Many South African enterprises are facing headaches about the complexities ushered by issues surrounding data sovereignty and residency.

On the one hand, there is a growing number of hyperscaler data centre providers that have built local availability zones in the country. On the other hand, a plethora of regulations are demanding strict compliance with data sovereignty and residency stipulations.

Data sovereignty and residency are important because they help organisations maintain control over their data, comply with legal and regulatory requirements, enhance data security, and build trust with customers.

These considerations are particularly critical in today’s globalised digital world, where data is a valuable asset that needs to be protected and managed responsibly.

The dilemma for decision-makers within enterprises arises when they are not sure if the data they have entrusted with public cloud providers is, indeed, within the borders of South Africa.

Though still in the works, the South African government is developing the National Data and Cloud Policy, which seeks to create an enabling environment for the provision of data and cloud services to ensure socio-economic development for inclusivity.

Critically, the draft policy intends to promote South Africa’s data sovereignty and security, as well as to ensure informed policy development based on data analytics.

This, as the influx of hyperscale cloud providers has seen the need for data sovereignty and residency gaining momentum, not only in South Africa but also globally.

Another piece of legislation, the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) sets out the regulations and laws relating to third parties involved in data processing, such as the collection, use, transfer, matching and storage of data.

Besides the POPIA, other regulatory bodies such as the Electronic Communication Act of 2002 and the Promotion of Access to Information Act of 2000 have been put in place to regulate the generation and flow of data within the South African context.

The South African Reserve Bank has also issued both a directive and a guidance note outlining the factors that banks should take into account when deciding to embrace cloud computing or offshore data. However, it’s worth noting that these regulations do not include provisions for data localisation or residency requirements.

Amid this regulatory quagmire, enterprises need to be vigilant when selecting a public cloud partner. 

BCX is addressing these challenges after the launch of its Africa Local Public (ALP) Cloud service, which marked a significant stride in BCX’s mission to deliver innovative technology solutions to businesses across the continent.

ALP was launched in partnership with Alibaba Cloud, one of the world’s largest cloud computing companies, providing scalable, secure, and reliable cloud computing services.

Reshal Seetahal, BCX executive head of Alibaba Cloud Business Unit, says with ALP, it simply means the data will not leave the borders of the African continent.

ALP Cloud has been deployed in two data centres in South Africa. BCX remains committed to keeping local data within Africa’s borders, along with another disaster recovery data centre in one of South Africa’s neighbouring countries to mitigate the impact of load-shedding.

“With BCX’s ALP Cloud, the data resides completely in Africa, as BCX is not reliant on any of Alibaba’s global data centres,” he says.

Also, in a bid to keep data in Africa, BCX has commenced a project to build a third data centre dedicated to disaster recovery in the neighbouring country of Mozambique. 

“We are currently deploying the data centre for disaster recovery and will be live soon,” says Seetahal.

“One of the things that we have taken into consideration specifically for Mozambique is that it is an ideal location for our South African enterprises to have a secondary disaster recovery site. This is because Mozambique does not have the same power challenges as South Africa. Mozambique is also not very far from South African enterprises and vice versa,” he explains. 

BCX has also taken an additional step to make the ALP Cloud environment more secure. “Even though it’s a public cloud, for customers that demand more security, we will connect them via a virtual private network (VPN). 

“This eliminates the risk of denying unauthorised persons trying to access that environment. With the VPN, we will know specifically who is trying to access that environment and only allow authorised customers access,” Seetahal concludes.