As long as technology is seen as a separate industry, rather than a tool to industrialize, tech innovation in Africa won’t reach its full potential.

That’s the experience of several innovators on the continent, who said on a panel at the World Economic Forum  in Durban that technology continues to be siloed or isolated from many of Africa’s economies.

Innovators who have been featured on the 2015, 2016, and 2017 Quartz Africa Innovators’ list voiced their frustrations during a discussion on creating Africa’s unicorn companies.  Quartz Africa Innovators is a list of 30 African innovators, which was launched  in June 2015 with the purpose to tell Africa’s stories through a lens of innovation.

“The biggest problem is that ministers of state, leaders, even business leaders, don’t understand that fundamental and integral nature that technology will play,” said Bright Simons, who is a tech entrepreneur and a 2015 Quartz Africa Innovators honoree. Simons is a Ghanaian social innovator, entrepreneur, writer, and researcher. He is also the founder and president of mPedigree. mPedigree is the leader in the use of mobile and web technologies in securing products against faking, counterfeiting, and diversion.

Partnering more than two-dozen telecom operators, Fortune 500 technology companies, and regulatory agencies in several countries, mPedigree has created more than a technology platform; we have helped launch a movement.

“They put us in a bracket,” she said on stage. “They say ‘you creative types,’ and they dismiss us.”

Perhaps it is up to innovators to explain to policymakers the practicalities of what their industries need to succeed and meaningfully contribute to the economy, said Rapelang Rabana, the founder of the Rekindle Learning platform who is also a 2017 Quartz Africa Innovators honoree. Rapelang is the innovative founder behind Rekindle Learning, a company looking to improve education in Africa by turning people’s compulsion to check their phones into an opportunity to learn

“We need to be translating what a 5 percent increase in bandwidth translates into in these industries and what kind of opportunities manifest,” said Rabana.

This challenge, said Simons, should encourage other African innovators to build industrial innovations to show just how an economy should be built on the tech industry, not beside it.

From Quartz. Story by Lynsey Chutel. With

As long as technology is seen as a separate industry, rather than a tool to industrialize, tech innovation in Africa won’t reach its full potential.

That’s the experience of several innovators on the continent, who said on a panel at the World Economic Forum  in Durban that technology continues to be siloed or isolated from many of Africa’s economies.

Innovators who have been featured on the 2015, 2016, and 2017 Quartz Africa Innovators’ list voiced their frustrations during a discussion on creating Africa’s unicorn companies.  Quartz Africa Innovators is a list of 30 African innovators, which was launched  in June 2015 with the purpose to tell Africa’s stories through a lens of innovation.

“The biggest problem is that ministers of state, leaders, even business leaders, don’t understand that fundamental and integral nature that technology will play,” said Bright Simons, who is a tech entrepreneur and a 2015 Quartz Africa Innovators honoree. Simons is a Ghanaian social innovator, entrepreneur, writer, and researcher. He is also the founder and president of mPedigree. mPedigree is the leader in the use of mobile and web technologies in securing products against faking, counterfeiting, and diversion.

Partnering more than two-dozen telecom operators, Fortune 500 technology companies, and regulatory agencies in several countries, mPedigree has created more than a technology platform; we have helped launch a movement.

“They put us in a bracket,” she said on stage. “They say ‘you creative types,’ and they dismiss us.”

Perhaps it is up to innovators to explain to policymakers the practicalities of what their industries need to succeed and meaningfully contribute to the economy, said Rapelang Rabana, the founder of the Rekindle Learning platform who is also a 2017 Quartz Africa Innovators honoree. Rapelang is the innovative founder behind Rekindle Learning, a company looking to improve education in Africa by turning people’s compulsion to check their phones into an opportunity to learn

“We need to be translating what a 5 percent increase in bandwidth translates into in these industries and what kind of opportunities manifest,” said Rabana.

This challenge, said Simons, should encourage other African innovators to build industrial innovations to show just how an economy should be built on the tech industry, not beside it.

Read more at Quartz.