This technological and indeed digital revolution is increasingly leaving no area uninfluenced by its radical transformation.
Indeed, this fact holds true for many parts of the world save for perhaps the developing world where access to computers and the Internet still depends largely on which income-bracket of society a person comes from.
This wide gulf in access to the Internet between the developed and developing world has given rise to a highly dissatisfactory state of affairs dubbed the ‘Digital Divide’.
Considering the centrality of information and technology to the world today it is about high time that African countries took sweeping steps to markedly narrow the Digital Divide for the betterment of their people.
To start with, the continent’s leaders should work on making access to computers and the Internet affordable.
Innovation as well as Research and Development (R&D) in science and technology at universities and other higher learning institutions needs to be actively promoted and encouraged to speed up the wheels of progress in society.
The Makerere University Business School (MUBS), for example, has won plaudits in recent years for engaging in pioneering scientific research in Uganda and this stellar example needs to be emulated by universities across the East African Community (EAC) and indeed the continent at large.
In addition, computer science should be made part of the Primary and Secondary School curriculum so as to encourage children to feel at ease with computers.
Granted, all these grand ideas require lots of money which the continent in light of the serious developmental challenges it has to grapple with would be hard-pressed to find.
But we should also remember that in today’s world technology is a sine qua non for development and indeed, the dividends accruing from this are more than worth it.
For instance, a technologically empowered generation can become technology entrepreneurs setting up tech start-ups that with time can eventually blossom into powerful companies wielding enormous clout across borders and providing greatly sought-after jobs as well as tax revenues to economies on the continent.
Moreover, incentivizing innovation in science and technology can often lead to great progress in various sectors of the economy such as hastening the arrival of e-Health provision and e-commerce, improving farmers’ access to markets via mobile phones which is already happening in many areas of the continent and coming up with new, trailblazing ways to secure data from cyber-crime which can be applied in other parts of the globe.
Furthermore, the affordable provision of Internet services also leads to the greater and widespread diffusion of knowledge and all forms of information.
This creates an enlightened society that is better able to make intelligent choices and decisions about important matters affecting their lives such as politics, elections and the overall process of democracy.
And the examples of the Internet exerting a positive influence over uplifting democratic change are well-documented.
One good case in point was the election of a then-unheralded Barack Obama to the US Presidency in 2008 which was dubbed the first YouTube Election primarily because the Obama Campaign Team was able to shrewdly use the Internet to reach out and connect with the youths of America in a massive way.
Thus, going to great lengths to make technology work for Africa can potentially effect largely positive change in society across many countries in our motherland.
So, as the clock continues to tick and the Digital Divide carries on widening, the sooner the continent’s leaders embrace the challenge of putting technology at the heart of African affairs the better off we will all be.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sinde Ndwasinde
Quelle/Source: IPP media, 25.11.2014
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