Software development and its outsourcing has been a revenue generator to various developing countries in the world. Africa is now emerging in this race and the world economies are looking at Africa as their next destination for software talent. So far Africa’s revenue depended on exports such as gemstones, minerals, cocoa etc. Africa’s global market share in software production has been sleek but this trend is now changing quickly. Countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, South Africa have been the fastest growing developer communities in the world. Tech giants like Microsoft, Google are heavily investing in Africa in areas of data science and AI. There are many challenges that Africa has to face and surpass to gain global market share in software development.
STEM education is a key to Africa development
With growth comes huge demand for software talent, and the education systems must quickly adapt to meet the demand for evolving technologies. To compete in global markets and make an impact, STEM education plays a crucial role. Today Africa has world’s largest youth population with 60% under 25, which can be transformed into global workforce through education. Estimates show that countries that have a strong emphasis on STEM had a great growth and economic expansion. 50% of US GDP growth is being attributed to emphasis on STEM education in the last 50 years. Africa has fallen short compared to the rest of the world in STEM education and there are various factors to it such as shortage of infrastructure like staff, electricity and water supply. Many regions lack the facility of Internet. One research shows less than 25% of African high school level kids are receiving STEM education. Due to this, many African projects that can be done in house are being sourced to China, US and India. Along with current initiatives, the governments must be aggressive in taking steps to educate African youth in STEM.
Africa’s Tech scenario across its regions
Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, is termed as Silicon Savannah due to its high concentration of programmers and has a huge business base with well met infrastructure needs. Kenya has established one of the top destinations for software firms in East Africa. People here are skilled in programming, databases and mobile development. North Africa has also been a good destination with countries like Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia giving a great edge in terms of talent, low costs, and ease of business for companies to invest. South Africa has been a top player in software technology across Africa. This location has a good cultural fit for foreign countries and great talent. West Africa has been catching to be a player in the race with Nigeria being one of the top developing countries in West Africa.
Evolving Technologies to Focus
Technology is always evolving, and Africa can start focusing on evolving technologies to capture a share in the world’s technology markets. Artificial Intelligence is the top evolving technology in the world and the top tech giants are looking towards Africa for AI advancements. AI areas such as autonomous driving, speech recognition, image recognition, deep learning, and pattern recognition, machine learning are some of the key areas of AI growth. Many of the online education platforms offer courses in these topics and the African governments can take up initiatives to offer these for free to the youth. Blockchain is one of the key technologies that is currently catching up with vast use cases to solve complex problems in governance, healthcare, finance and education. Amazon offers infrastructure to learn these at a very low cost. Internet-of-Things is one of the key technology transformations that is happening in the world. This will make houses, cars and utilities smarter. Smart house industry is vastly expanding in the world and developing countries are currently catching up. Followed by smart cars where the car manufacturers are eager to launch fully electric smart cars.
African youth can also focus on high demand technologies such as the cloud, big-data, programming, testing, web and mobile development. These areas have the most jobs in technology, easy to learn and high paying due to their demand. With so many areas in technology and Africa having amazing young talent, a great potential can be realized in the African continent.
By Venkata Harish Gollavilli
