I remember the first time a computer made an impression. It
was in 1993, and I was living in Nanyuki
an outpost town in Kenya (at least back then). I was ten, and I had gone to
visit a programmer who had been hired by a research team studying Mount Kenya
and the ecology around it. Although most details are hazy today, I remember the
programmer, I really thought he was the most intelligent man alive and
everything that came out of his mouth was the golden truth. I promised myself
that one day I would own and operate a computer like him. I was one of the
first students in Kenya back in 1997 to take up IT as a subject in high school,
I honesty think that was a blessing because we had a volunteer from the UK who
had experience in developing software, he took us through three of the four
year in high school, it is through him that we really dug into C++, C and
Pascal programming languages. It is from here that some of my colleagues
eventually found themselves working in the Greater Seattle area for Microsoft,
and a few other multinationals.
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| The Equator passes through Nanyuki Source:https://dekockoverland2europe.wordpress.com |
So why do I share this story?
Over the last twenty years, my generation has seen tremendous
change and disruption in what was once believed to be culturally acceptable. Many of us migrated to the cities in search of
a better education and life. Many more dreamed of travelling to Europe and
America to get a better livelihood.
The reality is that for those who go to Western countries, a
minority actually became great successes, but a far greater percentage end up
barely surviving and live from hand to mouth, or worse still die in the high
seas having not arrived at their safe haven.
As all this is happening the great majority of Africans are
young, unemployed, and uninspired. They lack mentors who can train them in
catching the proverbial fish that can sustain them through life. The kind of
education they receive in public schools is only reflective of the lack of
focus seen in how governments are run across Africa. Teachers are few,
underpaid and overstretched, ill equipped to educate much less mentor the flood
of children left at their school gates, by a population barely making a
living.
I have visited swatches of land around my country where
there is no trace of a human being, while in the cities there are moments when
you cannot walk on a straight path because of the density of human traffic
choking the life out of our cities.
And while this is the state of affairs in all African
countries, statistics shared by World
Bank and Bloomberg
point to Africa for strong economic growth.
Is this a contradiction? Or is this gradualism at work. Where despite
the harsh reality that disease and poverty is still ravishing Africa, the
continent is getting better a man at a time.
Most of my writing points to a bright future for Africa. In
this article, I would like to explore the theory that technology is the
centerpiece of this vision becoming a reality. And for me the technologies that
will drive this change include social media, mobile computing, data analytics
and cloud computing.
How have these technologies altered the African landscape?
The mobile phone has collapsed the distances that once made
communication impossible between relatives in the city and rural areas. Research
also confirms that mobile phones are effective as means of searching for labor-market
information, which then drives migration among rural populations.
The mobile phone has also been lauded for being the tool
that will allow financial services to reach the unbanked and underserved rural
populations inexpensively and/or cost effectively. But many of us forget that
once upon a time, banks would visit rural outposts once in a few months to
offer their services to a rural community; this was never a successful
venture. With mobile phones and the
ecosystem it has created, we now have banking agents, who for
an affordable rate can offer increasingly complex and higher value financial
services to villages across the developing world.
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| Graph showing U.S. production of corn in 2015 at more than 150 bushels per acre as compared to African corn yield at about 30. Source:Gatesnotes |
Seven out of ten Africans are farmers, but they are far less
productive than their counterparts in other continents, why? There is a
disconnect between the agricultural research being done, and its dissemination
to farmers across the continent. There
is lack of better food storage, lack of knowledge around use of fertilizer,
crop rotation, timing and planting techniques. The process by which farmers get
this information is called agricultural extension. It was traditionally
expensive and complicated and required highly trained agricultural experts to
travel and engage the farmers. However, today, the mobile phone can deliver
this service, inexpensively and effectively.
The other dimension to this story lies in the elimination
of the middleman, who usually depends on the poverty, ignorance, lack of
information, short window of freshness, and the exorbitant cost of distribution
that face most farmers across Africa. They
buy fresh produce at rock bottom prices in the rural areas and make a large
profit by selling these produce in urban areas, where food is desperately
needed.
The answer here lies in the creation of cost efficient
networks that can effectively allow farmers to negotiate better prices with
their consumers, which in the end affords them higher prices.
In Kenya, for instance, there is a quiet revolution brewing as
young professionals are going back to the farm and using better farming
practices and adopting the latest farming technologies. And they are using social media to educate,
inspire and collaborate with each other.
Technology is altering both how we educate Africa, read here,
and how we deliver health care, read here.
SMEs
contribute greatly to the African economies. Despite this, most are not part of
the formal economy and are severely hampered by a weakly developed business
environment hampered by red tape, corruption, complex entry regulations and few
incentives to become a formal part of the economy.
A case
study on the awareness of cloud computing by SMEs in South Africa,
uncovered that most of the respondents had very low, to low understanding of
cloud computing and the terminology used and how it could benefit their
businesses. And while there are counter-arguments to adopting cloud computing,
the truth is that Africa is ripe for its adoption predominantly because it
allows us to utilize infrastructure, human capacity and experience that is
lacking across the continent. It allows SMEs to compete favorably
internationally.
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| Africa 2.0 Source Africa Progress Panel http://www.africaprogresspanel.org/why-technology-is-key-to-africas-future/ |
The conversation leading to the adoption of cloud computing
in Africa needs to be basic. African SMEs need to also understand that when
they are using Facebook, Google mail or WhatsApp they are actually utilizing
the cloud.
With time more technology innovations will arise that will
target the individual SMEs as technology incubators, hubs and competitions like
Pivot East become established across
the continent.
In conclusion, I believe because of technology, Africa is
witnessing explosive but gradual change that will empower the continent. But am
sure you already know that!
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