African countries are taking measures to avoid being left out in the current wave of digital transformation. Apart from internet connectivity, they are also addressing employability for socioeconomic growth.
To attract more investors, Mauritius intends to improve employability in its IT sector. In doing so, the country aims to have 2,000 additional jobs created in its IT sector in the next two years. The figure was presented by its Prime Minister, Pravind Jugnauth (photo), last Thursday (July 7), during the official ceremony organized by Accenture Mauritius to celebrate its 20-year presence in the country.
“We are currently working to attract other tech giants to Mauritius. Based on the pipeline of projects facilitated by the Economic Development Board, in the next two years, 2,000 new jobs will hopefully be created in the IT sector. They include notably programming, claims processing, customer support, cybersecurity, and data analysis,” the government official said.
To improve employability in the IT sector, Mauritius plans to accelerate skills development by creating a Digital Industry Academy supported by Landscope Mauritius. A cohort of 1,000 people is scheduled to start artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and cloud computing training this month.
According to Pravind Jugnauth, with a 6.5% growth, the country’s IT sector is the only one that has not been affected by the global health crisis. In the sector, 30,000 people are already working for 900 firms, while 3,000 new jobs were created between 2020 and 2021, he added.
Samira Njoya
Thanks to information and communication technologies, African countries can efficiently manage their civil registration system, therefore improving population data and statistics.
The Nigeria Digital Identification for Development Project (ID4D) will cooperate with the National Population Commission (NPC) to digitize the civil registration system. The information was disclosed by ID4D coordinator Musa Odole Solomon, during a friendly visit to NPCs executive chairman, Alhaji Isa Kwarra, last Thursday (July 7).
At the end of the visit, Musa Odole Solomon expressed the ID4D project’s determination “to invest in the Civil Registry system to reinforce the foundational ID ecosystem by delivering National Identity Numbers at birth, as part of the birth registration process through links with the digitized Civil Register.”
According to the coordinator, “the project is designed, following an Ecosystem model and not limited to any single organization. It, therefore, involves different agencies of government, the private sector, and civil society. The project had since identified the National Population Commission as an important ecosystem partner.”
In 2020, the ID4D project secured US$430 million from the World Bank, the European Investment Bank, and the French Development Agency. It aims to develop an efficient identification system that will enable access to essential services. Its ambition is to increase the number of biometric ID cards issued from 40 million to 148 million by 2024.
According to Alhaji Isa Kwarra, the cooperation between ID4D and NPC will be useful in several areas. “We are trying to modernize our civil registration systems. We register births and deaths. We are supposed to be registering marriages and divorces, etc. Modernizing and digitizing our processes is very important and that is where you come in. We are willing to partner with you 100 percent. We are also involved in national identity coverage. I assure you of our total support and collaboration,” he said.
Samira Njoya
Mobile money and digital payment solutions are gradually taking over the business world. To facilitate payment processing, entrepreneurs are developing efficient solutions.
Paymee is a fintech solution developed by a Tunisian eponymous startup. It is a gateway allowing firms to collect card payments.
According to Paymee founder Mawen Amamou (photo), the startup is already known for the simplicity and efficiency of its payment solutions. It now wants “to become the market reference in Tunisia … addressing [..] client needs and simplifying their operations …,” he said in a recent release announcing the completion of a “six-figure round.”
To integrate Paymee’s solution on their websites, firms just have to create a business account with the fintech startup and validate that account by submitting required documents. They can also use the startup’s application programming interface or plugins. No matter the integration method chosen, they can process their transactions in real-time.
In May 2019, the Tunisian Ministry of the digital economy labeled Paymee, which was founded in 2017, as a “startup”. Currently, it claims over 15,000 agent accounts and more than 250 business accounts with some 100,000 transactions processed.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Over the past nine years, she has been a tireless advocate for gender equality in technology and the digital world. Her leadership position in the Senegalese public sector is also helping her reach her goals.
