Technology
Why Integrating Apps, Democratising Automation Should be Cornerstone of Every IT Strategy
By Linda Saunders
As businesses look to transform the AI world, the demand for AI and automation tools is growing, intensifying the pressure on IT teams to deliver. This is especially true for the African continent.
IT leaders across Africa are grappling to establish the governance and processes required to master the basics with widening digital skills gaps, disconnected systems, and compliance concerns among their top concerns.
This is according to MuleSoft’s 2024 Connectivity Benchmark Report, which found that among 1,050 IT Leaders worldwide, 98% say they are facing challenges regarding digital transformation.
81% of IT Leaders report the persistence of data silos, and 72% cite the fragility of tightly coupled and highly dependent systems as the top challenge holding them back from AI adoption.]
For businesses looking to stay ahead in an AI-powered future, integration and automation will be essential. The role of the CIO and other IT leaders is becoming more critical than ever. The savviest business leaders are turning to their IT leaders to help drive their businesses’ AI strategy forward.
While 85% of IT leaders expect AI to boost developer productivity, they flag that both security and trust remain barriers to adoption. An additional 64% of IT leaders are concerned with ethical AI usage and adoption.
This includes establishing and communicating a clear strategy for execution that addresses both compliance and skills gap concerns.
Integration is the foundation for connected customer experiences
With the adoption of AI tools rising rapidly among the general public, demand for AI-first customer experiences will follow. Today’s customers have come to expect exceptional experiences supported by well-connected data through integrated systems.
Nearly three-quarters (70%) of customer experiences are now entirely digital, but only 26% of organizations report providing a completely connected user experience across all channels.
This is why a single, unified, and real-time view of every customer, at scale, is the intelligent heart of customer engagement. Across all industries, there’s a greater need for better integration to unify all structured and unstructured business data to power and deploy trusted, relevant AI across business functions.
While AI has the power to drive efficiency, it is dependent on integrated data, and it’s creating more complexity for integration strategies. Organisations have to balance nearly 1000 applications to create a cohesive experience for end users.
IT Leaders acknowledge that data silos and systems fragility are holding their companies back from AI adoption. Over 90% of IT leaders are experiencing integration issues.
A significant minority of organisations are architected for AI success, where only 2% report no significant barriers to utilising their data for AI use cases. Concerns around integration are twofold: the difficulty integrating generative AI features with other software systems and the need for integration between existing systems.
Organisations that have adopted an integration strategy have reported a vast array of benefits. From customer experience, more significant ROI, and automation implementation, integration positively impacts the organisation. Failure to close the gap between integrated/connected applications will prevent AI from meaningfully improving employee or customer experiences for most organisations for the foreseeable future.
Democratising automation and establishing data governance will unlock greater productivity
Automation remains a source of contention for IT leaders. IT relies on automation solutions to drive efficiency and provide business users with autonomy. According to McKinsey, current generative AI and other technologies have the potential to automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70 per cent of employees’ time today.
Yet IT teams are still largely responsible for governing and maintaining the automation process, and the workload that is required to implement solutions can counter the intended benefits.
To scale, automation solutions highlight an opportunity for business teams to self-serve and ease the burden on IT. As businesses increasingly look to automation to drive efficiency, APIs can become a powerhouse for productivity and revenue. IT leaders report that APIs allow them to drive agility and promote self-service (54%), increase productivity (48%), and even benefit business teams and help meet their demands (46%).
Managing and securing the data that underpins these APIs at scale has become increasingly complex. By establishing data governance – setting the rules or policies by which information is collected, managed, stored, measured, and communicated – companies can set the foundations for success.
With the right governance parameters in place, automation can be democratized, which would free up IT teams to tackle technology challenges with increased complexity.
With the support of the wider business, they can unlock the benefits of AI applications and data integration and governance, paving the way for a more productive, efficient AI-powered future.
Linda Saunders is Salesforce’s Director of Solutions Engineering for Africa
Technology
Facebook Offers New Tools to Report Impersonation, Removes 20 million Accounts
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
As part of its commitment to celebrating and rewarding creativity, Facebook has updated its guidance, with clear definitions of what counts as original and unoriginal content.
In a message on Monday, the social media platform said it was offering content creators new tools to report impersonation.
Launched last year, the content protection tool is expanding beyond detecting reel matches across Meta platforms to now also flag potential impersonation.
Creators can take action on content theft and easily submit impersonation reports all in one place.
Facebook, in the statement received by Business Post, said creators can check for access to content protection in their professional dashboard or apply for access here.
The platform also disclosed that in 2025, it removed over 20 million accounts impersonating large content creators, and impersonation reports related to large content creators dropped by 33 per cent.
Further, Facebook is deprioritising unoriginal content by making sure they do not perform well on its platform.
It noted that content that is duplicated from other sources or makes low-value changes to someone else’s content may see significantly reduced reach, and accounts that primarily post unoriginal content may lose eligibility for recommendations and monetisation.
It was emphasised that “these changes provide creators who post original content with greater reach and monetisation opportunities, provide stronger protections for their work, and reduce the reach of unoriginal content.”
