Only 16 percent of Africa’s population of over a billion is online. But as Internet and mobile phone connectivity grows rapidly, the continent wants to join forces with Asian powerhouses to change its digital landscape.
While offering its vast market, Africa hopes to leverage Asia’s information and communication technology (ICT) prowess to develop sectors as diverse as banking, telemedicine, education and cyber security.
“There is a lot of opportunity for collaboration,” says Safroadu Yeboah-Amankwah, director and leader, McKinsey’s Business Technology Practice, South Africa.
lot of the talent, skill and technology available (in Asia) may be of great use,” the Ghanaian engineer-turned-telecom strategist told IPS.
He was here to attend Telecom World 2013 organised by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) last month.
A large contingent of African countries led by Nigeria mounted a big roadshow at the event, both to display their growing mobile and broadband communication-oriented economies and to attract Asian investment.
“North America, to be honest, is not relevant to our markets. There are very interesting opportunities in terms of South-South collaboration, especially around banking, education and so forth, where collaborations will allow for bigger markets and therefore more innovation availability,” Yeboah-Amankwah said.
“Larger Asian and African e-commerce players could collaborate to make the opportunities even bigger. For us, integration between large African and Asian players is an exciting idea,” he added.
According to ITU statistics, more than 720 million Africans have mobile phones and some 167 million already use the Internet. And the figures are rising fast as mobile networks are built up and the cost of Internet-enabled devices falls.
soure:ipsnews.com
