Africa is taking over the Tech world

Africa’s embrace of technology turns two common assumptions inside out – that tech breakthroughs happen in rich countries, and that Africa needs basic services before it can use high-tech solutions. What Africa’s start-ups are doing is using technology to build those basic services – and a whole lot more.

In fact it’s in Africa where some of the world’s cutting-edge innovation is happening right now.

Technology is improving people’s lives – especially mobile services and applications. With minimal fixed line phone infrastructure, the continent has embraced the opportunity to leapfrog existing technologies, becoming a world leader in the delivery of such critical services through innovation.

Take JamboPay, for example.

JamboPay, which was founded in 2009, now has more than 5,000 institutional clients and processes more than $500 million in payments every year. The company has a presence in Kenya, Tanzania and Senegal and is expanding rapidly.

Jambopay has facilitated low-cost solutions to critical public problems and transformed the relationship between citizens and their governments. This is an African solution to a world problem.

In Sierra Leone, fishing communities have used a combination of mobile phones and GPS-enabled cameras to report on foreign fishing boats stealing from their waters.

Many of these systems struggle to bridge glaring gaps in existing services. African farmers, for example, need better access to data, which means establishing more and efficient weather stations. The agricultural information service, Esoko, can provide weather data to farmers in Ghana, for example, which suggests that meteorological agencies need to partner with the private sector.

One hurdle that technology innovation faces in Africa is the lack of power. About 620 million Africans live without access to electricity, but mobile phones need to be charged and transmitter towers need power. Access to energy is a constraint for social and economic progress all over the continent.

Africa is a continent of innovation and creativity, though – so technology itself is helping to break down the barriers to energy. Off-grid electricity is growing fast. Solar-powered phone chargers are becoming more common across the continent.

Technology could also help to bring down another barrier to progress in Africa. East Asian countries successfully converted their domestic savings into investment, facilitating their transformations to middle-income countries. But Africa has so far largely failed in this respect.

In most parts of the world, banks provide the major interface for savers. But Africa lacks bank branches, especially in rural areas, and the costs of banking are prohibitive for the overwhelming majority.

So how can Africa mobilize domestic savings? Technology can enable peer-to-peer lending – cutting out the middleman, removing the need for retail banks, and even leapfrogging existing business models.

Using mobile phones to make payments is another promising avenue. In Africa, just 23% of people have a bank account, but majority have access to a mobile phone.

Kenya’s mobile payment system, M-PESA, has shown the way. In just 10 years, M-PESA has enabled 25 million Kenyans to send and receive money electronically.

A promising offshoot is a micro-insurance health cover service that allows subscribers to contribute to health insurance via M-PESA. NHIF for example has adopted this concept while all banks have since integrated mobile transactions into their banking products and services.

Technology has been key to many of Africa’s most exciting developments in recent years. Watch out for new pan-African social media platforms emerging to challenge the global giants of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. WhatsApp will be relegated to the periphery as the world looks to Africa for tech solutions.

New technologies will rapidly transform societies in the future. The robot generation will start in Africa. The action is already happening in Nairobi. Africa is leading