“Ajaye is an intelligent boy of 10th Grader when I met him a year back. We called him from the town of Areka with his dad to our ministry. After listening to what he aspired to do, we assigned him some seed money to prototype. Now he has done it, I myself have inspected and drove.” This was what Dr. Engineer Getahun Mekuria, Minister of Innovation and Technology tweeted on January 1st.
As Jack Ma, co-founder and former executive chair of Alibaba Group says: The best way to help those young people “is to support their growth and give them the tools I wish I had when I started my own entrepreneurial adventure. As my experience in China taught me, no entrepreneur can go it alone: There are important roles to play for government, educators, venture capitalists, industry associations and start-up incubators.”
The experience of China gives us much optimism. When Ma founded Alibaba in 1999, China had a large population with low per capita income, and poor infrastructure in retail, logistics and banking. But in just two decades, its per capita income has risen from $800 to $9,000. “The Alibaba ecosystem alone is responsible for creating more than 40 million jobs in China.”
Ma believes that “Africa’s future will be built by its entrepreneurs _by the hungry dreamers who view problems as opportunities.”
As a former Minister of Science and technology, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s ascendance to the Prime Minister’s office has been a blessing to the sector. His government immediately signaled that innovation and technology is the priority of the government, and has put innovation at the heart of its development ambitions. It has also set its sights on becoming Africa’s next tech hub, and building a digital economy.
In the two national committees Abiy chairs: Investment and Jobs Creation National Committee and Doing Business Initiative Committee, the aim is to create three million jobs in a year’s time through key sectors identified – agriculture, mining, tourism and of course IT.
The government is gunning to make the digital a means to create jobs, boost household income, and create wealth to the country. It is working to provide an innovation platform as a strategy to create needed employment among its youth population; by triggering its spirit of entrepreneurship, and making it economically viable for financial service providers to reach poor and isolated young individuals and communities.
Thus, the government should keep working in attracting investment to the sector, creating a more enabling environment to nurture local innovative ideas and tech progression. It should maintain its efforts in creating national innovation ecosystem.
It is wise to think ahead about the potential future opportunity innovation and technology brings, especially taking into account that most developing countries invest far less in innovation money because money is slim and other dire needs take priority. It is also good to see that Ethiopia is teeming with innovative ideas and technological progress where ‘coders, developers and startups are continuing to create innovative, socially relevant technologies’. The government should continue and later escalate those efforts.
The Ethiopian Herald January 22/2020