Technology
Genetec Sets New Standard for Enterprise Physical Security with Cloudlink 2210
By Dipo Olowookere
A new high-density appliance that enables enterprises to scale cloud-managed physical security without forcing cloud-only storage or infrastructure replacement has been launched by a global leader in enterprise physical security software, Genetec.
The product, Cloudlink 2210, was designed for complex, enterprise-scale deployments and supports multiple workloads, including video management, access control, and intrusion detection, in a single appliance. By consolidating these workloads into one appliance, it reduces system sprawl, simplifies management in large-scale environments, and lowers operational overhead.
Unlike solutions that separate workloads across multiple proprietary systems, Genetec Cloudlink 2210 is built on an open architecture that supports a wide range of third-party devices, including cameras, access control systems, and intrusion panels. This enables organisations to modernise at scale within a unified, cloud-managed model designed to preserve architectural flexibility, while securely integrating existing hardware, maintaining business continuity, and reducing migration risks.
The company disclosed that Cloudlink 2210 also supports hundreds of connected devices per appliance and provides up to 240 TB of local storage per unit, making it well-suited for deployments with high device density and long retention policies. The Cloudlink 2210 is ideal for enterprise environments where uptime and local retention requirements are operational priorities because its design minimises dependence on cloud storage, helping organisations control long-term storage costs while maintaining the performance and availability required in enterprise environments.
The new product also incorporates hardware-level resiliency to support strict uptime and retention requirements. RAID-protected storage and redundant system components help ensure data protection and OS availability. Security workloads continue operating locally, independent of cloud connectivity, allowing deployments to maintain continuity even during network disruptions. Dual network interfaces provide redundancy and support network isolation to strengthen cybersecurity.
It scales by adding units as requirements grow, enabling organisations to increase device counts and storage capacity without redesigning their infrastructure. Centralised cloud management maintains visibility and control across deployments.
Genetec Cloudlink 2210 is part of the broader Genetec approach to deployment flexibility. The cloud-managed appliance portfolio enables organisations to operate on premises, in the cloud, or across hybrid environments based on their operational and regulatory requirements. By combining high-performance local processing and storage with centralised cloud operations and management, Cloudlink 2210 supports scalable, cloud-managed deployments without compromising control or performance.
The Product Director for Unified Solutions at Genetec Incorporated, Mr Christian Chenard Lemire, said, “Enterprises don’t want to choose between innovation and operational certainty.
“With Cloudlink 2210, we’re redefining what cloud-managed physical security looks like at scale by giving organisations the freedom to modernise on their own terms, control long-term costs, and maintain the resiliency and continuity their most critical environments demand.”
Technology
TikTok Invests Fresh $200K in AI Media Literacy in Africa
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
An additional $200,000 will be invested in Artificial Intelligence (AI) media literacy initiatives across Sub-Saharan Africa, TikTok announced during its third annual Sub-Saharan Africa Safer Internet Summit in Nairobi, Kenya.
The platform hosted government officials, regulators, online safety partners and industry leaders for the event, reinforcing its commitment to collaborative approaches to online safety.
The funds will be provided in ad credits to help support local organisations in the region to expand AI media literacy.
This investment builds on the company’s initial $2 million AI Literacy Fund, launched in November 2025, which awarded 20 global non-profits to create content that boosts public understanding of AI.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, TikTok initially supported three organisations to advance digital literacy and combat misinformation.
“With the rapid advancement of AI, we are committed to educating our community online, so they feel empowered to have responsible experiences with AI, whether that’s as viewers or creators.
“We are partnering with trusted local organisations that communities already know and rely on, because their expertise and deep local connections are essential to making AI literacy programs truly impactful,” the Global Head of Partnerships, Elections and Market Integrity at TikTok, Mr Valiant Richey, stated.
Earlier, the Head of Government Relations and Public Policy for Sub-Saharan Africa at TikTok, Ms Tokunbo Ibrahim, said, “As we host the 3rd Annual Safer Internet Summit here in Kenya, our mission is clear: to share learnings, insights, tackle common challenges and collaboratively advance actionable solutions that protect citizens online.
“By bringing together a diverse coalition of policymakers, tech innovators, and creators, we are ensuring that the conversations we have at this Summit are all-inclusive and lead to a more resilient digital landscape.”
The summit featured expert panels and discussions on critical topics, including TikTok’s Trust and Safety efforts, protecting young people online, and policy frameworks for responsible AI governance.
A key highlight of the event was showcasing how TikTok uses AI to transform how people share their creativity and discover new passions, while ensuring the community remains safe through transparent and responsible AI practices.
The platform also shared more about how recent advancements in AI are helping the platform moderate content faster and more consistently at scale, by improving automated moderation and empowering human teams with better moderation tools.
With over 100 million pieces of content uploaded daily to TikTok, these advances, which work alongside human moderation teams, are helping get violative content down faster, reducing the likelihood of the community seeing it.
According to the latest Community Guidelines Enforcement Q3 2025, TikTok removed over 14 million videos across Sub-Saharan Africa, with 96.7 per cent detected and removed proactively using automated technology, underscoring TikTok’s commitment to proactive moderation and swift action.
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