Accra, Jan. 29, GNA – Mr Selorm Adadevoh – Group Chief Commercial Officer, MTN has called on governments to empower the youth through education to drive technological transformation in Africa.
He said, “Africa is lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to technology and about 50 per cent of the population do not have access to internet services.”
Mr Adadevoh was speaking at the 2024 African Prosperity Dialogue held in Accra, Ghana.
The African Prosperity Dialogue is a three-day event being held on the theme:” Delivering Prosperity in Africa: Produce, Add Value and Trade.”
The Dialogue brought together government and business leaders from across Africa and beyond to exchange ideas on key issues and solutions needed to build and harness Africa’s growth.
Speaking in a panel discussion on “Critical Enablers for Single Market Success – Leveraging Infrastructure, Innovation, and Technology”, Mr. Adadevoh highlighted the advantages of harnessing the power of the youth to push Africa to the forefront of technology.
He said according to the World Bank, “we will need about 1.7 trillion dollars to invest in infrastructure to catch up with the rest of the world in the next 10 to 15 years.”
“Transformation, I believe, begins with the mindset. The chain of influencing infrastructure transformation starts from what we are willing to do,” he added.
He said one area that needed to be tackled to solve this issue was education and it was not enough to invest in the infrastructure without investing in the skills needed.
“Africa has the largest youth population in the world. We must harness the power of the youth by transforming our current educational system towards a more digital framework,” he said.
Mr. Adadevoh there aas the need to create markets within markets in pushing Africa to the forefront of technology. ”Until we start to create markets within our markets, this will not be economically viable. We must begin to rely on ourselves to find cheaper solutions to our problems,” he added.
He said a lot of payment options around the world started on the African continent but have been sold and this was because of the barriers in trade across African countries.
MTN Group Chief Commercial Officer said there must be a collective effort to break these barriers and allow ease of transaction so that we can collaborate towards building the Africa we all wish to see.
GNA