By Philip Buda Ladu
National Ministry of Information, Communication Technology, and Postal Services has announced that it will soon commence construction of the country’s first-ever Resilient Data Center for hosting electronic data for both public and private sector institutions and businesses.
Undersecretary Dr. Lado Wani Kenyi made the statement to South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC). He is attending this year’s ongoing Pan African e-Government Summit in the Zambian capital Lusaka.
This year’s summit agenda majorly focused on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in e-government.
Dr. Wani said the government has already secured the necessary resources from the World Bank, and now they are in the best position to start the implementation of this noble project.
He noted that the resilient data centre the government is trying to build now came as a result of the summit held in 2023.
“We have got a World Bank project; there are funds to do that, and these are some of the key elements and lessons that we learned from this conference last year.” Dr. Wani told state-run SSBC in Lusaka.
He highlighted that the yet-to-be-constructed data center will enable the government to have full control of its digital data, including the companies working within the country.
Most of the companies, including financial institutions like banks operating in South Sudan, are still hosting their data outside the country, according to telecommunications records.
The Undersecretary said they already did some feasibility studies on the digital infrastructures in South Sudan saying the study will help them design better infrastructures in those areas that were especially devastated by floods for long.
“So basically, the digital infrastructure that we are building is going to be resilient, and that’s one of the things that we got from last year’s Pan African E-Government Summit,” he said.
Dr. Lado further underscored that they have identified areas where mini-grids will create some job opportunities and new business opportunities for the people in the areas.
He highlighted that this year’s Pan African e-Government Summit discussions have Artificial Intelligence AI as a key topic, which is becoming a very strong component in e-Government.
The Undersecretary noted that South Sudan is currently implementing e-government services.
“We have some services that are already on offer to the citizens of South Sudan to use, specifically the e-Tax, e-Custom, and e-Visa.” He emphasized that a lot of e-Immigration services are there, like e-Commerce and all those services are available and rendered in partnership with the private sector.