Integrated mobile solutions company ComzAfrica (comza) believes Africa can play a leading role in mobile innovation despite the progress the continent still has to make in the field.
Speaking to HumanIPO, Jeff Gasana, chief technical officer at comza Rwanda, said: “I think that Africa still has a long way to go in the mobile innovation field due to different problems the continent faces [such as] poverty [and] wars.
“But it still can play a leading role with time.”
HumanIPO reported last year on Alan Knott-Craig Jr’s opinion of Africa potentially leading the United States in the mobile industry.
Gasana, also chief executive officer at SMS Media, believes the “different African innovations” gives hope for the path it will pave for the mobile world to follow.
“Africa will play a leading role in [the] mobile innovation field by beginning, for some countries, or continuing to put its strength and money in the education, the research and promotion of young entrepreneurs who are working in the field,” he said.
Success stories such as the design of the first African tablet and smartphone by Congolese Verone Mankou, founder and chief executive of startup VMK, who Gasana praised as a pioneer example.
The likes of iHub, the young entrepreneur-focused tech community facility in Kenya, and the Rwandan-based kLab, provide opportunities for mobile applications and software while supplying spaces of innovation to Africans, Gasana said.
According to BizCommunity, 90 per cent of the East African population owned a mobile phone at the beginning of 2013, signifying an 87 per cent increase since 1999.
Furthermore 96 per cent of mobile phone users use handsets for financial transactions.
“In the year ahead, we thoroughly expect more mobile innovations to originate in developing countries, which already account for the majority of the world’s mobile users,” KF Lai, co-founder and chief executive of mobile internet advertising company BuzzCity, said.
According to Simon Carpenter, director of strategic initiatives at SAP, Africa is a “Disneyland for entrepreneurs”, while Daniel Epstein, founder of the Unreasonable Institute, also believes the future of technological innovation lies on African soil.
