When Africa’s digital revolution is spoken of, it is often described in terms of millions of phones and connected lines. The description is illustrated with an obligatory image of a disheveled, smiling native on the open savannah, or in a rural shanty, holding a phone to their head.
“Africa is mobile”, the well worn refrain chanted in unison by analysts and event jockeys, is hard to fault. But while mobile has become the approved symbol of innovation in Africa, those who have tried to pander to the notion have found that the waxy seal doesn’t really keep well outside of air-conditioned conference rooms.
Microsoft’s 4Afrika device campaign, in collaboration with Huawei hasn’t seen much traction. Intel’s YOLO trial, a cheap smartphone running Android which proposed to bring cheap devices to the masses in Africa was discontinued. Despite an obviously aggressive play at getting the bottom of the pyramid demographic to use Google products and services, the search giant refrained from creating a mobile phone specifically for emerging markets.
Outside of Kenya, the success of mobile money has failed to live up to the hype of its potential.
The fact is that while Africa is mobile, mobile is no longer the future. The world has moved on, in search of the next game changing innovation. Self-driving cars, augmented reality, interstellar travel, all once considered moonshots have become quotidian.
Nor is mobile the silver bullet to the continent’s problems. The “Africa is mobile” mantra is an unsophisticated narrative that discounts the macro dynamics that actually drive development.
“The true problem that we have is skills, infrastructure and investment”, according to Omobola Johnson, Nigeria’s minister of communications and technology at the Lagos Social Media Week in February.
The ministry has acknowledged cheaper devices as a goal but has been more visibly working to develop critical broadband infrastructure and stimulate the local technology industry with startup funding. Working with the global private sector forms a significant part of the minister’s strategy.
“When we started in Nigeria, we looked at the priorities of government”, said Ekundare Olubunmi, country manager of Intel Nigeria. “We focused initially on education, because we felt that was a niche that was important”.
Intel’s activities range from teacher-focused programs to initiatives targeted at learners and corporate venture capital, all aimed at stimulating the uptake of STEM learning and technology entrepreneurship.
Most conversations about technology adoption in Africa are focused on driving down the cost of mobile devices. But a more creative approach to the problem of access is to focus instead on crashing the cost of broadband to the point that it is within the reach of everyone, says Sven Beckman, Intel’s director for Sub-Saharan Africa.
“The impact of cheap hardware is cheap and finite — costs of raw materials and manufacturing can go only so low before margins disappear and the economics stop making sense”, he said. “Cheaper broadband is capable of amazing multiplier effects on the experience of the users and the economy”.
Mobile, not just in terms of the hardware, but also the paradigm met a profound need in Africa — the need to communicate, with ripple effects across the board. Yet it would seem that massive success of the telecoms industry have obscured the rest of the fundamental problems that besiege the continent still. Stepping out of the mobile box reveals other lateral approaches that will not only solve these challenges but allow Africa catch up quicker with the rest of the world.
IBM’s Project Lucy is using Watson, its signature big data crunching supercomputer to try and develop commercially viable solutions to Africa’s grand challenges in healthcare, education, water and sanitation, human mobility and agriculture.
Microsoft is exploring the idea of bringing broadband connectivity to rural areas via unused television spectrum.
Google, the actual pioneer of the white spaces stratagem is taking it one step further with balloon-powered internet, mapping uncharted regions of the continent and piping free broadband into universities.
Facebook recently acquired a company that makes drones. Drones that like Google’s balloon’s could supply internet to underserved regions, in line with the company’s internet for all vision.
Intel Teach has trained 40,000 teachers across Africa on the use of technology to significantly augment the learning experience for their pupils.
Sub $50 devices are great, but the biggest players are zooming out to take a good look at the bigger African picture. Leapfrogging decades of development will require apparently slower, but inherently more transformative strategies than getting people in the developing world to install WhatsApp.
Photo Credit: World Bank Photo Collection via Compfight cc
