Wikileaks, technology futures and a president’s dream

March 19, 2011 - Wangu Mwangi (Web editor, Capacity.org)

A series of encounters over the past few months have got me thinking about alternative pathways to African development.

The first was reading media articles based on the now-infamous Wikileaks diplomatic cables, from early 2010. They describe a Kenyan diplomat’s blunt comparison of the capacity-building approach of Western donors vis-à-vis that of China. The second was a book presentation by Japser Grosskurth, author of Futures of Technology in Africa, highlighting the findings of a foresight study of three 'technology hotspots': Nairobi, Johannesburg and Lagos. The third was an interview I did recently with a Brussels-based Southern African diplomat, which painted a picture of a new wave of African leaders who are strategically reorienting the resources at their disposal to tackle the root causes of poverty and underdevelopment. 

In a report on the so-called ‘Nairobi cables’ by UK’s Guardian newspaper, the diplomat was quoted as saying that African countries are against tripartite cooperation between Africa, China and 'western donors' because they are frustrated by "Western insistence on capacity building, which translates into conferences and seminars." This is contrasted to China's focus on “infrastructure and tangible projects”. The Kenyan diplomat supposedly added that “cooperation with western donors will bring interference and impose governance conditions as opposed to giving African countries options.”

The second encounter was the book presentation [1] by Jasper Grosskurth at the European Centre for Development Policy Management in Maastricht. He spoke of his frustration with the underlying cynicism in current development cooperation discourse, which he contrasted with the more positive tone that was evident during the study team's interactions with diverse individuals in the three countries. These included technology pioneers and entrepreneurs, as well as journalists and social commentators, academics and government officials. According to Grosskurth, the study reveals a continent on the verge of momentous social, political and economic transformation, a lot of which is technology-driven. He cites the rapid expansion of mobile phone usage (more than 450 million units in use today), coupled with the potential to exponentially reduce communication and business transaction costs, once installation of fibre optic networks linking the entire continent has been completed. The majority of young entrepreneurs cited in the study were not asking for hand outs, he said, just a chance to prove themselves.