International Journal on Communications (IJC) Volume 4, 2015

Doi: 10.14355/ijc.2015.04.001

www.seipub.org/ijc

Higher Education and the Adoption of Cloud

Computing Technology in Africa
Mboungou Mouyabi SEKE
Business Intelligence Services, Wits CRM Office
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
Private bag 3, 2050 South Africa
Jordan.Seke@wits.ac.za
Abstract
With the emergent demand for information technology (IT)
services, African Universities should consider adopting
cloud computing to meet with this growing demand on
different IT services, Cloud computing could provide good
business models for African universities since these
universities often do not have enough resources and
knowledge to manage the necessary information technology
(IT) support for educational, research and developmental
activities that must be delivered in a higher education
environment, while cloud computing aims to eliminate these
complexities from the user.
This paper describes the importance and the challenges
facing higher education in Africa, introduction to cloud
computing technologies, services and deployment models,
adoption of cloud computing in higher education as a
possible solution despite the challenges facing higher
education in Africa.
Keywords
Adoption; Africa; Cloud Computing; Higher Education

Introduction
Higher Educational Institutions hereinafter referred to
as HEIs, in Africa and across the world are in the
historic era. Information Technology (IT) aptitudes are
alleged as significant cost centres, to many advocates,
even though an institution relies on technology in
every aspect of its operation, it is difficult to perfectly
calculate the return-on-investment (ROI) from the cost
of information technology. Correspondingly, it is
challenging to attribute the benefits of technology in a
straight line to the institutions vision, mission and
goals.
Cloud computing is now a topic of significant impact
and, while it may represent an evolution in technology
terms, the truth behind this approach is that, it has
changed the ways in which both academia and
industry are thinking and acting. If cloud computing is

one of todays key technologies for the modernisation

and realisation of the public sector as advocated by
many, the belief is that cloud is part of the new trend
of technology that is set to take computing experience
to another level
With huge finances needed in higher education
globally and the growing demand for ITservices,
universities in Africa are facing challenges in
providing essentialInformation and Communication
Technology (ICT) support for educational, research
and developmental activities.
Although universities have been using cloud-based
applications for years (e.g. email), the cloud computing
fashion is quickly evolving into a premium model for
data storage and exchange. According toGartner a
technology research company, more than 50 per cent
of Global 1000 companies are predicted to store
confidential data in the public cloud by the end of 2016.
The cloud is proving itself as being (a) tech oriented
that is here to stay.
This is mainly as a result of a new genre of students
with learning needs vastly different from their
predecessors. In addition, it is increasingly recognized
that effective use of technology in higher education is
essential to providing high quality education and
preparing students for the challenges of the 21stcentury
as underscored by Masud et al. (2012). It is also
significant to note that, in many technology arenas,
higher education exhibits two behaviours. With
regards to networking and high-performance
computing, higher education enjoys a reputation as an
innovator. However, on the other handasargued
byKatz et al, (2009), higher education is a relative late
adopter in the applications and IT support arena.
Higher educational institutions argue that adopting
the latest technologies and solutions is essential to
staying competitive and holdingstudents. These
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students, known as digital natives (Prensky, 2001),

the Net Generation, Generation Y, or even
Millennials, have not known a world without the
Internet (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005). Through
programs and social forums such as Facebook, Twitter,
Gmail, and Flickr, students already are well versed
with and are frequent consumers of cloud-based
technologies (Ercan, 2010).
However, in sharp contrast to this decrease in
available funding for IT services and support, Cloud
computing can actually help institutions reduce high
expenditures on hardware, software and IT
maintenance. Cloud computing provides businesses
with a centralized, virtual data centre that is accessible,
for example to faculty and admissions personnel at
any time and any location.
In addition to what will be elaborated in this paper,
regardless of this proliferation of cloud computing
resources and interest enterprise globally, for some
advocates and institutional administrators in Africa,
the bench is still out.But there are other worthy
concerns which warrant countlessscrutiny in the
adoption of cloud computing in higher education.
Those concerns are the focus of this paper.
This paper provides an indication to cloud computing
in higher education. The intent is to,first, explain those
unfamiliar with the theory its definitions, the defining
characteristics, and its service and deployment models.
These initial extents aproposofcloud computing are
provided as contextual information and framework to
then help border discussions. These discussions
include its current implications and its adoption in
higher education in Africa. Finally, the concluding
section offers a result and discussion around the
adoption role of cloud computing in higher education.
Defining Cloud Computing
There are more technical details to actual cloud
infrastructure, platforms and delivery, but for the
purpose here, I will stick to the basic view as with
many new services, adoption of the next generation
technology may be much greater than anyone expects,
as users find novel way and context in which to apply
it.
It is true that service providers and users globally have
different definition of what the Cloud is. Cloud
computing which is envisioned to change the IT
landscape, is consumer/delivery model where IT
capabilities are offered as services billed based on
usage. Some advocates think otherwise.
2

