Gartner Forecasts MENA IT Spending to Grow 7.4% in 2025

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IT spending in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is projected to total $230.7 billion in 2025, an increase of 7.4% from 2024, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc.

“Governments and private sector enterprises in MENA are investing heavily to position the region as a world-leading AI innovation hub, supported by strong cybersecurity and cloud platforms to enable a highly scalable infrastructure,” said Mim Burt, Managing VP Analyst at Gartner. “Local organizations are ramping up investments in research and development to create new business models, enhance customer experiences, and build a skilled workforce for global competitiveness, thereby boosting IT spending in the region.”

Gartner analysts are discussing the trends that are impacting the IT market during the Gartner CIO & IT Executive Conference, taking place here through Thursday.

AI and Cloud to Drive MENA Data Center Systems Spending in 2025

Data center systems will continue to be the segment with the highest annual growth rate in MENA, increasing 14.9% in 2025.

“In 2025, chief information officers (CIOs) in MENA are expected to increase their spending on data center technologies to cope with the growing adoption of AI and cloud services, as well as the rise in consumption of data storage and processing capacity,” said Burt. “In addition, several major hyper-scalers in the region are investing in data center systems to provide sustainable, scalable AI-embedded cloud infrastructure, further bolstering the growth of this segment.”

Strategic Shift in GenAI Investments for MENA CIOs in 2025

Software spending in MENA is projected to grow 13.7% in 2025, fueled by increased CIO investments in generative AI (GenAI)-enabled applications. “To enhance the digital workplace, customer experience, and product and service quality, MENA CIOs are spending more on the combined power of GenAI applications, cloud services, and cybersecurity software ensuring the safe acceleration of innovation for competitive differentiation,” said Burt.

Starting in 2025, CIOs will take a more focused approach toward their GenAI projects, leveraging the experience gained from their pilots. This shift comes as a result of lessons learned and a deeper understanding of the complexities involved.

“Pilots and trials have cooled the hype on GenAI as CIOs are beginning to realize the challenges related to data and the cost versus value of these GenAI pilots,” said Eyad Tachwali, Sr. Director Advisory at Gartner. “To address these barriers, CIOs will need to take a portfolio approach to their use cases aligned with business priorities and invest in data and AI literacy that focus on the ‘doing’ as much as the ‘knowing’ to derive value from their GenAI investments.”

Gartner’s IT spending forecast methodology relies heavily on rigorous analysis of the sales by over a thousand vendors across the entire range of IT products and services. Gartner uses primary research techniques, complemented by secondary research sources, to build a comprehensive database of market size data on which to base its forecast.

The Gartner quarterly IT spending forecast delivers a unique perspective on IT spending across the hardware, software, IT services and telecommunications segments. These reports help Gartner clients understand market opportunities and challenges. The most recent IT spending forecast research is available to Gartner clients in “Gartner Market Databook, 3Q24 Update.”