I've been taking a deliberate look at 4 companies (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) lately. These are 4 brilliant companies that have produced amazing technologies that have gone on to solve many of the problems the world faces. But I'd want to make the argument that these companies and their technologies have not helped Africans solve the problems we uniquely face. Yes, they have been beneficial, but they haven't solved OUR problems.
Hear me out.
Ghanaians and Africans don't need better chat apps. If I'm not wrong, communication has not been an issue we've traditionally faced. The white man sought to create better communication tools because the fact that he mostly lived very far away from his external families. In our case, we lived with our external families on the same compound. A Facebook in Africa wouldn't have made sense.
We also didn't need search engines. We didn't even have our information properly documented to even search for it. Creating an African Google made little to no sense! Computers? We weren't making huge computations or research that needed the capabilities humans could not provide. Apple wouldn't have been possible.
These technologies have not solved any of the peculiar problems we face in Africa. They've made our lives easier, but they have not solved any of our problems. Try to take a critical look at Ghana and Africa today, and you'd realise that we've mostly been faced with challenges in 3 main areas.
- Food insecurity
- Health & sanitation
- Education
Unfortunately too, the people who are being groomed to solve the problems we face are mostly focusing on the wrong problem. Yes, it's true, Ghana needs to have dominion in the crypto and metaverse space. But we can't do that when we still have people dying from malaria and cholera. When our people don't have food to eat (and although we're mostly farmers, import food), and when our students are still being prepared for colonial-era jobs! We need solutions to OUR problems.
That its why I've historically not been of the view that teaching Africans STEM by coding is the way to go. Unfortunately, the problems we face today as a people cannot be solved by building apps or software only. We need a major revolution in these 3 main aspects of our economies. We need better food security, improved health & sanitation conditions, and an education that prepares our kids to solve the problems WE face and are yet to.
But I believe that the beautiful thing now is the fact that we don't have to start completely from scratch. These technologies can be a huge advantage to us if we learn to use them properly and to OUR advantage. We can truly leverage the power of Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon to make breakthroughs in the problems WE face. To be frank, most of us aren't studying to solve the problems we face in Africa - myself included.
I've kept on asking myself this question for the past few days: How do branding and UI/UX solve the issues we *"uniquely"* face? Make an honest assessment and try to list the core problems we face as a people. Then write down what you want to be in future. Try to make a link between the core problem we face and what you want to do. Ask: how does what I want to do solve any of these problems?
Chances are that it's not!
60+ years after independence and we're still solving the white man's problems - inadvertently. We're making our lives easier when we've not even solved the problems we face! So far, the biggest innovation, I'd argue that has solved a uniquely African problem has been Mobile Money Services. Momo completely made banking services available to all and expanded the economy even further.
But then again, which of our core issues did it solve? It brought us convenience, yes, but didn't solve OUR problems. To make sure that we don't mix between what's essential and what's convenient, I'd want us to take a simple test.
*Take whatever field/innovation. Ask yourself: Can we totally live without it? Even if it means living a bare minimum life?* If your answer is a no, then it's essential. If it's a yes, then it might as well be a convenience. Chances are that the majority of what you come up with would be items of convince, and not essentials.
It is of this reason that I'm so excited about Mathias Charles Yabe and what he's doing with the team at Akofresh. I don't know him personally, yet but he is an example of a person who's leveraging technology in solving one of the CORE problems we uniquely face as a people.
But then again, like I always say. We need more! We need more people taking bold steps to solve our problems. If you want to start solving problems, I think these are the 3 areas you should start looking at.
However, with Agric, I don't mean go and farm. That is a terrible way to solve our Agric issues. We need innovations that look at our weather, soil, climate etc. to make accurate deductions on what to plant when to, and all that. We need to make data-driven decisions, and not gut-based ones. We need to stop basing our whole existence on the weather.
These are just random, out of the blue thoughts. I vowed not to talk about Africa again but here we go. It's an exciting future? Hopefully.
