Andrew Mack is a former World Bank official and Principal of AMGlobal Consulting; Jeremy M. Goldberg is the Director of Communications for AMGlobal. They blog at Andy's Global View.

By Andrew Mack with Jeremy M. Goldberg

All over Africa, there is a significant realization that tech is the wave of the future.  African government ministers are traveling around the world – from San Francisco to the UAE to Bangladesh – pitching opportunities for new investors and building deals.  Technology has also quickly become a major item on the development agenda, thanks in large part to Africa's new tech champions and a blooming tech sector.  

This, of course, is not completely new news.  Initiatives to get urban and rural African cities on the grid have been going for over a decade – things like USAID’s Leland Program spring to mind, but there are many others.  However, in today’s emerging markets ICT world, especially in Africa, two things are different:

The first difference is leadership.  African leaders, including presidents like Kagame, Kufuor and Johnson-Sirleaf, are more ICT-focused than their predecessors, offering high-level support to projects and policies that will really (not just rhetorically) help the spread of ICT.  Countries from Senegal to South Africa are increasingly getting serious about protecting intellectual property, lowering burdens on ICT businesses and promoting investment – and Africa’s economies are benefiting.

Moreover, Africa’s leaders are investing in their e-futures.  One need only look at the growing number of large World Bank-supported eGovernment projects planned for Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania and other Sub-Saharan countries.  From paying taxes and registering land, to getting passports and driver’s licenses, governments are seeing ICT as crucial to their ability to offer service.

African leaders are even adopting the language of ICT, building Government around the needs of what they hope will become a new class of “eCitizens”.  And to make this a reality, they are implementing institutional reforms.  As just one example, according to Ghana’s Science and Sports Papa Owusu Ankomah, that country will introduce universal ICT education into the basic educational system in September 2007.  And, as we saw at the March Sub-Saharan Africa ICT conference in San Francisco, Ghana is far from alone in its focus on ICT.  Quite a change from even a few years ago.

The second difference is the increasingly active private sector, and its willingness to work with Government and civil society on all manner of partnerships.  Some of these efforts are primarily philanthropic.  A good example is the NEPAD e-Schools Initiative, which works with more than a dozen countries and major tech firms like Intel, Oracle, HP, Cisco, and Microsoft.   The initiative aims to equip African youth with in-classroom technology and ICT skills to participate in today’s information society.  It is an innovative approach innovative in the way that it brings together multiple companies and countries through a long-term commitment.

And there are other examples – risk taking by private sector actors large and small that recognize the opportunity presented by technology in the re-building in places like Liberia or Northern Uganda.  These are tough environments, and you can’t just come with your container of goods and try to sell.  So businesses are working with government, donors, communities and local entrepreneurs like never before.

However, today it’s simply not enough to raise the flag for enlightened governments and innovative companies.  Why?  Because tech today is reaching only a small fraction of the people that it should.  Specifically, tech is reaching only a small fraction of the youth and young adults that need it most, the citizen-consumers that are the heart and soul of tech-centered innovation and commerce in the “more developed world”.  

What will it take for ICT in Africa to REALLY catch on?

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