Muggie van Staden, Obsidian

In the Middle East and Africa, South Africa is emerging as the region’s fastest-growing cloud market and is projected to hit $6.3 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research. “In South Africa, and globally, businesses are shifting gears, moving towards cloud and AI solutions to keep up with the pace of innovation to remain competitive and relevant,” says Eugene de Souza, regional cloud ecosystem lead at Red Hat. Hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are introducing AI and machine learning services, making advanced analytics accessible to businesses of all sizes. There’s also the emerging trend where local cloud and service providers are offering AI-as-a- Service capabilities to their customers. AI will continue to dominate business and technology conversations in 2025. Businesses that don’t adopt cloud and AI will be overtaken, he adds.

“One of the most significant [cloud trends] is the shift from digital transformation to AI transformation,” says Ravi Bhat, chief technology and solutions officer for Microsoft’s Africa Region. This transformation is not simply about moving to the cloud, it’s about integrating services like AI capabilities to drive innovation and improve customer experiences. “It represents a step up for some organisations from where they were, and we are seeing customers leapfrog into AI transformation,” he says.