Africa on the digital rise

Many African countries have leapfrogged into the mediated world of smartphones and apps without passing through the stage of wired telephone use. Through smartphone technology, the internet is more easily and flexibly accessible to more and more African people. Global service providers of digital technologies stretch their business interests into formerly remote and difficult to access markets such as sub-Saharan Africa. The limited access to digitally shared information ("digital divide") has been discussed as a critical obstacle restricting the educational development and socio-economic growth of Africa and its people. It is still more accentuated in African countries as they lack a broad access to information distribution systems. Nevertheless, in technological terms, the internet revolution is booming in Africa. The African continent may have the lowest internet penetration but, at the same time, it boasts the fastest increase in internet accessibility.

The second machine age might be driven by technological innovations but can only be pursued successfully if strategies and cultures adapt to the volatile, complex, and uncertain nature of today’s world. African cultures appear to be better prepared to cope with the lack of a clear, single-minded and foreseeable environment than non-African traditions. Thus, Africa can rather be regarded as a starting point than a mere recipient of information and communication technologies (ICT) that have been created in the innovation hubs in the Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv or Beijing.

Terri Grant from the University of Capetown (South Africa) and Ute Rademacher from the International School of Management in Hamburg (Germany) presented case studies of a successful ICT service provider “made in Africa” and cutting-edge propositions created by African ICT students as potential future “out of Africa” business solutions. These business cases exemplify that digitalisation offers a valuable springboard by making use of African values and practices when designing and creating innovative ICT solutions. Because African cultures appear to be more lean, more agile and community-oriented, they have the potential to better cope with the lack of a clear, single-minded and foreseeable environment than non-African traditions. These offers might focus on solutions for specific needs in African regions or on global needs such as user-centric transport, individualised education or environmentally friendly consumption. The distribution and ownership of these digital services might represent an essential challenge to African countries and corporations due to the lack of stable political systems, technological education and financial funding that are needed to nurture a sustainable culture of digital entrepreneurship. However, not only are innovations such as the South African online education provider GetSmarter good for the continent itself. They may have global appeal demonstrating that digitalisation “into Africa” may be counter-balanced by digitalisation “out of Africa” in the near future.

Rademacher, Ute & Grant, Terri (2019). Out of Africa - A new perspective on digitalisation in Africa. Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis (TATuP), 28/2 (2019). Special Issue "Digitalization in the Global South", p. 41-47.