International Journal on Communications (IJC) Volume 4, 2015

Cloud computing is about getting a service across the

internet, either paid-for or free, where you don't need
to be concerned with the mechanisms of provision of
that service. In everyday life, that might include using
Dropbox for file storage, or Apple iCloud for
automatically syncing your photos and music to
multiple devices, or Google Apps for document
processing, or YouTube for storing and managing your
videos, or Flickr for your photos. In fact, search
engines like Google and Yahoo! are also cloud services,
and examples of the genre that I suspect many are
already using.
On a more elementary level, cloud computing is a
system for automatically managing a collection of
virtual computers somewhere that are very easy to
create, manage, and destroy over the network,
automatically, by software, without human action.
Cloud computing systems are also founded on the
concept of resource sharing, which means that several
virtual servers reside on one physical machine, and
make variable use of its real hardware.
Cloud computing is a renewed concept that is still
sprouting across the information technology industry
and university circleseventhough in early 2009,
McKinsey & Company reported that there were 22
distinct definitions of cloud computing in existence.
Numerous definitions have evolved so far, but for Mell
and Grance (2009) of the National institute of Standard
and Technology (NIST) whom the definition of cloud
computing is credited or attributed, they define the
concept as: a model for enabling convenient, ondemand network access to a shared pool of
configurable computing resources (e.g., networks,
servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be
rapidly provisioned and released with minimal
management effort or service provider interaction.
This cloud model promotes availability and is
composed of five essential characteristics, three service
models, and four deployment models (Mell & Grance,
2011).
On another elementary level, Cloud Computing is a
copy of utility concept we are interacting in our daily
life. In the same way that one uses utilities like
electricity and water, someone can use cloud
computing. When one needs water, the subject just
open the kitchen tap, consume it, and pay according to
the consumption with no concern on how the water is
prepared and delivered to his house. Similarly, when
one needs computing, he log-in into his cloud service
provider system, consume services, and pay without

International Journal on Communications (IJC) Volume 4, 2015

any other technical concern (on how the consumed

resources are provided for him).
Illustrating from early definition of the concept, one
can store his files in Dropbox without having much
concern on how the files are stored. When he needs
more space, one does not need to make any effort,
simply buy space from Dropbox and start using that
instantaneously. Without Dropbox, one have to buy a
new external hard disk with larger capacity, copy all
his data from the old, small hard disk to the new one
(to make everything in once place, otherwise data
management becomes challenging) and keep using the
space. One should repeat the same process again and
again when the need of excess space is required.
Regardless of varying definitions of the term cloud
computing, there appears to be consistency and
general consensus in the literature on the general
characteristics, service models and deployment models
described by NIST. All these characteristics and
models are beneficial to understand the context within
higher education; they are described briefly in the next
sections of the definition.
Five Essentials Characteristics of Cloud Computing
The following five characteristics, as defined by NIST,
are considered inherent in cloud computing services
(Mell & Grance, 2011):
1.

On-Demand
Self-Service:
Customers
can
automatically provision computing capabilities
and resources on their own when needed
without necessitating any human intervention.

2.

Broad Network Access: Access and capabilities

are available over the network through
standard devices, such as cell phones, laptops,
PDAs, etc.

3.

