"Most companies will now have an easier way to put services in place through secure cloud computing, which will relinquish the burden of financial pressure on capital expenditure," said Mike Macharia, CEO of Seven Seas Technology in Nairobi.

"In addition to this companies will require ... elaborate, detailed business continuity plans that will enable them to recover their people and processes in the case of major disaster," added Macharia, whose company is involved in setting up data centers for Safaricom.

Given its superior economic status, South Africa has the majority of data centers while Kenya and Nigeria have emerged as regional hubs and data center locations to serve Eastern and Western Africa markets respectively.

"The emergence of regional hubs is bridging a lot of the historical challenges of disaster recovery and business continuity, but as Africa matures, the need for nearshore / onshore data centers is increasingly becoming important; especially for those organizations in the financial services industry," said Pieter Kok, a research manager for IDC in South Africa.

Internet Solutions is one of the major companies offering cloud services through its MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) platform, with data centers in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Mozambique.