Africa can enjoy leapfrog development

Can Africa leapfrog its way into the future? There is no doubt that technology and innovation are transforming Africa. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, phones now act as banks for millions of Africans who cannot even dream of opening a traditional bank account. With the touch of a button, small farmers can find out how much they should be charging for their crops. People can buy solar energy using a phone, get their hearts examined in rural Cameroon using a medical tablet, or get blood delivered by drones in Rwanda.

But these achievements mask a tougher reality. For Africa to leapfrog further into the future, a number of conditions must be met, including investment in infrastructure, having the right regulatory environment for new business models to be tested, and paying deliberate attention to research and development, science and technology. On a trip to Guangdong province, China, a couple of years ago, I toured one of the world's largest mobile phone assembly plants. I was stunned to find out that nearly all of the young workers I met there only had a high school degree but their level of technical literacy probably exceeded that of the average African college graduate.

The truth is we cannot achieve innovation without a properly trained workforce and a robust education system. A recent World Development Report on Education found that most sixth grade students in Sub-Saharan Africa are not sufficiently competent in reading or math. This has to change. Kenya was able to deploy electricity and internet access to remote rural schools, raising the proportion of schools with electricity from 43 percent in 2013 to 95 percent in 2016. More than 90,000 teachers have been trained in delivering digital learning while e-learning has been introduced in more than 18,000 primary schools. These investments will pay off.