Avsharn Bachoo, AfroCentric

Sovereignty ensures that all your data sits on your soil. It inhibits access to this data by a foreign entity and insists that this data be stored locally, never crossing borders or jurisdictions. It has become a topical conversation in light of increasing geopolitical conflicts. Organisations are looking at this minefield with one eye on the agility provided by cloud and its architecture, and the other on security and data autonomy.

Deloitte’s Cloud Sovereignty paper describes it as the “political, business and technological dimensions of data protection and data security” and as important to the private sector as to the public. Andrew Moodley, chief digital officer, Axiz, says: “You need to know where your data is at rest and what laws are applicable to your data. It’s not simply a case of saying, ‘I’m South African, I want my data to be South African’; sometimes companies want their data to be sovereign because they can benefit from a specific regime. They can choose The Netherlands, for example, because they benefit from green initiatives and regulations.”