Andrew Mack is a former World Bank official and Principal of AMGlobal Consulting. He previously blogged for NextBillion .net about Rwanda's IT development and leapfrog technologies, in January 2007.

By Andrew Mack

About three weeks ago, I sat in a conference hall in San Francisco and listened as President Paul Kagame of Rwanda addressed a group of African and US Government officials. Nothing particularly remarkable in that. It's part of the role of head of state, after all.

However, the location was more than symbolic. The event was at the Hilton, in the Financial District, in tech-rich northern California. And the audience was chock full of luminaries of the IT world, from Cisco, Oracle, Motorola, Microsoft and others. What is even more remarkable is that nearly everyone in the audience agreed.

They agreed on the power of IT to transform the continent, and on its ability to help countries "skip steps in development" by adding more dynamism to local business. Kagame himself referred cell phones as the "lifeline of microentrepreneurs".

They agreed on the importance of increased investment in IT as a way of improving government. New technology, said Kagame, was no luxury, but a central focus of the country's programs in delivering remote education, providing disease surveillance and avoiding drug shortages.

They agreed on the incredible demand for IT on the continent. An expert from Uganda's Makerere University described how Uganda's cell phone penetration had gone from 5,000 units 9 years ago to more than 2.6 million today. In fact, a cell provider that didn't exist in Uganda a decade ago was the nation's #1 taxpayer in 2006.

But unlike so many meetings, this private sector-government pow-wow went much further, and the implications are important for companies that want to do business on the continent and for Governments that wish to attract them.

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