How Africa is Aiding Africa
Africa is quickly gaining a reputation as the land of opportunity, with the thriving technology hub of east Africa being compared to Silicon Valley. What is it that is fueling this transformation?
According to Jon Gosier, director of Ushahidi, the answer is Hunger. “It’s natural progression,” said Gosier. “In parts of the world that have essentially been discounted by everyone as sources for innovation, there will always be people who actively work against that mischaracterization. They’ve always been there, they’re just now getting recognized for the work they are doing, or the work they’ve enabled their children to do.” New technologies are aiding nations in overcoming the large hurdles they face in economic development.
In many African nations, large revenue inflows from natural resources such as oil, gas, timber and mining fail to aid development. Lack of government accountability is to blame. New initiatives have developed ways to facilitate natural resource transparency. Some examples include; Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the Natural Resource Charter and Publish What You Pay.
The challenge in creating these complicated accountability reports is the required database. In a developing country where there are not many IT people, getting a database is the first challenge. Those who can get that far face the challenge of expensive and unreliable internet.
Another debilitating challenge African nations have to overcome is local diseases that kill millions but are not given attention by major global drug developers. Last year a collection of reports from MRC Global was released documenting local African innovation to address these local health concerns.
The report concluded that “in the long term, the sustainable solutions to Africa’s health problems rest with the home team. The studies demonstrate that, with the right partners and incentives along with support from governments at home and abroad, Africans have the scientific creativity and entrepreneurial talent to improve local health and prosper at the same time.”
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