my name is Erica seokwon and I’m from
Ghana which is one of the 54 countries
that make up Africa before I start I
want to just do a reality check
anybody in the audience that think
Africa is a country not a continent just
just try to be sure okay so this is
great we’re on the same page so I’m
going to tell you something South Africa
that will probably be in your blind spot
the phrase is the size of Africa do you
know that Africa is so huge that you can
fit the United States in West Africa
China Asia and still have room for India
and Japan yes that’s how big Africa is
Africa is so huge
currently Africa has a population of a
billion this 1 billion population is
made up of 70% youth and one-third of
this is in a middle class according to
the United Nations Africa’s population
is going to grow by 1.3 billion by 2050
so Africa is going to be an important
marketplace in a 21st century and this
is the Africa rising narrative I believe
that the African rising narrative is a
tech rising narrative and I’ll tell you
why in 1999 there were more land lines
in the whole of Manhattan than Africa
fast-forward by 2008 there are more
souls in Africa than the whole of United
States so within a decade Africa
actually lived throughout the United
States and went straight to mobile
everybody was expecting Africa to
industrialize but she rather went
straight into the Information Age by
2014 as you see here adult social
ownership in Africa
was at par with the United States
countries like South Africa and Ghana
and Kenya to name a few so cell phones
became very pervasive in Africa and
became the basis of which most Africans
saw the internet and therefore Africa’s
experience of the information it is not
very different from what you see the
u.s. most Africans have seen the web for
the first time on their cell phones and
that’s quite important this cell phone
explosion was met by the development of
submarine cables in 2008 I was part of a
team that built the first submarine
cable to connect East Africa to the rest
of the world before that Africa had just
one submarine cable by 2014 they were
about eight more submarine cable driving
built across the continent these
submarine cables connected to the mobile
phones and therefore most African
started experiencing the Internet
through their mobile phones so Africa is
a mobile first a mobile only and a
mobile web continent this is quite
significant because we got to see
innovations in a mobile air space one of
which is mobile money any of you hear of
more money okay I’ll tell you what it is
now in the West most of you New York
online transaction using credit or debit
cards because there’s a system here that
works in Africa you don’t have that
because there’s no credit system and
most addresses don’t work because of
that it was impossible to implement a
postpaid phone billing system so war
upon war account sorry the first mobile
operator in South Africa implemented
what they call prepaid airtime basically
what it means is that you take cash you
go to a vendor by the earth time load it
on your phone and then bingo we can talk
now this is how most Africans were using
their phone by pre buying the airtime
and loading it onto the phone fast
forward in 2008 safari for one of the
leading mobile operators in Kenya
decided to SMS technology convert
back into electronic value so suddenly
you had mobile money Trulia flagship for
that called m-pesa essentially what
Emperor does is allow you to be able to
do electronic transaction using the
money that you’ve loaded onto your phone
and therefore you are able to do
electronic transactions and participate
in the online economy and this is how
most Africans were transacting online
this is signally different from here in
the United States now the most of this
innovation were being built by Africa’s
youthful generation what do you call
Generation Z and so most of these
entrepreneurs were using mobile to solve
problems in their societies we were
going to see innovations in areas like
security in areas like transportation
finance etc so the invasion of mobile
that we saw was not yet in financial
service started creeping into all kinds
of sectors one of my companies for
example formerly helps farmers to use
mobile money to do transactions
electronically and to assess the global
market and till then they couldn’t do
this so mobile started impact in
different parts of African society and
essentially this how the digital economy
started imagine in Africa led by the
Generation Z that I talked about
according to Bloomberg nowhere is this
in impact moose fault than in Ghana in
2012 the value of product and services
that are coming out of the information
technology sector said 239 percent in
2012 this how much ICT was contributing
to the economy and this actually
improved Ghana’s credit worthiness as
well as reduced it borrowing in 2015 to
the GSMA which is the global Association
for mobile operators conducted a survey
looking at the impact of mobile in a
global South they concluded that while
in Latin America it was 4% an inch of
Pacific it was 1.4 percent in Africa the
impact of mobile was 6% of GDP that’s
how much mobile was making an impact
in Africa so we’ve had an impact side of
it in the same year another firm the US
firm this time Paul Freshfield decided
to look at the performance of 40 telecom
media and technology companies across
Africa from 18 countries and they
concluded that the analyse retains of
these companies was at 19 percent this
is more than three times higher than oil
and gas and therefore the ICT sector was
outperforming the oil and gas sector as
well as the Africa MSC index so there’s
no way you can tell me that the Africa
