Africa must use technology to re-imagine the continent’s future

Kendi Ntwiga – Nderitu Microsoft Country Manager for Kenya

This year has been one of uncertainty and unexpected challenges. While it’s nothing new to say that things have changed as we’ve all experienced that change as it happened and seen its impact around us, it is clear that Africa will go through accelerated transformation as we move into the future.

When it comes to digital, the continent was on a steady trajectory to adopting technologies, particularly in regard to governance.

Digital transformation in government was still in its early stages in Africa when the Covid-19 pandemic compelled countries to use technology to find innovative solutions to the limitations placed upon them, such as the need for social distancing.

Transformation in government is vital to enhancing public services that enable a better quality of life as technology can help support better decision-making and ensure efficient use of resources while strengthening transparency and accountability.

But now as we are moving past responding to these obstacles placed in our way and are looking to ensure recovery of the continent, there is need to increase transformation efforts to create an improved future capable of weathering disruption and come out on the other side relatively unscathed.

Government’s responsibilities cover a huge range of areas from public safety and healthcare to road infrastructure and city planning.

While African countries have made significant steps to improve governance, there remain a number of service delivery challenges. Apart from lack of resources, education, health, water and sanitation are some of the most daunting obstacles that African governments continue to tackle.

Positive effect

Technology is a powerful enabler and can have a monumental positive effect on service delivery. It has ability to re-engineer current systems and processes to improve the functionality and quality of services, promote innovation and inclusion, and facilitate a better relationship between the government and its people while enabling developmental growth.

A key area where African governments must invest in technologies is communication and collaborative technology.

Collaborative solutions enable centralised and coordinated communication between teams, agencies and leadership.

Through a shared workspace, governments are able to increase transparency for workers in one department of projects underway in another, thus having a greater overview of the entire picture and how it relates to the work one group is doing.

Open lines of communication make participation easier through chats, calls and shared files and facilitates co-creation and collaboration.

Meanwhile, remote government access solutions can increase the flexibility of government agencies by curating personalised government services, when and where it’s needed, while providing faster response and resolution times that create a better customer experience.

The world is changing at a much faster rate than has been seen before and government must transform and adapt not only to enable recovery and growth but to create a new digitally led and inclusive future.

- The writer is country manager, Microsoft Kenya