TMCnet News
CONFERENCE - Africa Innovation Summit, Praia, Cape Verde - Innovation takes centre stage [African Business](African Business Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) I found the combination of a full-scale forum on the status of innovation in Africa and the opportunity to visit the Atlantic Ocean group of islands too tempting to resist. I'm glad I went as it opened my eyes to an exciting new phenomenon sweeping the continent. Conferences on innovation are becoming fairly frequent over the past few years; indeed African Business and IC Events organised what turned out to be brilliant forum on innovation in Kampala a few months ago, but this one in Praia was on a very large scale and involved a bewildering variety of actors ranging from innovators and academics to financiers, investors, manufacturers, Nepad and government. I had never before visited Cape Verde and was curious to see how this Portuguesespeaking group of islands, some 600km off the West African coast, would cope with the formidable challenges of hosting such a highprofile event. It coped wonderfully well and the summit delivered everything it promised. The event was organised by Inhaba, a business development and knowledge-network venture founded by Nigerian Olugbenga Adesida and Cape Verdean José Brito. Brito, with science and engineering degrees, has held ministerial and ambassadorial positions in the Cape Verde government. They told me that the venture had taken them at least two years to get off the ground. Among the challenges they faced were the travel logistics - getting to and from Cape Verde can be a nightmare especially, and ironically, from African countries. Then they had to solve commitments to dates from very busy people and organise accommodation in Praia - which is not on the tourist circuit - for a mass influx, arrange internal logistics, security for heads of state and the smooth running of a fairly complex forum system. There was a lot of support from the African Development Bank, Nepad, and a variety of sponsors, but the state, though its Ministries, played a crucial part in making sure that everything went without a hitch. The summit was an important event for Cape Verde. Contrary to its name, the country is neither a cape nor is it green except for a brief period when it rains. It relies on tourism, a little fishing and, to a great extent, remittances from its large diaspora communities. Nevertheless, the capital, Praia, with its elaborate Mediterranean architecture, is quite splendid - and very clean. It therefore came as a bit of a surprise to learn that Cape Verde has taken electronic government up several notches. We went to visit the House of the People where citizens can come to get all documentation they need, register businesses, property, check wedding, birth and death certificates, apply for government-subsidised housing, obtain mortgages, register as voters and so on seven days a week. One of the journalists with us, a Cape Verdean, registered his company within 15 minutes. The software of the whole e-government system, regarded by the World Bank as number one in West Africa and the envy of many other such systems in Africa, is developed and tested by Cape Verdeans at their headquarters, the Operational Information Society Nucleus or NOSi. NOSi provides integrated platforms which manage data from a variety of sources and get the systems to talk to each other and make sense. The gains in efficiency are astounding. Its services are in heavy demand outside the country as well - in Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Mozambique and Angola. We were given a tour of their new data centre about a month before its official opening. The centre, designed to resemble a geometric rock rising from the sea, is strong enough to withstand a tsunami. It can safely store trillions of bits of data and make backups for disaster recovery. A substantial number of clients have already signed up for its services. Clearly, and this was confirmed during the conference by the Prime Minister, José Maria Neves, Cape Verde is positioning itself as an IT innovator in the West African region and as one of the very few Portuguese-speaking African countries, will expect to provide IT solutions to Mozambique and Angola - both on the cusp of accelerated economic growth. If it can smooth out a few rough corners in terms of the quality of hotel accommodation, it could well become an important conference venue as well. With this in mind, the innovation conference, as a showcase, was logical and it was also important to differentiate this conference from run-of-the-mill ones if its credentials as a host are to be taken seriously. Another plus point was that the organisers had taken pains to invite a cross section of the African and international media and had made provisions for the journalists to visit places of interest around the island rather than confining them to the conference halls. This ensured that the event was well covered and journalists were able to get a feel of the bigger picture and place events in context. reduction and no region overcame the challenge of development without having to prove its ability to create and innovate." He said that Africa needed a transformation of vision alongside physical transformation. "Innovation is not necessarily technological - workplace innovation is crucial," he went on. He said that innovation was not a specialised course but a process of evolution. "Much of innovation is based on the store of knowledge and social interaction. It consists of trial and error and learning from mistakes." PM Neves, who studied the theory of organisations, said that transformation did not arrive as one big bang but consisted of making small changes that cumulatively lead to bigger, more radical changes. He reminded the audience that the country's great political writer and thinker, Amilcar Cabral, had said that simply adding water and salt will not cook your rice - you need fire, which is the creative genius. Bright Simons, president of the mPedigree Network, which works to identify counterfeit medicine, introduced a philosophical dimension when he said that while invention was a solitary activity, innovation cannot be done in isolation. "It is profoundly social in character and while it can be a leveller, it can also be disruptive." He explained that innovation is primarily a youthful expression as it seeks to overturn traditional ways of doing things with newer ones. "Who