In the 200 years of transformative moments compiled at citi.com/200, few of those moments transformed Africa. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1834, work began on the Suez Canal in 1880, the Berlin Conference partitioned Africa in 1884, the first cases of AIDS were reported in 1981, Nelson Mandela was freed in 1990, and the Arab Spring occurred in 2011. What were missing were advances in manufacturing, transportation, communications and information technology, science, and medicine.
Nowadays efforts to conquer disease in Africa have been effective. The world rallied to stamp out eBola in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. People like President Carter have worked tirelessly to eradicate Guinea worm disease, river blindness, polio and other diseases. President Bush has made sure treatment for AIDS has been funded. And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has focused on stopping the scourges of malaria and dengue fever with mosquito nets and more.
It is easy to trace the lack of security in Africa from the bands of boy soldiers, terrorists, and robbers that pose a threat from Libya to Nigeria to Rwanda to South Africa to the lack of education and job opportunity on the continent. I remember learning that when Belgium granted independence to the Congo, the new state had only one college graduate. Unlike Mansa Musa, who crossed Africa from Mali to Mecca to find the Arab scholars he brought back to a university and library at Timbuktu in the 14th century, the countries that plundered Africa for slaves and raw materials and claimed territory at the Berlin Conference had no interest in identifying genius and educating the population.
Just as disease now has less impact on Africa's poverty, training and education have the power to overcome a lack of development. In a speech at the University of Pretoria on July 18, 2016, Bill Gates suggested teachers may be able to use mobile phones both to teach students basic skills and to receive instant feedback that enables them to catch problems and tailor the pace of instruction. Samaschool, a non-profit founded by Leila Janah, already provides digital training online and in Kenya. When Gates noted Africa's need to invest in high-quality public universities essential for the education of scientists, entrepreneurs, educators, and government leaders, I was reminded of John Zogby's idea of forming a Technology Corps. The tech-savvy educators in this corps would be ideal professors at such universities (See the earlier post, "Work Around the World.").
Africans now work in computer fields. According to an item on trendwatching.com, a Dutch organization, Butterfly Works Foundation, has launched Tunga, a platform in Kenya that brings African programmers together with tech companies looking for coders. Leila Janah's Samasource employs marginalized women and youth in Uganda, Kenya, India, and Haiti to turn data, images, content, and voice surveys into algorithm-ready, clean, searchable data for projects at Google, eBay, and Walmart. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg discovered Angela, campuses in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya, that provide six months of intensive training for male and female engineering programmers who go on to work as software developers with technology firms, such as Google, Microsoft, and startups like 6Sense and the Muse. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, founded by Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Dr. Priscilla Chan, has given Angela $24 million. Other investors in Angela include 2U, Spark Capital, Omidyar Network, Learn Capital, GV, and CRE Ventures.
Zuckerberg observed, "We live in a world where talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not....Priscilla and I believe in supporting innovative models of learning wherever they are around the world--and what Angela is doing is pretty amazing." Jeremy Johnson, head of the 2U startup and co-founder of Angela, said the goal was "to cultivate a next generation of founders and executives of great companies across Africa." Two African entrepreneurs have tourism startups. David Ssemambo in Uganda, provides transportation, hotel bookings, and tours for visiting foreign dignitaries, investors and tourists. (See his website at sendeetravels.com.) Ssemambo is even studying how to use China's social media to attract Chinese tourists to Africa. If you wish to climb Mount Kilimanjaro or bask on a beach in Zanzibar, you can contact Licious Adventure (liciousadventure,com), which is run by another local entrepreneur in Tanzania.
(Also see the later post, "Africans Learn to Play the Game," and, for additional information about business opportunities in Africa, see the earlier posts, "Invest in Africa's Agricultural Future" and "Want An Exciting Career?")
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