Resource Pooling: Resources such as network

bandwidth,
virtual
machines,
memory,
processing power, storage capacity, etc. are
pooled together to serve multiple customers
using a multi-tenant model. That is; virtual and
physical resources are dynamically assigned
and reassigned based on need and customers
demands.

4.

Rapid Elasticity: Depending on demand,

resources and capabilities can be quickly and
automatically deployed and scaled at any
quantity and at any time.

5.

Measured Service: Customer usage of the

vendors
resources
and
services
are

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automatically monitored; controlled and

reported offering a high level of transparency
for the customer and vendor.
Service Models
In reference to Mell and Grance(2011), there are three
typical kinds of cloud computing services: Processing
Clouds that provide scalable and mostly affordable
computing resources that run enterprise programs,
which is also sometimes known as Infrastructure as a
Service (IaaS); Storage Clouds that offer an alternative
to local file systems also known as a Platform as a
Service (PaaS); and Application Clouds also called
Software as a Service (SaaS), which allow a thin client
to interact with services that are completely hosted on
an external infrastructure.By the same token, cloud
may be hosted and employed in different fashions
depending on the use case.
Deployment Models
The cloud space is rapidly adopting a plethora of new
short forms and expressions to designate different
aspects of the offering, which is the next evolution of
the Internet. For purposes of this paper, the following
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
definitions are used for deployment models:
Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is operated
solely for an organisation. It may be managed by the
organisation or a third party and may exist on premise
or off premise.
Community cloud. The cloud infrastructure is shared
by several organisations and supports a specific
community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission,
security requirements, policy, and compliance
considerations). It may be managed by the
organisations or a third party and may exist on
premise or off premise.
Public cloud. The cloud infrastructure is made
available to the general public or a large industry
group and is owned by an organisation selling cloud
services.
Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a
composition of two or more clouds (private,
community, or public) that remains unique entities but
are bound together by standardised or proprietary
technology that enables data and application
portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load balancing
between clouds).
It is essential to understand that the service models,

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deployment models and the five characteristics of

cloud computing as described by NIST do not run
independently but are necessarily interrelated and
connected to each other. This visual demonstrates that
a cloud-based strategy can take on different
configurations depending on the institutions needs. It
is not uncommon for institutions to begin with one
service model, such as SaaS and a Public Cloud
deployment model as a pilot, and then slowly scale if
the pilot proves successful. It is also possible to use
several deployment models to support one or more
service models.

FIGURE.1 INTERRELATIONSHIPS WITH CHARACTERISTICS,

SERVICE MODELS AND DEPLOYMENT MODELS

Cloud Computing in Higher Education

If one is in the IT channel, he is probably used to the
fact that IT has its own language so it is in academia.
For an IT expert, the words mouse, tablets and
cloud have different meaning than for most of the
population surrounding him.
Irrespective of the nature of business one is or found
himself into, there is a must know what is going on in
the fast-paced ICT world; and the causticness
surrounding cloud computing in higher education in
Africa today is that most institutions, departments or
faculties have already been using it to some extent but
may not even realize it. Gmail or Yahoo as underlined
early in this paper is one example.
In the most transformative technology shift since the
personal computer commonly known or called PC and
the internet, it is apparent that migrating business to
the cloud has reached a tipping point in recent years,
where it is no longer a development but rather an
absolute business requirement and higher education
institutions of the 21st century have no choice rather

