Research has shown that if governments harness the full economic potential of just the internet, Africa could add $300 billion to its GDP by 2025, just as 70 per cent of all jobs would have an ICT component by 2020, President African Development Bank Dr Akinwumi Adeshina has said.
Akinwumi said this at a debate entitled: The new tech era: Job-killer or job-creator? organised by Africa Report and Jeune Afrique as part of the2019 Mo Ibrahim Governance Week, held at Sofitel Hotel in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.
He pleaded with Africans to embrace technology, and governments to urgently move away from “investing in the jobs of the past, but rather in the jobs of the future. A future that is just around the corner.”
the ADB boss said, “The people who control data, will control Africa. Coding must be compulsory, at all levels. The currency of the future is going to be coding. Information technology must not be the exclusive privilege of the elite, we must democratise technology.”
Panelists included Pascal Lamy, board director of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and past director-general of the World Trade Organization; Eric Kacou, an Ivorian businessman and co-founder of ESP Solutions; Chioma Agwuegbo, a Nigerian tech specialist and Zyad Liman, publishing director of Afrique Magazine.
In his welcome remarks, Mo Ibrahim told the panelists to think about ways to address the “tsunami of young people entering the job market.”
In response to that call to action, Kacou insisted on the need for “a change in mindset to move from BBC or Born Before Computers to rethinking education to teach people how to learn and help them solve problems.”
Panelists acknowledged the critical role the tech industry can play in Africa’s economic transformation through the continent’s digitisation.
