Digital catalysts in Africa

• That of telecommunications with the success in particular of the deployment of mobile in Africa from 2003, then also of submarine cables, fiber but also satellites.
• That of electronic payment and in particular mobile payment, a formidable axis of financial inclusion, with unprecedented success in the world.
• That of e-commerce, still relatively successful today, but testifying to a transformation of uses.
• That of e-government with real reflections on the issue and topics for progress, particularly in the field of health and digital identity.
• And finally that of the platform economy, around confidence in new business models.

It then appears that several movements have taken place over the past four years to increase the weight, role and stake of digital in Africa. If we want to keep the jumping image, it would be easy to highlight those related to the Internet of Things, the progress of digital in agriculture or the success of African start-ups … but we can see that these subjects are very different. In fact, they illustrate the existence of three types of catalyst for digital in Africa, these catalysts being those which allow the famous leaps.The first catalyst is what is related to technology. We mentioned it with the issue of telecoms networks, but it is clear that there has been a ripple effect in recent years. We will not come back to the telecoms network dimension in the strict sense because, in the end, the last years have been following the previous ones. However, we will have to remain vigilant on this subject, because the generalization of 4G and the arrival of 5G will strengthen this technological dimension. In the technological field, three major subjects must be taken into account:

• The role of data and especially of all the tools allowing their analysis.
• The deployment of the Internet of things (IoT or IoT according to the English acronym for Internet of things).
• Blockchain as a means of building trust.

The second catalysts are the actors themselves, those we call the facilitators. First of all, public institutions and in particular donors, who are starting to position themselves in digital, which was not their field of predilection at the base. The expected success of the SDGs (sustainable development goals) is partly conditioned, in Africa, on the success of digital development. They are therefore key stakeholders, bringing the African public sector with them.

Entrepreneurs are also a key category in Africa and even if the number of start-ups in Africa is still low compared to the United States or Europe, it is clearly a set of new actors (with the structures of support) that did not exist on the continent during the first wave of internet-related start-ups. Finally, companies, beyond new entrepreneurs, are also key players in digital development, particularly those that are part of an approach to developing an ecosystem of partners, the famous platform economy. Their ability to develop new business models, what we call hybridization, make some of them facilitators of digital development.

The third category of catalysts constitutes what makes digital the basis of a new industrial revolution: use… beyond innovation, technique, the will of structured economic players… what do we do with digital to change life? In the 2017 and 2018 works we had developed several use cases. The case of mobile payment remains the most interesting use case for digital in Africa. The development of e-government (given the importance of administration within African economies) is also key and that of e-commerce reflects the challenge of developing commercial channels on the continent. Other use cases, perhaps less “general public” than the previous ones, through the contribution of digital to two key sectors of the African economy, should be considered: agriculture and energy. Two sectors which not only weigh more than two-thirds of the continent’s economy, but are also the basis of other sectors, both for feeding people and for their daily life and work.

It is these catalysts that are analyzed in Africa and digital just released at Pearson (2). We believe that they constitute a relevant reading grid for understanding these structuring evolutions for the continent in the digital field.