International Journal on Communications (IJC) Volume 4, 2015

than to compromise.
As many contend that cloud computing holds a
promise to provide considerable benefits to colleges
and universities. By moving storage, processing,
applications, or other IT infrastructure and services to
the cloud, institutions might realize increased
reliability and flexibility, with lower or more
transparent costs (EDUCAUSE, 2010a)
A rudimentary understanding of ICT in education is
vital in beingwell-informed of rapidly changing
technologies. It is essential for higher education actors
to gain a solid understanding of how cloud computing
is evolving, and the developments in its adoption.
Emphasis has been laid on IT in administrative and
financial
transactions,
wireless
and
mobile
communications with promising results, Funding
projects in this direction has yielded proportionate
outcomes too in developed and developing countries
across the world.
The cloud based education system requires the use
and creation of knowledge in higher education as a
decisive factor for social, economic, cultural and
technological transformation. Achieving this goal
necessarily involves the use of technology, which
would allow knowledge transmission and create new
areas for education, research and development (Masud
et al. 2012)
However, the push by the ICT business, coupled with
the noteworthy benefits that cloud computing
promises to deliver, leads me to think that cloud
computing will be widely used in higher education in
the African continent. At the same time, I fully
understand that the distinctive features of higher
education data management necessitate a cautious
assessment concerning whether, where, how, and
when they might adopt cloud computing. But I am
also aware of the fact that Information security
depends on the three principles of confidentiality (who
has access), integrity (correctness of information), and
availability (ability to access information and services
at appropriate times). These elements constitute
computer security in any context, and they take on
new significance in cloud computing because it
depends on third-party providers (EDUCAUSE, 2010a).
It is remarkable to note that: the most important factor
in promoting cloud computing has been the
recognition that large data centres have thousands of
servers that largely do not operate at full capacity,
creating anexcess of computingability. By using these

International Journal on Communications (IJC) Volume 4, 2015

resources more efficiently through virtualization,

cloud computing enables greater returns on data
centre investments. In addition, it makes it possible for
a university to create its own private cloudwithin its
own infrastructure.

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models of Cloud Computing may be chosen to be used.

The decision must take into account the real needs and
be aligned with the university strategy (Mircea and
Andreescu, 2011).

1.

Increasing access to scarce IT expertise and

talent.

2.

Scaling IT services and resources.

3.

Promoting further IT standardization.

Benefit realisation will also depend on the chosen

cloud-computing deployment model.In the short to
standard term, I am of the opinion that the selection of
a cloud deployment model is one of the most
important decisions higher educations IT actors will
face. African universities may choose to build their
own private cloud for their own consumption, and
even offer hosting services to other universities for the
purpose of revenue generation.

4.

Accelerating time to market through IT supply

bottleneck reductions.

Concerns over Adopting Cloud Computing

5.

Channelling or countering the ad

consumerisation of enterprise IT services.

6.

Facilitating the transparent matching of IT costs,

demand and funding.

7.

Increasing interoperability between disjoint

technologies within and between institutions.

8.

Supporting a model of a 24 x 7 x 365/6

environment.

9.

Enabling the sourcing of cycles and storage

powered by renewable energy.

Katz et al. (2009) identify 10 important features of

cloud computing in higher education with respect to
on-demand SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS:

hoc

10. Driving down capital and total costs of IT in

higher education.
TABLE 1: MAIN BENEFITS AND LIMITATIONS OF USING CLOUD
COMPUTING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Benefits
Access to applications from
anywhere
Support for teaching and learning
Software free or pay per use
24 hours access to infrastructure
andcontent
Opening to business environment
andadvanced research
Protection of the environment by
usinggreen technologies
Increased openness of students to
newtechnologies
Increasing functional capabilities
Offline usage with further
synchronizationopportunities

Limitations
Not all applications run in
cloud
Risks related to data
protection and securityand
accounts management
Organizational support
Dissemination politics,
intellectual property
Security and protection of
sensitive data
Maturity of solutions
Lack of confidence
Standards adherence
Speed/lack of Internet can
affect workmethods

Anyway, the use of Cloud Computing in higher

education must be analysed both from the benefits
point of view, as well as from that of the risks and
limitations (table 1). After the analysis, one or more

