Kathy Gibson reports – There has never been a more exciting time to be a developer – particularly in Africa.
This is the message from Jyoti Ball, GM: sub-Saharan Africa at AWS, who points out that we are living through a time when many technology streams are booming, and all fuelling one another.
“But something we are seeing now is different to what we have seen before,” she says. “In the past, transformation was sequential. By that logic, the organisations further forward had a bigger advantage. But in the new wave of AI adoption that’s not what we are seeing.”
What is happening instead is that new entrants are able to leapfrog past incumbents by using technologies like cloud and AI.
“There is no continent has been evidenced that principle more powerfully than Africa,” Ball says.
She cites the connectivity revolution, which saw South Africa’s 4-million phone connections in a population of 40-million in 1990 expand to more than two connections per person in 2026.
This was accomplished not by waiting for copper to be installed, but by embracing mobile connectivity.
Africa also built the world’s first mobile money system, and today has more mobile money transactions than anywhere else in the world.
“Leapfrogging has given us a real competitive advantage,” Ball says. “And the next leapfrogging is happening now.”
Cloud and AI will drive the next phase of Africa’s growth, she believes. Indeed, AI is forecast to be a $16,5-billion market in Africa by 2030, growing by 27%. The World Economic Forum (WEF) says economic value could add 4 percentage points to Africa’s GDP if we lay the right foundations.
Some of the use cases Ball sees are happening already include using language models to serve customers in their home languages, developing technologies to quickly identify crop diseases and more.
“AI will solve real problem on the continent for the continent,” she says.
AWS is committed to continuing its investment in Africa. Since 2018, the company has invested $890-million and have committed $1,5-billion going forward.
“We have brought 154 services to Cape Town, and trained 1-million people in cloud and AI skills,” Ball says.
“What is exciting me is that Africans not just consuming AI, but building and owning AI.”
Tanuja Randery, vice-president and MD: EMEA of AWS, believes that Africa is ready for the AI era.
“We have the infrastructure and the skills. The market is ready and the developers are ready,” she says.
“Every time I meet with business leaders, there is genuine energy to reimagine business processes end to end.
“They are genuinely reimagining how businesses will look in the future.”