The “New” Pulse of Africa

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Adolfo Hernandez is guest blogging for the Forum. He is the President of Alcatel-Lucent EMEA and is participating in the World Economic Forum on Africa

Jacob Zuma Adolfo Hernandez There are certainly way more points to cover than one can address in one blog, but in today's column I would like to focus on “just” four:

POINT 1: The "pulse" of Africa today- the world needs to leverage it. Despite major challenges, Africa offers so many opportunities that the world needs to leverage. I was involved in a brainstorming group this morning with business leaders and some senior African political leaders. The real challenges at hand are the difficulty of doing business in Africa, the energy deficit vs rich commodities, the need to grow faster than 7% to create jobs for 700 Million young Africans under 23 yrs old.  This opens questions: how to come up with creative ideas to build more skills? How to leverage across multiple parts of Africa ("Af-expats"?)?  Or how to bring African talent back to Africa ("Af-repast?")

As many companies expand their workforces significantly, fewer do so in Africa because of the lack of predictability which is a risk costing the investment so critical for Africa. Yet Africa has a wealth of opportunities including human talents of 1B people, a determination to build a strong society and economy, and increasing investment in key telecoms infrastructure which offers a whole new world of innovation on a global scale from Africa.

POINT 2: The fantastic paradox of public and private behavior. That is, countries who used to be small government and big business are now relying on public sector for recovery, and vice-versa. Developed countries now behaving like old developing countries and developing countries now behaving … We are also witnessing many cycles where both behaviors take turns in many successful countries like South Africa, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria and more.

POINT 3: Climate Change is a problem for everyone.  In Africa in 2010 alone, 200 Million people were affected. Disasters cost nearly half a trillion dollars and those affected had no safety net. What a mind-blowing and sad reality! So in Africa, Climate Change can be the Achilles heel given the interconnection with demographic changes, food requirements, energy and water availability.  In the upcoming UN Durban Round on Climate Change, we need to see more multilateralism to find a solution, innovation and not only brute force.  Let's not wait until we have a final signed agreement to start working. There is a lot that can be done today with resources, technology and funding available by different actors (eg Alternative energy powered base stations, lightRadio, GreenTouch…

POINT 4: Put Telecoms and Information technologies at the core of the Africa development momentum. Communications infrastructure has a major role to play in Africa, where average penetration of around 50% much less than in other parts of world and with rural penetration still less than 20% in many African countries.

Communications infrastructure is seen as essential for economic activity, with benefits that are much greater to the region than perhaps they are seen elsewhere, e.g. substitute for other forms of poor communication links such as transport and a tool for improving healthcare & education in more rural regions. Broadband telecoms infrastructure enables cost efficiencies in health services, further reach for education, telecommuting and thus less traffic in urban centers, public safety communications for disaster management. More and more examples of clever use of broadband infrastructure for entrepreneurship in Africa: faster commerce, monitoring fisheries and water pumps, agricultural trade.

There is an excellent opportunity for new sustainable infrastructure models based on alternative energy and that are inclusive from a social, economic and environmental perspective. Affordable solutions are available. But this must be matched by investment in backhaul and national backbone networks to provide greater bandwidth.

Well, as you can see we have our hands full here in Africa but the endeavor is a once in a lifetime. It has the potential to fundamentally transform and improve the quality of life in a massive continent like Africa. Once again it will be down to our ability to work together for TEAM AFRICA!

President Zuma, thanks again for being a gracious host (once again) and for spearheading the African success story into the BRIC-S…

This post also appears on the Alcatel-Lucent blog

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