When Getrude, gathers water and firewood to prepare her meagre family meal, she lives in a world of technology isolation. She has no idea of how her life can change and she has no way of improving her life. Gertrude is an imaginary person who lives rural Africa. She has multiple children and she struggles to feed them, every day is just survival for her. Her children attend a poor school with limited resources and she lives in a country with few opportunities for her family. The government is struggling to deliver services to her and the community in which she lives. Constrained by funding and infrastructure, the government has very limited means to change this in a traditional model of development. She has no access to business opportunities or access to commercial services like banking. Can this change?
There are 2 technologies which may be game changers for Africa – businesses and governments. Cloud computing can shift infrastructure, data and business critical applications to stable environments allowing African companies to compete on a global scale. Social media and the platforms that support these – i.e. tablets and smart-phones can deliver business-to-business solutions, business-to-employee enablement and business-to-consumer solutions.
Implementing these solutions, delivering content via a mobile phone and using the limited skills available in country, a limited budget and by sweating the cloud can provide opportunities to make in-roads in these rural communities. A focused approach to building niche skills in some centres as areas of technology focus can transform the way technology is used. A technology industry can be started without necessarily requiring thousands of skills.
The benefit is if one country gets it right, the service can be sold to their neighbours and progressively a regional IT hub can be developed. To focus and build cloud and mobility channels is the way for under-developed states to catch up and even get ahead. Technical resources earn less, real-estate is affordable and the technology can be quickly deployed. Watch out Asia, Africa may be on the rise.
Mike Backeberg – April 2012