Transforming African Lives
Transforming African Lives
The power of the Internet is reshaping the daily lives of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa as its people change decades-old routines and habits with a more technology influenced way of life that will not just change how they interact with each other but also how much exposure they will have.
This is most evident in the recent rise in smart villages across the region where people’s lives start to increasingly rely on mobile technology. In Rwanda, for example, their transformation started in 2015 when the government partnered with a private firm to lay down the infrastructure necessary to create a society whose transactions are all digital in Tumba, a small village outside the capital. Then they gave their 4G bandwidths to TIGO, a company that builds smart communities in Uganda, for free on the premise that they increase 4G national coverage to 95 percent by 2020. Currently, it is 70 percent. The Ugandan government also tasked the company to create a “Smart Village” in Tumba. “It is now up and running,” says the company’s CEO Philip Amoateng. “It is our proof concept.”
In Niger, the focus is on building digital and smart services for people living in villages and rural areas first rather than focus on meeting the demands of people living in the country’s large metropolises. “Our flagship project is to connect Niger’s villages together digitally via a common platform,” said Ibrahima Saidou, High Commission of TIC in the Republic of Niger. “It includes mobile operators, startups, banks, and scholars.” Niger is also organizing monthly national boot camps where Niger’s digital transformation stakeholders meet to talk to share insight and the latest trends. “We started this in 2017,” said Saidou.
Meanwhile in Nigeria, the government has just finished unifying linking citizen ID cards with all government service providers and agencies thereby create a digital record of all native transactions and allow them to be offered online. Also done is connecting all of the country’s banks via a private virtual network.
Demola Aladekomo, Chairman of SmartCity Resorts PLC in Nigeria, the key to the region’s transformation is to acknowledge that rural to urban movement is “irreversible,” he said. The other great aspect is that many countries in Africa complement each other. For example, in Ivory Coast, they cultivate some of the best quality coco beans while in nearby Swaziland, they process and package these beans for trading in the continent or outside it. Therefore, the digital transformation of these two countries needs to be highly integrated and linked.
To successfully transform Africa’s nations, local governments must adopt a polycentric urbanization model where urban life and services come to rural areas, thereby attracting people and businesses to these areas thereby creating new opportunities. The other challenge is to create institutions that ensure the smooth transition of people from living in a rural area to coping with the demand of urban areas. Such institutions include rule of law, stronger legislations, and transparency. “We need to have these ideals rooted in our families,” said Aladekomo. “We are getting there. Slowly but surely.”