I remember the phrase ‘line psychology’ from my days as an undergraduate. Being in a public institution in Kenya, operational efficiency regarding fee payment, serving meals, and class arrangements was a luxury that we were not very lucky to have. It was normal around the opening week, around exam time, and during meal times to find hundreds of us in long sweaty line scrimmages with hope to get service(s) through small grilled windows that had mostly arrogant and disinterested servants. Where there was the option of more than one line, the other line always seemed to be going faster than your own and the temptation to join the other line was always irresistible; but once you succumbed to the temptation, the previous line from which you just came, miraculously starts going faster than the one you are now on! The line psychology, we called it. By deduction, this is the plague that has befallen African continent where most residents (mostly the youth) are obsessed with the ‘greener pastures’ available in the West forgetting that our own continent is actually the fastest growing continent in terms of opportunity space, technological advancement and political tolerance. As opposed to yester-years, stories of ‘flowing-milk-and-honey’ for people who move to the West in search of better opportunities are dwindling by day being replaced with frustrations, harassment, and discrimination. Line Psychology!
Mid February 2014, I had the pleasure to attend a Tech Conference in Algeria organized by African-born initiative, Webdays. It was dedicated towards interconnecting Africa through IT and web development initiatives. It is constituted by young African social entrepreneurs, web development and IT experts with the vision of building a platform for African youthful professionals to create African-driven solutions for African challenges. Founded by the cheerful, and a-little-crazy Farid Arab, Webdays organizes similar 7-day or 3-day workshop events around African university campuses with Startup Weekend concept giving participants an opportunity to develop applications, startups etc for a period of 54 hours and showcasing their laborious developments at the end of the sessions to crown the event. Webdays has organized editions in different states in Algeria as well as other African Countries in the West and North Africa. This particular event held in the dry, yet beautiful city of Ouargla, in the Kasdi Merbah University was themed Mobile Content where for a period of seven days, speakers labored to share on the state of web and game development applications in the 21st Century Africa.
I had the privilege of shedding some light on The State of Mobile Development Interventions in Africa where I highlighted the various interventions that developments in mobile technology has created quite a stir in Africa. As surprisingly as it may be, according to the eTransform African World Bank Report 2011, Africa has more phone users than the US and the EU, playing second fiddle only to Asia. Africa’s mobile phone market has grown 40-fold for the past ten years to over 700 million users which has caused growth in key sectors such as business, health, agriculture, financing, manufacturing, and energy. One particular point in case is the revolutionary 2005 innovation mobile transfer technology in Kenya called MPESA which allows phone users in Kenya (and indeed in the East African Region) to send and receive money, pay bills among other financial transactions using their phones without setting foot in a banking institution. Because of this invention, hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Kenyans have been handed a convenience to exercise financial flexibility in payment of goods and services, regardless of their socio-economic status or geographical location.
Dolphine Aseka, who spoke about Employability, highlighted the various opportunities within African States that can be exploited by youthful Africans to take center stage of development and policy. She highlighted on industry trends requiring entrepreneurial savvy people to adapt to the challenges facing Africa, and particularly Kenya as a country. The government in recent times has launched a number Government Funds targeting the youth and women to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit for self-development. For instance, there is the 10 Million USD Youth and Women Enterprise Fund and the 60 Million USD Uwezo Fund all of which set up to build capacity and invest in start up ventures for Kenyan Youths. This discourages the general obsession with white collar jobs pushing youths towards the more liberating and flexible self-employment.
The experience in Algeria was like no other. Sharing in a different culture and jointly organizing an event with French and Arabic predominant speakers, personally having little or no working knowledge of the languages was a great eye opener that in this time and age, linguistic or cultural differences are not a determinant connecting and working together. As envisioned in the Webdays vision of creating a safe working platform for Africa through entrepreneurship, this is the way to go in order to bring a realization of the Pan African Spirit for African Renaissance!
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Opara Jacob is the youthhubafrica correspondent for Kenya. He is a Mechanical Engineering graduate of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) and a Community Development Entrepreneur who also doubles up as a professional content and academic writer. Read his full profile here
