When thinking about Africa’s future (which few people really do), one is easily lost in a maze of great ideas, contradictions, inspiring pioneers, disenchanting news reports and ridiculously low quality data. Jasper Grosskurth of STT spent 3 years exploring ‘Futures of Technology in Africa’ on a quest to understand the continent’s next two decades.
The resulting book contains lots of insider knowledge, ICT and energy data, insights into future opportunities and risks, future scenarios, a chapter about learning from Africa, a science fiction short story, and much more. You’ll find the book (PDF) right here.
Africa’s ICT future begins with the mobile phone. The 450 million units in use today are the cornerstones of Africa’s first ever pan-continental infrastructure, reliably and affordably connecting all corners, urban and rural. Internet will follow suit, and so will mobile money (pay and/or earn anywhere anytime) and geo-location services (navigation, tracking & tracing, …).
As a consequence, the transaction costs for any type of data (voice, image, video, prices, locations, account information, weather data, code,…) are dropping from outrageous to global average. Business economics 101 teaches us, that lower transaction costs mean more business opportunities for everybody. Read Jasper’s book (PDF) to add insights about changes in other fields, such as energy, infrastructure and agriculture taking place over the next 20 years and your head should start spinning.
All this has an impact on what 1% of time or money can do. First of all, less of anyone’s 1% input is lost in transaction. Money reaches its destination quicker, information is exchanged more efficiently, increasingly complex projects can be tackled through digital and social networks. And 1% really can make a difference.
However, as the amount of entrepreneurship – for profit or not – in Africa grows, 1% will make less and less of a difference. When skills levels, access to information, the sophistication of African economies and the Cheetah generation grow, the added value of the 1% contributions will drop. With some luck, they will continue to drop to a level, where we see a global 1% community funding each other’s great projects.
1% of Kenyan money and skills will then help a cool idea in Amsterdam to move from idea to reality as much as the other way round…
Contribution by Jasper Grosskurth
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