Opinion: The Next Decade Belongs To Africa As Technology Ripples Through The Continent

Written by Staff

Dec 22, 2019

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted about his plans to move to Africa in 2020, saying he wants to live there for up to six months. Africa may be the last continent to undergo rapid economic development, but Dorsey nevertheless believes it has a lot of potential.

Africa is an untapped market for digital-payment systems, and there is a pronounced first-mover advantage for Dorsey and especially for Square, his mobile-payment company, as he scours the continent for lucrative deals and investments.

This is precisely what he did during his last African tour, which started Nov. 8 and took him to Ghana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and South Africa. In the tweet, he also said Africa would define bitcoin’s future. This is unsurprising — Dorsey has been a bitcoin advocate for a while, and he plans to integrate the most popular cryptocurrency into Twitter and Square. His tour also took him to Ethiopia, where he was pitched by local startup companies.

From MarketWatch. Story by Jurica Dujmovic.

For the past few years, Africa’s tech industry has experienced a great surge, and Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Huawei have taken notice and are already fishing for young talent among developers and tech specialists. These entrepreneurs and companies are well aware that there’s much more to Africa than safaris.

According to Briter Bridges, the number of active tech hubs (currently active organizations with a physical local address that offer facilities and support for tech and digital entrepreneurs) in Africa has almost doubled over the past few years — from 314 in 2016 to 618 in 2019. This has sprung from multiple investment sources, including venture funds, development finance, corporate involvement as well as ever-growing, innovative communities. The greatest concentration of tech hubs is in Nigeria (85), South Africa (80), Egypt (56) and Kenya (50). This is a great indicator of tech development that is taking place in Africa, and tech-oriented companies are dead set on reaping the benefits — in human potential as well as products and know-how.