Africa tech is a bright spot

Almost everything that works nowadays in a still largely dysfunctional African continent is underpinned by technology. From telephony, elections, to the mundane hailing of a taxi or posting of a letter, tech has made these hitherto needlessly difficult tasks so easy that we now thankfully take them for granted.

In the “What to Watch in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2022” publication, an annual outlook by the Africa programme of the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington DC, where I am a non-resident senior associate, my colleagues and I provide prognostications on the likely outcomes to expect from US-Africa policy interactions and other facets of the African political economy in 2022.

In reflection of current realities, many of the forecasts point to deterioration. There were some bright spots, however. The American foreign policy outlook on Africa under the Biden administration is hugely positive, for instance, with a US-Africa summit planned for later in the year.

Another bright spot is the continued improvement of African lives through tech, which as I assert in my contribution, will be even more pronounced in 2022.

Kenyans will be electing a new president in August 2022. With at least a year to the 2023 Nigerian general elections, campaigns are already in high gear. In both cases, an incumbent will not be on the ballot for the presidential elections.

Promisingly, Nigeria plans to allow electronic voting and electronic transmission of election results. That is, if Muhammadu Buhari, the Nigerian president, keeps his promise to assent to amended legislation allowing for the innovation.

Thus like Kenya, Nigeria will also increasingly rely on technology to cut fraud and rigging in upcoming and future elections, setting the stage for wider adoption across the continent. Unfortunately, Uhuru Kenyatta, the president of Kenya, is supporting legislation to revert to the more fraud-prone traditional election methods.

This is a retrogression, one I hope does not succeed.

But just as technology is making living on the continent less tedious, it is also increasing the capabilities of our governments to rule with the fist.

In fact, more African governments will increasingly acquire relatively cheap off-the-shelf online surveillance technologies, with disastrous consequences for democracy, human rights and freedom.

Already, African authorities switch off the internet, block social media and other “unfriendly” websites, for sometimes no other reason than the head of state is in a bad mood, having been irritated by a critical publication, say.

For chats on Whatsapp to emails, African governments have happened on how easy and cheap it is to monitor citizens’ communications anywhere from anywhere.

There are other technological developments on the continent of significance, some for the better, others for the worse, and in a number of cases, for better and worse.

More drones will be deployed across the continent, for instance, delivering blood and medical supplies to hospitals like American firm Zipline does in Rwanda and Ghana.

But drones are also now being used to fight wars on the continent, as is the case in the ongoing Ethiopian civil war. Even more alarmingly, terrorists and criminal gangs are also now able to acquire drones for their nefarious purposes.

FinTech is revolutionising payments and credit extension, a boon for financial inclusion. Blockchain technology is opening up myriad opportunities to fix longrunning African infrastructural and public service inadequacies related to trust.

There have been regulatory resistance to some of these innovations, however, most prominently in relation to cryptocurrencies for FinTech. Even so, cryptocurrencies will continue to facilitate easier cross-border payments despite such pushback, from African central banks, for instance.

But for cryptocurrencies, some of Africa’s currently engaged young tech talent with Silicon Valley firms in America and elsewhere in the developed world would have remained in despair, without jobs and a bright future to look forward to in their home countries, where they are now able to work from remotely.

Cryptocurrencies have also stirred African central banks to action, with Nigeria already issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Ghana and South Africa may follow suit with their own CBDCs this year, and perhaps a number of other African countries as well.

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A wider adoption of blockchain technology for digital IDs and myriad registries will also increasingly be the rage. DNA sequencing of the hitherto marginalised African population is also ascendant, excitingly by American-funded startups and programmes like 54gene in Lagos and the H3Africa Initiative in Cape Town.

5G licenses in Nigeria and auctions of additional internet spectrum in South Africa also raise the prospects of higher quality and wider range of internet services in these key African countries, even as fears about 5G risks remain.

Despite uncertainties in global financial markets, African tech startups are getting significant foreign investor interest. Western-backed Nigerian FinTech firm Flutterwave is now valued at more than US$3bn, after a recent well-subscribed US$250m capital raise.

With success comes scrutiny, however. So, naturally, African governments will increasingly seek to regulate tech. Kenya and Nigeria are already working on legislation to regulate tech startups.

More African governments are also looking to tap the huge revenue potential of the tech sector to boost their strained budgets. There are risks to African tech innovation and growth from this interventionism. Even so, tech will continue to be an enabler of a better quality of life for Africans.

See link to “What to Watch in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2022” publication by CSIS Africa viz. https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-watch-sub-saharan-africa-2022