Accelerating growth and development in Africa : the role of technology and innovations

 In 2001, A 13 year old Malawian boy had to drop out of school because his family could no longer afford his school fees. Michael Kakwamba's family was just one out of the many other families that was facing a hard time as an aggressive famine was ravaging Wimbe, his hometown located in the Kasungu area of the country. Michael tried making up for his lost time by enlisting the help of their local librarian, from there he began to frequent the school's local library. With the help of a textbook he found in the library, he went on to create a wind turbine from materials he got from a junk yard, scrap materials and a bicycle dynamo. This gave his family and hometown a fighting opportunity as the turbine provided both water and electricity. The achievement though minimal, was to be the inception of other things Michael would do for his community. He went on to construct two additional turbines to complement the model turbine. With the influence Michael got, he has been able to champion initiatives that provide gadgets to usher children in his hometown and those across the globe into an emerging digital education, he also brought about the advent of a digital library for the local school in his hometown. He had brought growth and development to his hometown through technology and innovation that started off from knowledge gleamed from the pages of the book at a time the internet wasn't widespread.

 Rwanda's unique topography has made it difficult to reach some of their regions, the roads are non-pliable for motor cars or other road vehicles. With the funding and backing of  their government and foreign investors, Rwanda is now home to the world's first drone port, the drones are being used to deliver critical supplies and items to areas that have now become unreachable. One of the items frequented in the drone travels are blood, the drones are literal life savers. This technological stride have in the long run improved digital skills and provided employment to the young population as other African commercial cities have also unveiled their plans for their drone network, this will attract investors and growth to the continent 

 As Malawi and Rwanda are just two countries ,Africa is a continent filled with myriads of young people and problems. With the younger generation being the drivers of technology and Innovation, the teeming population of African youngsters are faced with proffering solutions to the same problems they have grown up seeing and experiencing, just like Mr Dougbeh Chris Nyan, An African medical inventor who created a medical toolkit said "Africans are forced to become inventive to be masters of their destitution ".  GoKada, SafeMotos, Yegomoto and SafeBoda are some of the startups that have risen to tackle challenges around transportation that face the cities in which they are found especially cutting down on time  spent on the road and safe delivery of their customers to their destinations. As they are also solving these problems especially the time spent in traffic congestions, they are also tackling  unemployment as they also attract massive foreign investments. 

 Just as the world has seen the end of the industrial revolution, it has evolved to being more digital based, likewise Africa though late, is catching up with these mind breaking innovations and technologies. Github is the world's leading and largest software  development platform, banking on the development of openly sourced codes and softwares, Github now leads the world in software development. In GitHub’s latest annual State of the Octoverse report, "developers from Africa created 40% more open source repositories on the software engineering marketplace over the past year"—a higher growth percentage than any other continent globally. In other words, Africa is the world's fastest growing continent for software developers. The transition is easy as more Africans now have smartphones in their hands, hence are more tech savvy. This can be traced to more young Africans being educated and the reduced cost of smartphones and Internet connections. This has afforded them access to the Internet, the home to the world's largest body of knowledge. A rising digital economy is especially critical as a multiplier of that development, since access to smartphones, softwares, applications and different gadgets gives room for consumer information, networking, job-creating resources, and even financial inclusion.

Technology will afford Africa the opportunity to fight instability especially when it is faced with uncertainties, a good example of this can be see when the whole world implemented lock down measures as a means to curb the novel corona virus, it had claim countless lives. At a time when most workplace, industries and financial institutions closed down as they were not providers of essential services. This has led to economical sabotage for most countries, at a time like this, the bulk of online and mobile payments came from Africa. This will go on to keep economic activities in some of this countries afloat and thriving. This being resultant of previous investments from different companies will further drive for more  investments  and innovations in the financial technology sector.

Michael Kakwamba during his visit to Kent Middle School, Kentfield in 2019 was asked "How he felt after he discovered the Internet,Google and the workings of a computer", this was almost two decades after he had invented his turbine. He expressed his awe at the Internet and even talked about the availability of different designs for building a turbine if one wanted to. Technology is making huge advances in Africa, it'll afford Africa the opportunity to skip stages of development undertaken by industrial continent of the world. This is possible because the presence of the internet as a frontier of knowledge has afforded Africa the opportunity to time jump itself out of years underdevelopment and bring growth and development to itself through technology and innovation.