Bitilokho Ndiaye (photo) is a Senegalese sociologist. She is, since 2020, the Director of Promotion of the Digital Economy and Partnership at the Senegalese Ministry of Digital Economy. Before her appointment to that post, she already had years of experience in the local IT ecosystem, in the gender dimension notably.
Between 2009 and 2020, she was the gender technical advisor for the Ministry of Communication. For the sociologist, women should have a strong presence in the local digital sector for enhanced economic growth in Senegal.
"Women represent 51% of the population in Senegal. They will have a positive economic impact if they are taught how to use the internet as a tool. [...] Particularly, for the large majority of craftswomen and those who create value in remote areas, digital technology would be an effective way to reach more buyers and increase sales, therefore impacting the national economy,” she told Inspire Afrika.
Between 2007 and 2009, she was the communication manager of the Ministry of Information and Institutional Relations. She is also overseeing, since 2013, a project (“Gender and Technology”) that aims to “integrate the gender dimension into IT programs and boost women’s presence in leadership positions.”
In 2016, she founded the Association of Senegalese Women in the ICT/Digital Sector (FESTIC), which aims to accelerate digital transformation in Senegal by capitalizing on the female population. In 2018, as the president of FESTIC, she launched “maison des femmes entrepreneures,” a training center equipping women entrepreneurs with digital skills.
Melchior Koba
The e-visa platform aims to facilitate visa application processes, rendering the country attractive.
Togo announced, Monday (July 11), that it has updated and re-launched “Togo Voyage,” its digital visa issuance platform. Unlike its previous version launched in August 2020, the new platform now integrates an online visa application and Covid-19 processes, greatly facilitating the application process.
“I am pleased with the Voyage Togo platform because it is revolutionizing our work methods. We now have access to a unique and virtual database of travelers coming in and moving out of the country, making it a hundred times faster to process and allowing our national security services to deliver more efficiently,” commented Minister of Security and Civil Protection Yark Damehame.
The platform, available in French and English, also offers travelers the possibility to store their data in user accounts to avoid entering them again for every application.
Payments have also been fully digitized (either via bank cards or mobile money) while cash payment is simply prohibited.
The e-visa project is one of the many reforms on the Togolese government’s 2025 agenda. A few months ago, the government announced the digitization of every public service to become more conducive to business operations and provide efficient public services to the population.
The new version of Togo Voyage was developed by Togo Digital Agency (ATD), and created by the government to steer the country’s digital transformation process. By the end of this year, the platform will be extended to include land and sea borders.
Samira Njoya
In Africa, citizen identification is a real challenge. According to estimates presented by the World Bank in 2018, 45% (about 500 million people) of Sub-Saharan African residents were unable to prove their identity in 2018.
State IT agency Sénégal Numérique SA signed, Thursday, July 7, a partnership agreement with the mayors of 19 of Dakar’s municipalities. Thanks to that agreement, the municipalities will be connected to the IT agency’s digital platform Senegal Services, facilitating citizens’ access to administrative documents.
“Thanks to the partnership, the civil status records issued by municipalities in Dakar will be accessible through the Sénégal Services platform and the state’s one-stop-shop portal. It will allow all those residing in the country to easily access those records,” explains Cheikh Bakhoum (photo, left), director-general of Sénégal Numérique.
Senegal and the European Union recently launched Nekkal, a program aimed at interconnecting civil registration centers and digitalizing civil status records. “We have already launched the digitization process. We will digitize 15 million civil status records, create an index of 30 million records and build 34 centers in the 14 regions. We will also train 3,000 civil registration officers and managers. Above all, we will train 600 archivists since we noticed that archiving is not factored in the management of civil registration,” indicated registrar general Aliou Ousmane Sall at the time.
The digitization of civil registration services will improve the traceability and reliability of birth data. So far, only 62% of children aged 0 to 5 years are registered at birth in Senegal. Those who are registered usually face several challenges including double matriculation and file destruction.
Samira Njoya
Farmcrowdy Foods Limited launched the digital platform amid the coronavirus pandemic as a way to curb a potential food shortage.