rising story is a resource narrative
it’s gotta be a tech narrative because
the tech sector has been growing
year-on-year since the last two decades
that Africa adopted mobile and we are
going to see more innovations coming out
of Africa because this is the tip of the
iceberg what you’ve seen so far is what
I call the connectivity era we’re not
going to see the creativity era where
the entrepreneurs are leveraging on this
mobile web platform to create amazing
technologies and there are five
countries that are actually leading this
revolution across the continent that I
would like to talk to you a little bit
about today so now let’s see how well
you know Africa ready for the test okay
so I call them the Kings countries we’re
going to use their positions and the
flags and see how well you know Africa
so let’s start with the one on the east
which country is that oh great Kenya so
the first is K Kenya the I the one to
the west the stream worst hello
I recall someone regarded a great from
the top that’s good
okay next with that is n oh here we go
everybody knows of an idea great and
then the next one is if you don’t get
this then I’ll be very offended
the G is which country because I told
you that I’m kidding
and the last one is so these are the
five countries that I I call the Kings
country these are the countries leading
the digital economy in Africa and I came
to a conclusion not because it’s a nice
acronym but actually through extensive
research and when I did that research I
came up with five characteristics that
means this country stand out the fastest
economic development if you look over
the last two decades these five
countries have had pretty steady
economic growth between two to eight
percent of course with some fluctuations
here and there we had a commodious crash
and some country suffered a little bit
but generally Ghana for example this
year’s estimated to grow back at eight
point four percent the second criteria
is that thus telecom sectors in these
countries are very vibrant if you take a
because for example there for mobile
operated as effectively competing to
provide services to the consumers and
enterprise I already showed you the tech
infrastructure you saw the submarine and
iteration of fibre cables secondly the
continent which happened just in the
last two decades and then the fourth
criteria is the entrepreneurial
ecosystem in each of this country you
see an active participation of
government research academia and civil
society in making innovations happen and
you need this collaboration to make sure
that entrepreneurs can survive and
thrive
the last criteria characteristic is the
supportive policies so for example in
Ghana the government set up what he
called the venture capital trust fund
which is especially essentially to hurt
activate the SME industry and startups
by providing them capital right and we
see this also in Kenya where the
government effectively bankrolled the
submarine cable that we built so these
five characteristics make the case
country stand up are naturally certain
things about them that are that make
them unique
first is the Kenyan smoothness I second
your smoothness because today in Kenya
you can register a business get a
license and do
written online sitting where you are
right now if you wanted to set up a
business the care you can literally do
it within a week online the next is the
Ivorian persistence in the last two
decades you guys have heard about ivory
coast having some civil unrest but the
country has persisted back and been able
to recover last year Ivory Coast was
growing at eight point one percent and
this is a country that was in civil
unrest just about four years ago any of
you encountered a Nigerian before I
think so yeah I mean I can’t tell you
much about a Nigerian hustle by a
Nigerian car houses something out of
nothing and then there’s the Ghanaian
integrity and finally the South African
diversity I guess you had a news the
last three days South Africa you know
had a new president in a pretty
democratic way and I guess from sources
in some democratic transitions in
Zimbabwe and Ethiopia also the last two
days so so we’re getting there
so the ceramic and diversity is very
very interesting for the continent so
the Kings are a representation of Africa
first can I represent East Africa I
because represent the francophone
countries and these are the
french-speaking countries South Africa
represents South in Africa now let me
tell you another very important fact
which is the IMG which is the name of
the Dutch bank and represent advocacy
Nigeria and Ghana the population the
combined population of these three
countries is about 300 million that’s
about the size of the United States the
population of the United States but sits
on one fake the landmass of West Africa
remember the map that I showed you of
the analysis fit into West Africa to
meet these three countries as the most
close meat market in West Africa and
that’s why West Africa is going to be a
very very important market to look at in
a 21st century nigeria has produced
Africa’s fair UNICOR is a company called
Jimena and jamia is really growing very
very fast so to conclude
I guess now you know how big Africa is
you didn’t know that before and you
didn’t know that Africa had so many cell
phones than the United States and so I
think that Africa is going to be a very
important player in the 21st century
leading a lot of the innovation that we
see today I guess many ways you miss
Asia Africa is where Asia was 20-30
years ago
Africa is the new market for a 21st
century and Africa’s innovation is led
by the kids thank you
[Applause]
