Rwandan President, Paul Kagame has challenged Africans to take up the responsibility of growing the continent’s digital economy. He gave the charge at a recently concluded summit themed Transform Africa Summit 2019 held in the Rwandan capital city of Kigali.
The summit themed ‘’Boosting Africa’s Digital Economy” had a lot features aimed at exposing the blossoming African Digital space to the world. The summit also showcased unique homegrown businesses, solutions, innovations and promoted partnerships.
Present at the summit were also two heads of state, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and Ibrahim Boubacar Keita of Mali who both gave their voices in support of Kagame’s call to back Africa’s digital agenda with an enabling environment – resources, policies, partnership, and action.
“We need to seize the opportunities of the new market,” President Keita said.
Kenyatta in his remarks cited M-PESA as an example. According to him, with M-PESA, Kenya has seen almost 97% of its population gain access to financial services.
Apart from innovations cited in the mobile phone industry and in the area of fintech, digital startups in agriculture and businesses were also mentioned and credited with the evolution in Africa digital economy.
The Vice President Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialization at the African Development Bank, Pierre Guislain said, “Our objective is to identify major opportunities to accelerate digital development on the Continent and set the stage for deeper partnerships in the digital economy area under the Africa-Europe Investment and Jobs Alliance framework.”
According to reports, other key topics discussed were the role of the digital economy in accelerating regional and continental integration, the development of a single digital market in Africa, harmonization of conducive policy and regulatory frameworks, including labor and data mobility, and measures to foster full participation of women and youth in the digital economy.