Farmcrowdy Foods is a digital platform launched in April 2020 by Nigerian startup Farmcrowdy Limited. It helps users easily purchase fresh farm products and groceries.
According to Farmcrowdy Foods’ business lead, the digital platform completes the local production’s value chain. “What we sell is what we get from the aggregation centers. On Farmcrowdy Foods, our products are classified into grains, tubers, seafood, wheat, and fruits and veggies. Save for our seafood where we’ve partnered with credible importers and farmers who produce things like snails and prawns locally, every other thing we have on our platform is gotten from our aggregation centers,” she added during an interview with Techpoint Africa.
Right from its launch, the solution became popular and, in its first 90 days, it recorded 3,000 orders just through its Android app. The only challenge it faced was logistics since there were Lagos areas “where cars and bikes cannot ply without suffering some kind of damage,” Linda says.
To access the platform’s contents and information, users must have an account or create one. To support its growth, the startup -founded in 2016 by Onyeka Akumah, Akindele Phillips, Temitope Omotolani, Christopher Abiodun, and Ifeanyi Anazodo - completed several funding rounds totaling US$3.4 million. In late 2020, it revealed that it had already raised US$15 million to finance 25,000 farmers.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
The young woman is convinced that digital innovation will create wealth, promote human dignity and promote prosperity in Africa. As a member of several networking organizations, she is hard at work promoting the continent’s innovation ecosystem.
Anna Ekeledo (photo) is a Nigerian senior marketing executive and executive director of AfriLabs Foundation (since 2016), an organization that federates 347 innovation centers across Africa. AfriLabs networks entrepreneurs, investors, tech entrepreneurs, and web/mobile engineers. In line with its mission to support African tech hubs, it provides financing, mentorship, networking opportunities, and tools to build the capacities of high-potential entrepreneurs.
In an interview with The Guardian, in 2021, Anna explained that as AfriLabs Foundation’s executive director, her work “entails overseeing the running of the organization effectively to ensure we achieve our mandate to our community and the African innovation ecosystem.”
“Externally, I engage multiple stakeholders to foster collaboration, raise awareness and funding for our work and our community of hubs, entrepreneurs, and innovators. I also work closely with the AfriLabs Board to ensure that we stay true to our vision, mission, and our strategies are aligned with them,” she added.
The young executive director is a marketing management graduate from the Leeds University Business School (2012). Since 2020, she is a member of the Europe Foundation’s strategic force group. She also chairs a working party on AfCFTA negotiations at Ecommerce Forum Africa, an organization that promotes e-commerce on the continent.
Since 2019, Anna is the African regional innovation lead for academic research institution Edtech Hub. About one year earlier, she was appointed a member of the Nigerian Industrial Policy and Competitiveness Advisory Council.
Before her immersion into the networking sphere, the marketing executive held various marketing and consultancy positions at home and abroad. From November 2010 to September 2011, she was an assistant investment officer for the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission. The following year, she became a brand ambassador for the marketing agency iD Experiential. Then, in 2013, she was the marketing manager of real estate marketing consultant Value Chain Project Consultants.
She further enhanced her marketing expertise as a business developer for Nigerian POS manufacturer Ingenico SA and senior marketing executive for digital marketing training institute Wild Fusion Digital Center. In 2015, she was appointed consultant for World Bank’s project GEMS in Nigeria before taking the helm of AfriLabs Foundation. From 2019 to 2022, Anna was on the advisory board of Technopolis Group, a science, innovation, and technology consultant. In 2021, she made it to the Agile 50 list celebrating the “world’s 50 most influential navigating disruption.”
Melchior Koba
One of the important reforms implemented by African countries in recent years is the introduction of biometric ID documents. The new system can help authenticate holders based on a set of biometric information.
Benin will officially stop the issuance of non-biometric ID cards. The decision was decreed during the ministerial council held in Cotonou, last July 6. The country, through the National Agency for the Identification of Persons (ANIP), will replace them with biometric cards per the decree n° 2020-396 of July 29, 2020.
