IT opportunities in Ethiopia outweigh the challenges… , identifying our problem is a key lead to improvements ...

1. Gizaw Tulu (ITIL, PRINCE2, PMP, COBIT5, EA,
Cloud )
Interest in: IT Service Management (ITSM)
Key Challenges of ICT in Ethiopia
[High level]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt

2. 2
Key Challenges of ICT in Ethiopia
1. Keep IT running
2. Aligning IT with business
3. Delivering value
4. Security
5. Regulatory compliance
6. Mastering complexity
7. Optimizing costs
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt

3. 3
1. Keep IT running
 IT operational failures
 Errors when introducing changes
 Insufficient testing [Decent coding but No/limited independent testing company]
 Poor planning of infrastructure within the organization
 Insufficient resilience of backup and backup testing
 Single provider of Network/Internet connectivity and Connection instability
 Poor user enablement
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt

4. 4
2. Aligning IT with business
 Poor and slack alignment with business priorities
 Poorly defined business requirements
 Communication gaps between business and IT
 Insufficient knowledge abut potential IT solutions
 Inability to follow/incorporate international best practices
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt

5. 5
3. Delivering value
 Limited/Lack of committed business sponsors during project management
 Poor program and project management
 Inadequate monitoring of benefit realization
 Lack of defined business cases for IT related initiatives
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt

6. 6
4. Security
 Poorly defined security policies and its enforcement
 Insufficient monitoring of potential security related events
 Limited awareness among users about security risks
 Limited awareness among management of the needed to protect information
 Limited IT supervision and security testing
 Limited IT Audit
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt

7. 7
5. Regulatory compliance
 Law and legal gaps
 Limited regulatory directives and gap
 Contractual requirement and dependency on SLA
 Responsibilities of outsourced service providers and business partners
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt

8. 8
6. Mastering complexity
 Availability of specialized skill needed to support wide range of technology
 Alignment of Capacity building, training providers and sponsors with outcome
 Divers technical infrastructures and lack of architectural standards
 Inability to innovate and adapt to rapid changes and new developments in
technology and business requirements
 Inability to focus on important service providers and manage key relationships
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt

9. 9
7. Optimizing costs
 Lack of financial management skill and cost of ownership
 Significant financial losses because of failed IT projects
 Excessive resources (costs/time) due to poor management of IT
 Uncontrolled IT spending by business units
 Ineffective procurement acquisition and contraction procedures
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt

10. 10
Suggestions:cascadegoal
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt
BeforeinitiatinganITProject,Isuggesttofollowthe
followinggoalcascadingsteps.

11. 11
Suggestions: Establish Project Governance
 There are four level:
1. Corporate or programme management - outside the project – responsible to
commission the project - define tolerance.
2. Directing – project board – approve plan, resources - authorize Change/deviation -
approve each stages - communicate with stakeholders - Project assurance
3. Managing – Project manager – day to day management of Project - prime
responsible for time, cost, quality, scope, risk and benefit – Project Support
4. Delivering – Team manager - team members are responsible for delivering the
project’s products to an appropriate quality within a specified timescale and cost.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt

12. 12
Suggestions
 More white paper in all seven challenges
 IT Audit organizations and Academes
 IT Regulatory framework
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt

13. 13
Note from compiler
 This document is not a research paper, everything written are a general
perspective not particularly related with any organization reside in Ethiopia.
 Written from a decade of experience.
 Government and private sectors spends billions to enable the business with IT
 I witness an organization who are actively understand most of the challenges
listed in this document and work proactively in an amazing pace.
 Lets work together to minimize our challenges.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt

14. 14
Next
 IT opportunities in Ethiopia outweigh the challenges…
 Coming soon … “Key IT opportunity in Ethiopia”
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt

15. 15
References
 Cobit 5-A Business Framework for the Governance and Management of
Enterprise IT
 https://www.devex.com/news/the-five-key-challenges-in-implementing-ict-for-
development-82499
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gizawt