Here is why Africa must play in the Technology Revolution

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 the Year 2050.

I have also opinned in a previous blog how e-commerce and online companies like facebook, amazon, Google are leveraging technology to become multi-billion dollar companies, more than the GDP of some countries in Africa.

And In fact, sensing the massive opportunity that Africa offers, and coupled with their enomous resources, Facebook & Google etc have aggressively entered this space with the 2Africa & Equiano submarine cable initiatives. 

In trying to connect populations to the digital economy, there has been tremendous initiatives, via national broadband policy agendas, to increase broadband penetration down to the rural areas in most African countries. The cost per Kilobyte(KB) of internet though still remains high in some countries on the continent to support full digital inclusion of societies. One clear reason for this is the rental costs for international connectivity access. The other is the meagre or insufficient infrastructure investments in international connectivity to rhyme with the increasing need for internet across all spheres of society. 

Available pricing data from a leading wholesaler international Capacity provider shows for example that the monthly cost of a simple STM-1 (155Mbps) connection from a PoP in Hongkong to one on the Africa continent is about 5times more expensive than the same  capacity going to Europe or America. This multiple is also consistent for higher capacities i.e STM-64(10Gbps). 

Africa must therefore strategically 'disrupt' this imbalance by ramping up investments in this space to create Competition and also for future Geopolitical considerations. PoPs fully owned by Africa for example to India, to China, to the USA will go a longway in getting parity for international capacity, make inland internet bundles affordable to people in remotest areas in Africa, and connect more and more people to the digital economy.   A futuristic Schematic to demonstrate this is below;

With a per KM deployment cost anywhere between 60000-70000USD, resources for such a project can be mobilized by the 54 member states to make it bankable and affordable. We can draw examples from mega transport projects in Africa, for example the Trans-sahara Highway (TAH) connecting Algiers to Lagos, a distance of about 4500KM. If we must be part of the fourth industrial revolution (4-I-R) agenda, these are strategic investments Africa needs to pursue.