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Here is why Africa must play in the Technology Revolution

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The continent of Africa has an infrastructure gap, as estimated by the African Development bank , in finance terms to be in the tune of $100bn a year. With a Low tax base, in most cases unable to support each Country's annual budgets, it therefore means Africa must rely on development partners to fill this Financing Gap every year as a short to mid term Solution. To increase the tax base, Africa must strive to have a fully digital society in all spheres of life. However, this is where i pose a Question... Is Africa thinking strategically to address this challenge? There may be many answers, but with the African Continental Free Trade Area(AfCFTA) Initiative , Africa has one avenue to address this challenge. Another is by fully embracing next Generation technology, leveraging its Geographical location, a young and growing tech savvy population to deliver social economic transformation for its people.  It is estimated that Africa will have a market size of about 2.5Billion people by ...
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Technology & Big Data in Infrastructure Investment Planning

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Infrastructure plays a critical role in driving several sectors of the economy. Social infrastructure like schools helps educate the next generation while Hospitals keep us healthy. Economic infrastructure like roads, power lines, railways, telecommunications drive the economic transformation of society. However, in Africa we have an infrastructure-financing deficit, to the tune of $100bn annually as per the African Development Bank ( AFDB ) projections.   Countries in Africa are not able to absorb this funding gap due to fiscal/budgetary limitations, lack of local financing, an inadequate or an undeveloped stock market et al. In the face of these realities, governments have to work with development partners and international private investment vehicles to attract the finance necessary to deliver the above infrastructure to society in a cost-efficient manner.   Country Demographics and Infrastructure planning A meticulous planning approach for social and economic infrastru...
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A community model for rural connectivity, Green Energy access and Small scale industrialization.

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 To deliver socio economic transformation of population in rural areas requires two key enablers - Broadband access and electricity. Broadband technologies deliver internet access to unlock access to services while electricity delivers lighting and powers multi-sectoral industrialization. Telco and Infrastructure companies in many African countries, and with patient capital from development partners are trying to bridge the unconnected, unserved and underserved Gap in rural areas with lowcost, smart, site infrastructure solutions paving the way for a digital transformation journey for these areas. There is still some way to go, because based on the GSMA State of mobile Internet Connectivity Report 2021, Broadband penetration in Subsaharan Africa stands at 28% , with 210m people still unconnected. This is compounded by the fact that the cost of extending Hydro electricity is still very high, estimated in the range of USD20,000-30,000 per Kilometre . According to an IEA World Energ...
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Digital revolution in football, the European Super League(ESL) Concept, and changing trends in the live content Industry

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The European Football Association (UEFA) was recently faced with a new concept of the European super league(ESL) that guaranteed clubs in the elite league huge annual incomes in an industry that increasingly has many avenues for generating revenues..  It is a concept that was premised on access to a global audience of internet or broadband subscribers and pushing live football content via web, smart phone applications, and other digital channels. It was vehemently fought by UEFA, Europe's governing body and partner FAs in each country. Many reasons are put forward but the main one in my opinion is that it would dilute the current UEFA Champions League Format. But faced with revenue pressures, a huge player wage bill and mounting debt , and looking at the opportunity to make serious money by leveraging their premier asset base (the Superstars), this is what Florentino Perez at Real Madrid, Laporta at Barcelona, Agnelli at Juventus, the Glazers at Manchester United or John Henry at ...
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Precision Agriculture, Internet of things(IoT) and the Opportunity for Yield Multiplication in Africa

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Digital transformation and technology are touching every facet of life today from banking, education, health, governance etc. Billionaires have been created overnight by harnessing the power of technology to mediate between markets and people, and solving previously 'impossible' societal challenges. It is technology that has broken geographical boundaries and made the world a global village.  In Africa, where most economies largely depend on Agriculture for livelihood, with farmers using traditional methods of Agricultural production, there is a huge opportunity for technology to fill this gap to improve yields (and their variety), double or triple farmer returns and encourage more young men and women to pursue careers in the sector.  With increased connectivity, we can use Internet of things(IoT) technology to determine Soil status in terms of type, nutrient distribution, salinity, PH, soil Moisture, related parameters like Temperature and Humidity as well as improving Pest C...
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The Rural coverage Conundrum in emerging markets, bridging the digital divide, the opportunity & what rich online companies can do to reduce the coverage and Affordability Gap

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 Africa is the next growth frontier for major investments in Infrastructure, in Agriculture and so many other sectors. But as Technology evolves towards cloud and data centre economics, and the race for 5G connectivity intensifies - there is still 750M unconnected subscribers, with the vast number, 300M in Subsaharan Africa and 220M South Asia according to the GSMA State Of mobile Internet connectivity Report 2019. The root cause is that there is no justifiable business case for telcos to deploy coverage infrastructure, especially since their investors require high returns in the mid to longterm. One of the solutions to this conundrum lies elsewhere - enter Online companies Online companies can be defined as those that conduct their businesses online by using the power of the internet. They can be termed as over the Top(OTT) companies. Some Examples for context are Google, Netflix, Alibaba, Zoom, Microsoft and so on. These companies make their money largely off already connected br...
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Lessons from Alibaba and Amazon, creating markets and a digital economy in Africa by 2025

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 Alibaba is an e-commerce and internet company based in China with 2019 revenues totaling USD 72 billion . Amazon, another company based in the USA and it generated USD 280 billion in the same period. By comparison, the total tax revenue collected by the Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania economies over the last year was a combined USD23.8bn . South Africa, one of the biggest economies in Africa collected USD73.8bn in tax revenues over the last year. These numbers therefore tell us a very interesting story; that to get Africa out of poverty, increase employment opportunities and improve the well-being of citizens, African governments must strategise and invest smartly to create an enabling environment for new and disruptive business models that fully embrace the power of ICT to boost trade both in-country and with other countries in Africa. With a population of about 1.3bn people, and a median age of 19.7 years , Africa needs to imagine and create new and scalable employment avenues for th...
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