (this threat was blocked on 8.78% of ICS computers in Africa), malicious scripts and phishing pages (6.9%), and malicious documents (1.83%). These malicious objects are normally used at the initial phases of the attack chain. As a result, they are blocked by security solutions more often than everything else. This is normally reflected in Kaspersky Security Network statistics.

Malicious objects used to initially infect computers deliver next-stage malware – spyware, ransomware, and miners – to victims’ computers. Spyware (Trojan-Spy malware, backdoors and keyloggers), which is mostly used to steal money or confidential data, is also widespread both globally and in Africa (blocked on 6.65% of ICS computers in Africa).

Worms and viruses are types of self-propagating malware. To spread across ICS networks, viruses and worms rely on removable media, network folders, infected files including backups, and network attacks on outdated software. This type of malware is very active in African countries compared to other regions and global average. Extremely high rates of self-propagating malware in the region most probably mean there’s a significant portion of OT infrastructure yet to be protected by security solutions (which is where the malware continuously spreads from) and there’s room for improving the overall cybersecurity culture to follow strict cybersecurity policies.

ICS computers in Africa continue to face covert crypto-mining programs – miners in the form of executable files for Windows and web miners, though this type of malware is decreasing in the recent years. If successfully installed these provide cybercriminals steady earnings from using victim’s computer processing power.

Since AutoCAD software is widely used in ICS organisations, cybercriminals also try to make use of this and similar programs creating special malware, detection of which increased in the first quarter of 2024 compared to previous quarters.

The Middle East and Africa lead among regions where ransomware is spread; though not high in numbers (0.28% and 0.27% of ICS computers faced these respectfully), this may pose serious risk to organisations, especially if data encryption scenario is selected by cybercriminals.

“Africa is actively integrating technologies, but it’s important to keep cybersecurity in mind and apply it to both new technologies and currently used solutions. By a security mindset we mean implementing reliable solutions, setting up security policies and educating employees depending on their level of relation with OT. This applies to all infrastructures, but is especially important in operational technology, where risks of material consequences are very high and impact on safety is possible. We hope organisations in Africa will set the stage in the region for a future where technology and security go hand in hand,” says Evgeny Goncharov, Head of Kaspersky’s ICS Cyber Emergency Response Team.

To keep ICS computers protected from various threats, Kaspersky experts recommend:

Using security solutions for operation technology endpoints and networks, such as Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity (http://apo-opa.co/4e0oN1a) to ensure comprehensive protection for all industry critical systems.
Regularly updating operating systems and application software that are part of the enterprise’s industrial network. Apply security fixes and patches to ICS network equipment as soon as they are available.
Conducting regular security audits of operation technology networks to identify and eliminate security issues.
Undertaking dedicated ICS security training for IT security teams and OT engineers, which is crucial to improve responses to new and advanced malicious techniques.
Using ICS network traffic monitoring, analysis and detection solutions for better protection from attacks potentially threatening technological processes and main enterprise assets.
Protect IT infrastructure using solutions for timely detection of cyberthreats, investigation, and effective remediation of incidents, such as Kaspersky Next (http://apo-opa.co/3KoMxhU).
Providing the security team responsible for protecting industrial control systems with up-to-date threat intelligence. ICS Threat Intelligence (http://apo-opa.co/3wWHamS) Reporting service provides insights into current threats and attack vectors, as well as the most vulnerable elements in OT and industrial control systems and how to mitigate them.

A full report on ICS threats in the first quarter of 2024 is available at ICS CERT website (http://apo-opa.co/3KnQUtu).

Industrial cybersecurity is one of the main topics being discussed by Kaspersky experts at GITEX Africa in Morocco, on 29-31 May 2024.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Kaspersky.

About Kaspersky: 
Kaspersky is a global cybersecurity and digital privacy company founded in 1997. With over a billion devices protected to date from emerging cyberthreats and targeted attacks, Kaspersky’s deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming into innovative solutions and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, governments and consumers around the globe. The company’s comprehensive security portfolio includes leading endpoint protection, specialized security products and services, as well as Cyber Immune solutions to fight sophisticated and evolving digital threats. We help over 220,000 corporate clients protect what matters most to them. Learn more at www.Kaspersky.co.za.