According to a release issued after the ministerial council, the ANIP has taken, since 2020, appropriate measures to efficiently assume its tasks. Thanks to those measures, national ID cards’ processing time is reduced to one week, we learn.
The satisfying results achieved by the agency prompted the government to “stop the issuance of non-biometric cards, which are no longer compliant with international standards,” the release reads.
The new identity card is a visa-card-like document with an integrated microchip that stores biometric data like fingerprints, names, surnames, etc. Presented as a tamperproof document, it includes a QR Code (containing an electronic signature) and a holographic code making it hard to falsify the identification information.
Samira Njoya
The coronavirus pandemic turned lives upside down everywhere, forcing habit change in almost every sector. It also accelerated digitalization and innovation, with local entrepreneurs developing solutions to address their compatriots’ pain points.
OnilBox is a Tanzanian startup that helps users find nearby training studios, gyms, etc, and book fitness activities and events. It was launched by Natalino Mwenda, in 2021, during the coronavirus pandemic to help fitness enthusiasts find gyms and similar facilities to work out in uncrowded locations.
“The concept originated amid COVID-19 from a garage CrossFit gym that users wanted to access to escape crowds. Users called to make bookings and as the calls continued to increase, OnilBox built an app that allowed users to book a room instead of calling. One room expanded to four, gyms joined the network, and activities also joined the network, allowing OnilBox to offer the largest fitness experience in Tanzania and Zanzibar,” Natalino told Disrupt Africa.
Through its Android and iOS apps, users can search available locations and activities to book their sessions. They can filter the desired results by the number of people and desired session duration. To diversify its offer, the startup introduced smart gyms powered by IoT.
Unlike traditional gyms that require monthly subscriptions, OnilBox operates a Pay-as-You-Go model. Its timer counts down the session duration and even unregistered users can use its services. Currently, the startup claims over 100 users and 2,000 workout sessions and locations booked. It plans to expand to other countries including Kenya, Mauritius, South Africa, and Rwanda.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
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He founded the first artificial intelligence research and development company in Ethiopia, igniting the passion of many young people. Over the years, his company has gained international recognition.
Getnet Aseffa is an Ethiopian computer scientist and founder of iCog Labs, an AI and Robotics Research and Development Company based in Addis-Ababa.
On his Linkedin profile page, he defines himself as “a futurist, and a rational progressive who is enthusiastic about making a breakthrough in the capability of AI systems to think, learn and create and use cutting-edge technology to help leapfrog Africa into the future.”
He supports public and private firms and institutions in their development by leveraging data analysis, machine learning, computational linguistics, machine vision, cognitive technology, etc. He also trains young people in digital and tech skills. Through iCog Labs, the tech entrepreneur inked agreements with 36 universities to share his knowledge and federate artificial intelligence research and development. He is also discussing agreements with 21 higher education institutions worldwide.
Aseffa discovered his passion for technologies very early. To polish his talent in the field, he took Youtube courses and followed DIY websites. Later on, when he was schooling at the Defense Engineering College, one of his friends made him discover Artificial intelligence by suggesting an American futurist Ray Kurzweil’s article published in Time magazine in February 2011 titled “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal.”
“I was so excited about this guy [Note: Ray Kurzweil]... “I got his book The Singularity is Near and I just kept reading it again and again— I read it three times in one week. This book created a roadmap from the past to the future. [...] In his writings, Kurzweil describes the exponential growth of technology and predicts that we will reach the “Singularity” by 2045— the point at which humans merge with artificial intelligence, transcending our biological bodies and brains,” he told media platform Emerge.
Two years later, Aseffa founded iCog Labs, which developed the cognitive engine and emotional capabilities of the humanoid robot Sophia. The latter, designed by Hong-Kong-based Hanson Robotics, is the first non-human to receive a United Nations title. In 2018, shortly after the inauguration of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, it met the latter in Addis Ababa.
