‘Africa 3.0′: How Broadband Connectivity and a Generation of ‘Cheetahs’ Will Carry a Continent Forward

I had the pleasure of attending one of the best presentations at SXSW, on what was (sadly) my last day at the conference. Led by TMS Ruge, founder of Project Diaspora, the session was called Africa 3.0: A Look at the Future of a Connected Africa.

Unfortunately, I was only able to stay for the first half of Ruge’s talk, but he is a captivating speaker (and a Keynote pro). I wanted to share a few of my notes and photos from this fascinating session.

The mission statement of Project Diaspora, written as an open letter to Africa, is a powerful, saddening, inspiring piece of prose. It pledges the following:

We here by pledge to mobilize, engage, and motivate the African Diaspora to take an active role in Africa’s economic, social, and cultural revitalization. We believe the economic assistance and relief models provided by the World Bank, IMF and other monetary or relief organizations to Africa has spectacularly failed on it’s promises over the last 30 years.

We propose a new model. There are over 167 million Africans in the Diaspora. As of 2007, financial remittances by these Africans topped $40 billion annually. That’s capital that’s directly involved in the sustainability of lives—through the stimulation of education, finance, health, and social sectors. We believe this model is far more effective in changing the Africa’s economic landscape. The continued direct involvement of Africa’s Diaspora community is our solemn mission.

My notes from Africa 3.0:

450,000,000 Africans (out of 1 billion total) are under the age of 15. They are ”the cheetah generation” — they are going to want the latest and greatest in technology. Accordingly, Ruge predicts that mobile web technology will leapfrog desktop computing in Africa the same way mobile voice communication leapfrogged landlines.

The following photo is a slide showing the massive under-sea telecommunications infrastructure surrounding Africa. (If you want to see a clearer version of this, check out slide 47 of this Slideshare deck, or click through to see the larger image on TwitPic) In a few years, there will also be a network of geosynchronous satellites over Africa providing broadband to the rest of the continent.

Ruge spoke about his mother in Africa. She has no electricity or running water, but her mobile phone is one of the most prized thing she owns. To have it charged, she sends it into town via taxi for an entire day. She’s able to use it to know what the prices of goods are selling for in nearby towns each day. Ruge actually tried to give her a call on Skype during the presentation, but apparently there was a network outage that day.

He was, however, able to pull up a live video chat with part of the team at Limbe Labs, a Camaroonian startup consultancy and incubator, and they described a few of the projects/ventures they’re working on. (Click through to see a larger version on TwitPic)

Unfortunately, that’s about when I had to step out of the session. This post feels entirely incomplete to me, as I was regrettably absent for the conclusion of the presentation, but I wanted to share what I could. If the session was recorded, I’ll put the video up as soon as SXSW releases it. In the meantime, I encourage you to visit www.projectdiaspora.org to learn more about Ruge’s work, and follow him on Twitter at @TMSruge.