Many encounters of cloud computing for higher

education are about its relative newness and the
underdevelopment of the marketplace for cloud
services. For higher education in Africa, decisions to
adopt cloud computing will be influenced by more
than technical and cost considerations.Colleges and
universities have deep concerns about the loss of
control in cloud computing. Concerns about security
are one of the major factors limiting greater adoption.
(EDUCAUSE, 2010a)
The NIST (2009) underscores the research conducted
by the IDC Enterprise Panel 2008 which concluded
that the primary concerns at various levels voiced are:
1. Security: there are several concerns surrounding the
implementation of security in cloud computing.
2. Performance and Availability experiments that are
required for research endeavours require extensive
computing power. Some of the concerns include how
to guarantee such performance from an outside
vendor. Availability of services is another related
concern in terms of the possibility of massive vendor
outages. This is true since it may influence student
learning or the timely delivery of research results,
which are typically tied to strict timelines.
3. Integration with in-house IT and Customizability:
University IT administrators typically use their own
in-house applications with a considerable portion that
is customised to their own IT lab structure. A
dominant anxiety is the transitioning of such in-house
applications to the cloud environment and how much
of the customizability will be lost in that process.
4. Cost considerations may be introduced by
additional vendor relationship management or

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possibly additional measures that are unique to cloud

computing.
Despite the growing acceptance of cloud computing
and documented cost savings made possible by cloud
computing in higher education, concerns about the
vulnerability to security breaches are the biggest
obstacles to cloud computing adoption in higher
education. In addition to this, anxieties regarding
privacy,
data
integrity, intellectual
property
management, regulation issues (e.g. In the US about
HIPAA which is the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act of 1996 and FERPA which stands
for Family Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974),
and audit trails are significant barriers to the adoption
of cloud-based solutions (EDUCAUSE, 2010a).
Thus argue Masud et al (2012), the conceptual
framework of integrating cloud computing in higher
education is reflected in aspects concerning: policy,
objectives and incentives; resources and facilities;
computer resources; teaching and learning activities;
processes of performance monitoring and evaluation.
Contract terms, liability provisions, indemnification,
and exit strategies are vital. (EDUCAUSE, 2010a)
Katz et al, (2009) underline the fact that those consulted
believe that higher education is early in the early
adopters stage of diffusion, and the analyst literature
suggests that other sectors such as the commercial and
government sectors are also in the early adopter stage
of adopting cloud computing. For Katz et al, (2009),
this shift is strategic. Cultural, organizational, and
regulatory considerations, rather than technical ones,
will slow adoption. Adoption will follow a standard
technology maturity model as illustrated in figure 2.

FIGURE 2 EVERETT ROGERSS MODEL FOR DIFFUSION OF

INNOVATION

So, although cloud-based systems and applications

International Journal on Communications (IJC) Volume 4, 2015

have been with us for more than fifteen years- think of

hosted email services like Hotmail, launched in 1996
and the whole question of clouds place in the higher
education sphere is still concerned with working
through its many complexities.
Cloud computing in my humble and firm opinion is
primarily about taking the complexity of applications
and client hardware that IT departments in the higher
education institutions face every single day and
resolving it into something thats much simpler to
control and manage.
Why will there be many concerns over the adoption?
The rise of the mobile students in higher education as
the primary user of the university applications and
services highlights a need for them to be accessible
anywhere. But the back-end services supporting these
mobile technologies continue to be wired using
infrastructures unable to keep pace with this rising
demand. Cloud computings property of load
balancing explained further in this paper constitute an
element of response to the concern.
Results and Discussion
While challenges exist in term of cloud computing and
it adoption; for the most part, higher education
institutions worldwide reacted positively to the
paradigm shift brought on by the requirements of an
always-connected academic society. Thus, it is often
valuable to compare new technologies to old when
trying to understand where they fit.
In this case, before cloud computing, if one wanted a
new server, or even a virtual instance of a server, he
would have to communicate with a human, probably
in a datacentre, at some point to have them bring it
online. This could create some very real problems if
the website can suddenly took off. In some cases, the
other human would have to order and install new
servers before he could get back online. Now, with
cloud computing, one simply click some buttons on a
web page and could bring up an arbitrary number of
servers running predefined software and control and
measure network access to them.
An additional property of cloud computing is that it is
often makes use of load balancing. With load
balancing, if one has software where a given server
instance can handle 10,000 requests per second, but
has instead 50,000 requests per second coming in, by
putting a load balancer in front of five of these servers
and it will balance requests to meet the requirements