Ghana which is one of the 54 countries
that make up Africa before I start I
want to just do a reality check
anybody in the audience that think
Africa is a country not a continent just
just try to be sure okay so this is
great we’re on the same page so I’m
going to tell you something South Africa
that will probably be in your blind spot
the phrase is the size of Africa do you
know that Africa is so huge that you can
fit the United States in West Africa
China Asia and still have room for India
and Japan yes that’s how big Africa is
Africa is so huge
currently Africa has a population of a
billion this 1 billion population is
made up of 70% youth and one-third of
this is in a middle class according to
the United Nations Africa’s population
is going to grow by 1.3 billion by 2050
so Africa is going to be an important
marketplace in a 21st century and this
is the Africa rising narrative I believe
that the African rising narrative is a
tech rising narrative and I’ll tell you
why in 1999 there were more land lines
in the whole of Manhattan than Africa
fast-forward by 2008 there are more
souls in Africa than the whole of United
States so within a decade Africa
actually lived throughout the United
States and went straight to mobile
everybody was expecting Africa to
industrialize but she rather went
straight into the Information Age by
2014 as you see here adult social
ownership in Africa
was at par with the United States
countries like South Africa and Ghana
and Kenya to name a few so cell phones
became very pervasive in Africa and
became the basis of which most Africans
saw the internet and therefore Africa’s
experience of the information it is not
very different from what you see the
u.s. most Africans have seen the web for
the first time on their cell phones and
that’s quite important this cell phone
explosion was met by the development of
submarine cables in 2008 I was part of a
team that built the first submarine
cable to connect East Africa to the rest
of the world before that Africa had just
one submarine cable by 2014 they were
about eight more submarine cable driving
built across the continent these
submarine cables connected to the mobile
phones and therefore most African
started experiencing the Internet
through their mobile phones so Africa is
a mobile first a mobile only and a
mobile web continent this is quite
significant because we got to see
innovations in a mobile air space one of
which is mobile money any of you hear of
more money okay I’ll tell you what it is
now in the West most of you New York
online transaction using credit or debit
cards because there’s a system here that
works in Africa you don’t have that
because there’s no credit system and
most addresses don’t work because of
that it was impossible to implement a
postpaid phone billing system so war
upon war account sorry the first mobile
operator in South Africa implemented
what they call prepaid airtime basically
what it means is that you take cash you
go to a vendor by the earth time load it
on your phone and then bingo we can talk
now this is how most Africans were using
their phone by pre buying the airtime
and loading it onto the phone fast
forward in 2008 safari for one of the
leading mobile operators in Kenya
decided to SMS technology convert
back into electronic value so suddenly
you had mobile money Trulia flagship for
that called m-pesa essentially what
Emperor does is allow you to be able to
do electronic transaction using the
money that you’ve loaded onto your phone
and therefore you are able to do
electronic transactions and participate
in the online economy and this is how
most Africans were transacting online
this is signally different from here in
the United States now the most of this
innovation were being built by Africa’s
youthful generation what do you call
Generation Z and so most of these
entrepreneurs were using mobile to solve
problems in their societies we were
going to see innovations in areas like
security in areas like transportation
finance etc so the invasion of mobile
that we saw was not yet in financial
service started creeping into all kinds
of sectors one of my companies for
example formerly helps farmers to use
mobile money to do transactions
electronically and to assess the global
market and till then they couldn’t do
this so mobile started impact in
different parts of African society and
essentially this how the digital economy
started imagine in Africa led by the
Generation Z that I talked about
according to Bloomberg nowhere is this
in impact moose fault than in Ghana in
2012 the value of product and services
that are coming out of the information
technology sector said 239 percent in
2012 this how much ICT was contributing
to the economy and this actually
improved Ghana’s credit worthiness as
well as reduced it borrowing in 2015 to
the GSMA which is the global Association
for mobile operators conducted a survey
looking at the impact of mobile in a
global South they concluded that while
in Latin America it was 4% an inch of
Pacific it was 1.4 percent in Africa the
impact of mobile was 6% of GDP that’s
how much mobile was making an impact
in Africa so we’ve had an impact side of
it in the same year another firm the US
firm this time Paul Freshfield decided
to look at the performance of 40 telecom
media and technology companies across
Africa from 18 countries and they
concluded that the analyse retains of
these companies was at 19 percent this
is more than three times higher than oil
and gas and therefore the ICT sector was
outperforming the oil and gas sector as
well as the Africa MSC index so there’s
no way you can tell me that the Africa
rising story is a resource narrative