Melchior Koba
In the music business, streaming has gradually taken precedence over music downloading. In Benin, a local startup wants to promote local audio content producers via that method.
DingaStream is a digital streaming platform developed by a Beninese eponymous platform. The platform, unveiled to the public in August 2021, allows users to listen to pan-African music. Its stated ambition is to showcase local audio content creators and let them monetize their productions.
“I made an ideological choice to create a product meeting the For Us by Us principle. For that purpose, I decided to recruit an African workforce, work in Africa, and produce for the African public with a focus on the Beninese audience because I have my roots and my activities there. Nevertheless, we are focused on Africa,” explains DingaStream founder Miguel Kpakpo.
For the time being, DingaStream is accessible through its web platform and Android app. To access its streaming services, users must first register and buy a monthly or quarterly subscription. A monthly subscription costs XOF2,000 (about US$3.11) against XOF5,000 for a quarterly subscription, payable via bank cards or mobile money. Artists are paid XOF3 per play.
Besides music streaming, DingaStream allows exclusive previews, podcast streaming, and offline listening.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Despite being a trained sociologist, a field that is far from being related to technologies, he is currently a tech entrepreneur and a prominent figure in the national digital innovation ecosystem.
Mahamadi Rouamba (photo) is a Burkinabe entrepreneur and founder of startup studio BeoogoLab. The studio founded in 2015 provides support, coaching, and funding to innovative tech projects. The aim is to create at least one innovative tech firm in every key sector in Burkina Faso by 2025.
According to Rouamba, the startup studio also plans to set up a business development fund with the profits generated from the funds already invested. “We are working to consolidate our position as an innovative entrepreneurship support institution at the national and regional level,” he told Afric’Innov.
With three master’s in sociology, project management, and management sciences, Rouamba is a prominent figure in the Burkinabe digital innovation ecosystem. As a digital transformation consultant, he is (for about a decade now) the CEO of Ticanalyse, an IT engineering firm that develops and deploys IT solutions. In 2019, he founded the fintech startup Lagfo Super App. The following year, he became the chairman of the national network of business intelligence professionals, the national federation of innovative entrepreneurship support institutions, and the federation of Burkinabe fintech startups.
He also received several awards and recognitions. In 2017, he was made Knight of the Burkina Faso’s Order of Merit. The following year, he was crowned entrepreneur of the year by a network of the African diaspora in Europe (ADNE) and civic entrepreneur by the Ouagadougou municipality for his contribution to the development of the city.
Melchior Koba
Fully aware of the importance of the digital industry, he helps young people acquire professional skills in the sector and prepare them for future changes in the job market.
Samy Mwamba (photo) is a Congolese entrepreneur and founder of Itot Africa, an edtech startup. Through its online academy Okademy, the startup founded in 2016 offers various digital courses including graphic design, software development, and automation.
Samy initially launched Itot Africa as a forum for discussions on new technologies and employment. He later shifted to software development, digital marketing, and tech talent recruitment consulting. To date, Itot Africa has trained some 400 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and created over 60 jobs.
“I launched Itot Africa in 2016 when I was still a university student. At the time, I used to see several of my seniors graduate from university and still be unable to find jobs despite being brilliant students. This led me to reflect on employment in DRC. [...] When I realized that there were no real employment prospects in DRC, I employed myself by first creating a business, which offers various solutions to the population, and then training people in digital skills,” he said in an interview with Deutsche Welle.
Samy Mwamba is, since 2020, an e-commerce and e-business teacher at the Higher School of Economic and Political Governance of Lubumbashi (EcoPo – Lubumbashi). In December 2021, he was a TED speaker for TEDxBoulevardMsiri. From May to June 2021, he was a training consultant for the Belgian development Agency ENABEL. From September to November 2021, he was also a digital platform consultant for Oxford Policy Management. Besides Itot Africa, Samy has co-founded JENX, a clothing brand, and Dark Valley (DAVA), a dog breeding center.
Melchior Koba