International Journal on Communications (IJC) Volume 4, 2015

of the initial request load (in reality one would want

some headroom, but this example keeps the math
simple).
Though cloud computing is essentially well-thoughtout as the future of enterprise and consumer
computing, it is not without disadvantages and
imperfections that would prevent those with really
special needs to adopt cloud computing into their
business or organization. Personally, I believe that
there is overpowering agreement regarding the
potential of this concept in advancing technology and
providing new avenues for enterprises to explore that
may cut cost and adopt better IT capabilities.
Cloud computing promises on-demand and scalable
access to computing resources that can be rapidly
provisioned and released with minimal management
effort. For most organisations the choice is between
public and private cloud, and most typically some
synthesis of the two-hybrid cloud. The often result of
moving to cloud solutions is a change in the cultural
approach as there is more emphasis on collaboration
and greater expectation that higher education
institutions will benefit from.
And in the race to own the future of cloud computing,
many companies are all on the hunt, although the
acquisitions they are making do not always make
sense when viewed in isolation. The true race to cloud
in this region of the globe and the need to look at the
infrastructure of the higher education institutions are
closely woven together. As it is advocated by me today,
the goal behind cloud adoption in higher education in
Africa should be made in creating affordable access to
basic internet services like e-library available to every
student in the continent.
While some of the more high profile battles of cloud
computing are being fought by the relative new
dynamic of young students entering the higher
education world today and big universities oversea,
there is a lot of confusion and FUD (fear, uncertainty
and doubt) on the topic in higher ranking varsities in
Africa. I remain in the belief that cloud is integral to
the future of higher education institutions in Africa;
cloud must be one of the most talked about, supported
and drawn-out service models ever, promising a new
era of information technology.
The cloud, which is quickly and perpetually altering
the ways that institutions deliver IT services, is shifting
outlooks for what institutions require from IT
leadership. In the recent past, Chief Information

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Officers or CIOs, the highest position of IT leadership

in higher education have been tasked to support and
maintain administrative and research computing and
network services (EDUCAUSE, 2009b).On one hand,
from a financial perspective in Africa particularly,
purchasing, installing, and maintaining extensive
hardware for high-powered servers contribute to some
of the higher costs that universities are currently
forced to allocate.
In the other end, a wide range of legislative, security,
data protection and regional concerns complicate the
pure no-borders ideal of cloud. However, because the
benefits of cloud computing stretch far beyond this noborders genesis, widespread adoption in higher
education institutions is inevitable. That simply means
the way ICT departments in higher education
institutions provide and implement their labs, training
venues and services will inevitably have to change as
well.
It is very important to note that higher education is
subject to regulations concerning the protection of
student records and other data, and individual
campuses tend to be idiosyncratic with respect to state
or local requirements and cultural attitudes towards
risk. In light of the findings on security, any institution
that turns to cloud computing faces important
questions about how information assets will be
safeguarded and what measures are in place to secure
those assets over time (EDUCAUSE,2010a)
In addition, as growing numbers of higher education
institutions move IT services to the cloud, there will be
less need and demand for in-house IT staff to manage
servers, databases, applications and resources.For
today and tomorrow, in divergence, adoption of a
cloud environment relieves the institution of the need
to acquire an actual costly server in order to conduct
research.
Cloud providers might need to be more transparent
with their processes and will perhaps move toward the
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that are acceptable to
larger numbers of colleges and universities. At the
same time, private clouds will evolve to meet the
needs of institutions with unique or more stringent
security requirements. Institutions will also explore the
security implications for integrating cloud services
with those hosted on campus (EDUCAUSE, 2010a).
Looking at others adopters in the higher educations
sphere worldwide, The Electrical Engineering and
Computer Sciences Department at the University of