it’s gotta be a tech narrative because
the tech sector has been growing
year-on-year since the last two decades
that Africa adopted mobile and we are
going to see more innovations coming out
of Africa because this is the tip of the
iceberg what you’ve seen so far is what
I call the connectivity era we’re not
going to see the creativity era where
the entrepreneurs are leveraging on this
mobile web platform to create amazing
technologies and there are five
countries that are actually leading this
revolution across the continent that I
would like to talk to you a little bit
about today so now let’s see how well
you know Africa ready for the test okay
so I call them the Kings countries we’re
going to use their positions and the
flags and see how well you know Africa
so let’s start with the one on the east
which country is that oh great Kenya so
the first is K Kenya the I the one to
the west the stream worst hello
I recall someone regarded a great from
the top that’s good
okay next with that is n oh here we go
everybody knows of an idea great and
then the next one is if you don’t get
this then I’ll be very offended
the G is which country because I told
you that I’m kidding
and the last one is so these are the
five countries that I I call the Kings
country these are the countries leading
the digital economy in Africa and I came
to a conclusion not because it’s a nice
acronym but actually through extensive
research and when I did that research I
came up with five characteristics that
means this country stand out the fastest
economic development if you look over
the last two decades these five
countries have had pretty steady
economic growth between two to eight
percent of course with some fluctuations
here and there we had a commodious crash
and some country suffered a little bit
but generally Ghana for example this
year’s estimated to grow back at eight
point four percent the second criteria
is that thus telecom sectors in these
countries are very vibrant if you take a
because for example there for mobile
operated as effectively competing to
provide services to the consumers and
enterprise I already showed you the tech
infrastructure you saw the submarine and
iteration of fibre cables secondly the
continent which happened just in the
last two decades and then the fourth
criteria is the entrepreneurial
ecosystem in each of this country you
see an active participation of
government research academia and civil
society in making innovations happen and
you need this collaboration to make sure
that entrepreneurs can survive and
thrive
the last criteria characteristic is the
supportive policies so for example in
Ghana the government set up what he
called the venture capital trust fund
which is especially essentially to hurt
activate the SME industry and startups
by providing them capital right and we
see this also in Kenya where the
government effectively bankrolled the
submarine cable that we built so these
five characteristics make the case
country stand up are naturally certain
things about them that are that make
them unique
first is the Kenyan smoothness I second
your smoothness because today in Kenya
you can register a business get a
license and do
written online sitting where you are
right now if you wanted to set up a
business the care you can literally do
it within a week online the next is the
Ivorian persistence in the last two
decades you guys have heard about ivory
coast having some civil unrest but the
country has persisted back and been able
to recover last year Ivory Coast was
growing at eight point one percent and
this is a country that was in civil
unrest just about four years ago any of
you encountered a Nigerian before I
think so yeah I mean I can’t tell you
much about a Nigerian hustle by a
Nigerian car houses something out of
nothing and then there’s the Ghanaian
integrity and finally the South African
diversity I guess you had a news the
last three days South Africa you know
had a new president in a pretty
democratic way and I guess from sources
in some democratic transitions in
Zimbabwe and Ethiopia also the last two
days so so we’re getting there
so the ceramic and diversity is very
very interesting for the continent so
the Kings are a representation of Africa
first can I represent East Africa I
because represent the francophone
countries and these are the
french-speaking countries South Africa
represents South in Africa now let me
tell you another very important fact
which is the IMG which is the name of
the Dutch bank and represent advocacy
Nigeria and Ghana the population the
combined population of these three
countries is about 300 million that’s
about the size of the United States the
population of the United States but sits
on one fake the landmass of West Africa
remember the map that I showed you of
the analysis fit into West Africa to
meet these three countries as the most
close meat market in West Africa and
that’s why West Africa is going to be a
very very important market to look at in
a 21st century nigeria has produced
Africa’s fair UNICOR is a company called
Jimena and jamia is really growing very
very fast so to conclude
I guess now you know how big Africa is
you didn’t know that before and you
didn’t know that Africa had so many cell
phones than the United States and so I
think that Africa is going to be a very
important player in the 21st century
leading a lot of the innovation that we
see today I guess many ways you miss
Asia Africa is where Asia was 20-30
years ago
Africa is the new market for a 21st
century and Africa’s innovation is led
by the kids thank you
[Applause]
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