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Silicon Valley eyes Africa as new tech frontier
LAGOS, July 15, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – With its colourful hammocks and table
tennis table, a new tech hub in the Lagos metropolis wouldn’t look out of
place among the start-ups on the other side of the world in Silicon Valley.
But the NG_Hub office is in the suburb of Yaba — the heart of Nigeria’s
burgeoning tech scene that is attracting interest from global giants keen to
tap into an emerging market of young, connected Africans.
In May, both Google and Facebook launched initiatives nearby.
This week, Nigeria’s Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo was in California to
court US tech investors for what he said could herald a “fourth industrial
revolution” back home.
But it isn’t just Nigeria that is piquing the interest of tech giants.
Last month, Google said it would open Africa’s first artificial
intelligence lab in Ghana’s capital, Accra.
Demographics are a key factor behind the drive: Africa’s population is
estimated to be 1.2 billion, 60 percent of them under 24. By 2050, the UN
estimates the population will double to 2.4 billion.
“There’s a clear opportunity for companies like Facebook and Google to
really go in and put a pole in the sand,” said Daniel Ives, a technology
researcher at GBH Insights in New York.
“If you look at Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, where is a lot of that
growth coming from? It’s international,” he told AFP.
Facebook is operating from the NG_Hub as it doesn’t yet have a permanent
office in Nigeria.
The company’s Africa head of public policy, Ebele Okobi, said at the
opening of the premises that the goal was to cultivate the nascent technology
community.
The social network has pledged to train 50,000 people across the country to
“give them the digital skills they need to succeed”, she added.
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In exchange, Facebook, which currently has some 26 million users in
Nigeria, gets more users and access to a massive market to test new products
and strategies.
“We are invested in the ecosystem. Just the fact that they are engaging…
that in of itself is a goal,” she added.
– Cyber colonialism? –
Many African governments have given the tech titans an enthusiastic
welcome.
In California, Osinbajo said the Nigerian government will “actively
support” Google’s “Next Billion Users” plan to “ensure greater digital access
in Nigeria and around the world”.
Few sectors in Africa inspire as much hope as technology, which has the
potential to revolutionise everything from healthcare to farming.
Examples include Ubenwa, a Nigerian start-up that has been described as
“Shazam for babies”, after the application that identifies music and films
from snippets.
Ubenwa analyses a baby’s cry using AI to diagnose birth asphyxia, a major
cause of death in Africa when babies don’t get enough oxygen and nutrients
before, during or immediately after birth.
Detecting the problem early could save thousands of lives.
“Africans should be responsible to come up with the solutions,” said
Tewodros Abebe, a doctoral student studying language technology at Addis
Ababa University in Ethiopia.
“Unless we are involved, no one can understand the existing problems in our
continent.”
Abebe dismissed fears that what Facebook and Google are doing represents a
form of so-called cyber colonialism.
“Working collaboratively I think is a good way of technology transfer for
Africa,” he said. “If they are only looking for business, that’s
colonisation.”
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– ‘Epocalypse Now’ –
As Africa’s technology sector grows, fuelled by growth in mobile phone use,
so too does pressure on governments to protect its citizens’ personal data.
Osinbajo told tech leaders Nigeria was keen to create the right environment
for development, including for regulation.
But the debate over privacy is muted in many African countries, unlike in
Europe, which recently passed tougher new data protection laws.
Facebook has also been at the centre of a storm for failing to protect user
data in connection with claims of manipulation in the 2016 US presidential
election and the Brexit referendum.
Global Justice Now, an anti-poverty group, fears tech companies are being
given free rein to create a global surveillance state.
“We could find ourselves sleepwalking towards a world in which a handful of
tech companies exercise monopoly control over whole swathes of the world
economy, further exacerbating inequality between the global north and the
global south,” said the activist group in a May 2018 report titled
“Epocalypse Now”.
Renata Avila, from the World Wide Web Foundation in Geneva that campaigns
for digital equality, said that has not come to fruition but there were
pressing concerns.
“The message is that Africa needs investment and it needs to develop these
industries, so usually it’s a pro-business narrative,” said Avila, a digital
rights researcher.
“But there is little oversight,” she added, warning that without
regulation, people were vulnerable to exploitation.
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