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California atBerkeley had a first-hand dealing with this

matter. They indicated that their lab has benefited
substantially from the ability to complete research by
conference deadlines and adjust resources over the
semester to accommodate course deadlines. As
adopters of cloud computing, they were relieved of
dealing with the twin dangers of over-provisioning
and under provisioning theirinternal data centres.
Successful adoption of cloud computing is key for
realisation of benefits promised by cloud computing
environment underline Armbrust et al (2009). As
organisations are faced with the need for high
processing capabilities, large storage capabilities, IT
resource scalability and high availability, at the lowest
possible cost, cloud computing becomes an attractive
alternative ( Armbrust et al. 2009).
However, adoption of cloud in African universities has
to be planned cautiously as different applications
make different usage of resources like in any other
environment.Before any major changes, a higher
education institution like any other business industry
must look into what they are potentially going to
invest in. From the time when this field is still
relatively new, it is strongly recommended that early
African University adopters plan the transition with
judgment and keep in close contact with organizations
that establish industry standards, such as NIST, in
order to ensure a uniform and smooth transition.
In terms of the implication of cloud computing, Sultan
(2010) underscores that the impact of cloud in
education has attracted researchers and countries
attention all over the world especially due to
technological implications of and open access to
knowledge. The impact can also create tensions that
are difficult to manage as well as changes that are
often difficult to implement (Masud et al. 2012).
Conclusion
On the very sunny side of things, universities across
the globe saw improvement in at least one area of their
IT department, and few reported a reduction in
surplus and energy consumption particularly in Africa.
However, the reality is thatmany encounters of cloud
computing for higher education relate to its relative
newness and the underdevelopment of the
marketplace for cloud services in the region.
The anticipation is that it will go through several
changes in the future, in terms of resources, issues,
risks, and ultimately best practices and standards.
However, there are some sought compensations that it

International Journal on Communications (IJC) Volume 4, 2015

can hypothetically provide value for institutions of

higher education. On-demand services can resonate
positively with the current university constrictedfinances across the continent.
The key question remains whether or not it makes
sense from a business and from a strategic point of
view to move to cloud computing and the answer is
that it depends on various factors that have been
mentioned above.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

It is always a desire to thank those who made this

paper possible. I owe my genuine gratitude and
warmest appreciation to the following people, who, in
any way have contributed and inspired me to the
overall success of the undertaking:
To Professor Jonathan Klaaren, for his guidance,
support, encouragement and trust;
ToTessa Murray, CRM manager at Wits University for
her approval; to Dr. Avitus Agborfor the remarkable
patience he exuded in perusing and deciphering my
hardly legible manuscript.
To my wife Carine Ali, my kids Julien Leandre and
Clline Leandra seke for their support and pure
hospitality; finally to my colleagues through Kuzi
Chikwava, who have been unselfishly extending their
effort and understanding towards this work
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1-9.
MBOUNGOU MOUYABI SEKE is an independent Partner
& Consultant on a personal and private basis. He holds a
Baccalaureate in Mechanical Engineering awarded in 2000
from the Technical College Poaty Bernard of Pointe Noire in
the Republic of Congo. He also received a Technician Patent
in Mechanical Engineering from Thomas Sankara Technical
Institute. He received an Engineering degree in Biomedical
Maintenance from the Tertiary Institute of Applied
Techniques of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo
in 2004 and his dissertation was titled The Establishment of
Maintenance Policy in Hospitals of Developing Countries:
Case of the Central Hospital of the Army Pierre Mobengo of
Brazzaville.
In 2008, he took Higher Diploma courses in Computer
Science at the University of the Witwatersrand, in
Johannesburg, South Africa. He was awarded with a
postgraduate certificate in Information Technology Project
Management in 2012 from the University of Johannesburg,
South Africa. In 2013, he was awarded a Certificate in
Computer auditing from the University of the
Witwatersrand. Before joining the Wits School of Law in July
2008, he worked as PC Engineer & Database Manager. He is
currently a Constituent Relationship Management Officer
within the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg
and visiting associate to the Wits Law School where he
served as a Senior Local Area Network Administrator.
He has presented papers at conferences and his recent
publications include:
Elearning and M-learning, Africas search for a suitable
concept in the era of cloud computing; Published in the
volume of International Journal of Social and Human
Sciences 6 2012 &
Virtual Desktops in Institutions of Higher education using
VMware view; Published in the second volume of the
International Journal of Communication (IJC) Issue 1, March
2013.
His research interests focuses on Africa and include Cloud
computing, Virtualization, ELearning, Big data, MLearning,
Digital Clash of Civilization in the continent.