The Government is working on finalising the national data and cloud policy of South Africa to improve the environment for the establishment of networks.

This was announced by Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Mondli Gungubele during a breakaway session on Digital Opportunities in South Africa at the fifth South Africa Investment Conference in Sandton on Thursday.

The national data and cloud policy “seeks to strengthen the capacity of the State to deliver services to its citizens, ensure informed policy development based on data analytics, as well as promote South Africa’s data sovereignty and the security thereof”.

The policy seeks to enable South Africans to realise the socio-economic value of data through the alignment of existing policies, legislation and regulations. The policy further seeks to put in place a conducive and enabling environment for the data ecosystem to thrive.

“We are excited about going forward. Google, Amazon and Web services have made huge commitments in terms of data investments and cloud service availability which is going to help us focus with least cost on the innovation space on development of technologies,” Gungubele said.

He said government has ambitious targets, especially for the three targeted areas which are digital connectivity, digital literacy and digital skills.

“We are targeting young people, women and SMMEs for these areas. We already have a huge number of people that are hungry for learning. We are working with universities and international communities to ensure there is intensification of innovations to promote capabilities as far as these industries are concerned. We are, amongst other things, already rolling out artificial intelligence hubs,” the Minister said.

Source: Nam News Network (NNN)