is threatened by innovation? Who has something to lose?" he asked. "To what extent will youth be allowed to up-end systems established by the political and economic elite? Innovation is revolutionary in essence." Algerian Djeflat Abdelkader, who teaches industrial and development economics at the University of Lille in France and who is chairman of the Maghreb Technology Network, said that the push towards industrialisation was not new in Africa. "In the 1960s and '70s, many countries adopted import substitution policies" but liberalisation had repressed industrialisation and now industrialisation's share of value added was less than 3.5%, the lowest in the world. "Is it possible to have industrialisation without innovation?" he asked. The world had moved its economies from resource-based to investment-driven to knowledge-based but most of Africa was still stuck in the resourcebased trench. It was important to learn from abroad and the BRICS offer the sort of technical know-how that fit Africa's needs. Francis Gurry, the director-general of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), speaking via video link, said that innovation was a major contributor to growth, jobs and improved standards of living and that innovators were taking on the challenge of climate change and other natural disasters. He pointed out that intellectual property was a vital component of the complex economic value of innovation and invention. "It provides protection for the long and often hazardous journey from ideas to market". This security, he added, encouraged innovation and ensured that those who had come up with new ideas were not left out in the cold when those ideas were commercialised. The first plenary session had set the tone and the general scope of the summit. Given the size of the agenda, the rest of the forum was arranged along breakout sessions dealing with, among other subjects: the ecosystem of Africa's emerging innovation hubs, building the innovation ecosystem, entrepreneurs and innovation, financing innovation and venture investors and educational systems and innovation. Since the sessions ran in parallel, it was physically impossible to attend all of them and, in my case, it was a matter of tossing a coin to decide which session I would attend or miss out. All the sessions I attended were intense and provided plenty of food for thought. For example, Julius Gatuno, a researcher with the African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET) wanted to know why only 25% of African farmers were using high-yield seeds and how the humble cassava, which is drought resistant and is the cheapest source of carbohydrates, is far less popular than the more expensive rice and wheat. He said that high-yield varieties had been introduced and that Nigerian inventors had made machines that made harvesting and pounding of cassava far easier. The addition of soya made the mixture healthy and a form of gari, popular in most West African states, was now being packaged and exported around the world. Ghana's Herman Chinery-Hesse, who has won a clutch of awards for his innovative ideas, as usual pulled no punches as he laid into the stultifying effect of government bureaucracy getting in the way of progress. Cameroonian Paul Fokam, whose Afriland First Bank has expanded to 10 countries including China and who has waged a relentless campaign to alleviate poverty and encourage enterprise, told the audience that the essential steps to a successful strategy lay in: "Thinking, action, then thinking again". China's Xiolan Fu, based at Oxford University, said innovation had the magic power to transform societies, for example, steam power had made Britain an industrial giant that ruled the world and the application of electricity had laid the ground for the US attaining super-power status. She said China had embarked on a similar path, "we don't always want to be followers" and was now a major innovator. Between 60-70% of the global output of mobile phones come from China: it has managed to turn out quality products at far cheaper prices because of its innovative production processes. Her session was moderated by Mammo Muchie, research professor of innovation studies at Tshwana Institute of Technology in South Africa, and who is the editor in chief of the African Journal of Science, Technology, Innovation and Development, which is bringing out a special edition based on the summit. I have only skimmed over the surface of this excellent summit but I believe papers will be made available to all those interested. There was also an exhibition attached and what caught most people's attention was a 3D printer made out of electronic waste by a group of young innovators from Togo. Zeino Abdelyamine of Algeria exhibiting his range of natural pesticides, Bit Bait, which use no chemicals or toxic substances and Annie Melnic of the UK-based Homestrings had a stand on crowdsourcing to fund innovative projects in Africa, Latin America and Asia. What characterised the summit was the energy and the drive to change the status quo that most delegates exhibited. Mozambique's Eric Charas was probably an extreme case in point. He has been a highly successful and deliberately unconventional entrepreneur in Mozambique. Among other activities, he publishes the continent's largest free newspaper. He typifies the 'disruptive' gene of the young innovators who cannot wait for a different, more technological, more innovative Africa and who are no longer willing to be stopped by more conservative elders. Rwanda's President Kagame, who attended towards the end of the conference, may not be in the first flush of youth, but his ideas seem to jell perfectly with the new mood sweeping the continent. He has committed Rwanda to a technology-driven future and when he spoke, he cut through the usual platitudes that so many politicians excel in. He wants solutions and he wants them now. Is he the model for a new breed of politicians who will embrace rather than fear innovation? Cape Verde is positioning itself as an IT innovator in the West African region and as one of the very few Portuguese-speaking African countries, will expect to provide IT solutions to Mozambique and Angola What characterised the summit was the energy and the drive to change the status quo that most delegates exhibited. Young innovators cannot wait for a different, more technological, more innovative Africa (c) 2014 IC Publications Provided by Syndigate.info, an Albawaba.com company |