African Innovation Quotes

I don't think Africa gets as much credit as it should have on the world stage. People tend to think of us as coming from The Dark Continent, where nothing good goes on. That's not true. A huge amount of, as I say, entrepreneurship goes on.

When most people in the West think about Africa, is their first thought about the game reserves and who's chasing gazelles, or are they looking at Africans as people who are equally equipped to do great things, as in the West?

I don't see myself anywhere specifically, but you can't deny that, in terms of opportunities to create or be an entrepreneur, Africa is a boulevard - it's still all to be done there. And as an African guy, as a Cameroonian, I will obviously do as many things as I can over there.

As I see it, tech in Africa 1.0 was the mobile-phone boom, and version 2.0 was about new apps developed in response to local needs. Tech in Africa 3.0 should be about those who are successful in transforming the chatter into real opportunities.

Every time I go to Africa, I see the future. I see what the Western world is going to become. It's a very futuristic place.

There is always something new coming out of Africa.

There is always something new out of Africa.

The only people who can fix Africa are talented young Africans. By unlocking and nurturing their creative potential, we can create a step change in Africa's future.

I always tell people that I am most proud of the fact that the Ushahidi story has provided an inspiration to other techies in Kenya and Africa as an example of the kind of talent the continent holds.

I think that we have been able to demonstrate that we cannot just consume software, that we can create software that can be used all over the world, that we have that kind of talent in Africa.

Technology is the perfect refuge for African capability stifled elsewhere by badly run governments and years of misplaced foreign aid. Ubiquitous connectivity in a world without legacy infrastructure, together with the potential to learn coding or anything else online, has allowed technology entrepreneurship to flourish.

The emergence of a hardware product from an African company marks a phase-change point for tech invention. The BRCK shows that great ideas can come from anywhere, that innovation comes from solving real problems with constrained resources.