 Shall we begin? I was waiting for some music. I was waiting for the theme tune from Titanic or something like that. Good afternoon everybody. My name is Bruce Whitfield. I will be facilitating this panel today on what is a very, very special day. And the reason it is a special day is it's because my three-year-old's birthday. Mr. You can go, ah. The reason why that is relevant is because at a certain time in every parent's life you have that conversation. It is sometimes started by you and sometimes it is started by your child and that conversation is So what do you want to be when you grow up? My three-year-old came to me the other day and he said, you know dad, one day I'm going to drive a spaceship and you and mom and my brother can come with me and I thought to myself either the kid is deluded, which is possible, or he's a great visionary because maybe in the year 2040, if I'm still around, I could become a passenger of his on a spaceship. The future of technology and the role of space of course is absolutely crucial in the evolution of technology. It's thanks possibly to the foresight of John F. Kennedy and others of the 1960s that today we have fantastic devices such as these. The technology that was enabled by this desire to explore in space. So the theme for today, the future of technology, using the race to space to push the next technology frontier is a good topic and it's a topic that we're going to be discussing today. Now, Lady Pandall is the Minister of Science and Technology in South Africa and she has got ultimate oversight of what is known as the Square Kilometer Array. It's about 300 kilometres from here, Minister. Yeah, there we go. In the Karoo, some of the clearest skies in the world, we won half the bid to host the Square Kilometer Array in South Africa. It's probably the most significant technology investment, global technology investment in this part of the world ever. And then next to her, we've got Indijaka Hari, who's the President and Chief Executive, Youth for Technology Foundation, based in Nigeria. Nice to see you as well. And then we've also got Solomon Asipa, who's Director of IBM Research in Africa, and then Acha Lekke, who is an electrical engineer by training, but he is also with McKinsey. Minister, if I can start with you, just give us context, please, when it comes to science, technology in this part of the world and the significance of the SKA project. Well, essentially, what we have tried to do as South Africa is to identify areas in which we could build stronger research competence, as well as promoter innovation. One of the decisions we took several years ago was to make better use of what we called our geographic advantage, and that was to build the astronomy sciences in South Africa and build infrastructure that would be both international in character with international collaboration opportunities, but also enhance the innovation capabilities of a range of institutions in the public and private sector. The square kilometer arrays a 3,000 dish set of connected antennae that allows scientists in the astronomy sciences to carry out a wide range of research and the capability we're anticipating once the build is complete by both ourselves and Australia. And ours is an African partner initiative with eight other African countries as part of this build. It will be the largest radio telescope in the world. It's allowed us to invest in a significant human capital development program. We've produced a number of PhDs as well as master's candidates. We've got our engineering firms involved in building radio receivers at the high tech level. We're training technicians to support us with the computer engineering, software engineering growth. So it's just boosted innovation and human capital development in a way that I think we hadn't imagined when we first put a bit for the square kilometer array. It almost feels as if it's up and running already, but it's only due for completion in 2018. It's a long build program. Both countries are to undertake to build a precursor instrument called the meerkat, which we're building. It will be a 64 dish radio telescope. It will be ready in 2017. We're already doing some science. We have eight of the dishes up already and we've had some excellent publications in science journals and lovely discoveries. So we're very pleased with the progress we're making. We're on track and we'll have the full 64 dish meerkat up in 2017. The build for SKA-1, of which meerkat will become a part, will begin in 2018. And the intention is to finish the full 3000 dish mega telescope by 2023. 2023 is the target date. What does that do then? What is the knock on that? What is the Kennedy effect, if you like, of this for not only this country, but the other eight participants and the region as a whole? What are the spillover benefits of that? Well, it's led to a number of very interesting developments, as I've said. But let me just look at the institutional developments with our universities. We've established eight research chairs linked to the astronomy sciences. Very significant and important for us because what you're doing is attracting scientists of international calibre to the country and they're training young people who will be the future innovators, the knowledge workers, that we want. Which is a nice segue to you, Nijeka, because you work with young people in technology. You need a pipeline, you need solid education, you need maths and science. And talking to a lot of people in the corridors of this gathering, one of the things upon which people have universally agreed is the African continent as a whole, their pockets of excellence, but doesn't excel in the maths and science fields. I'll get back to the minister, who's a former education minister in South Africa as well, for her perspective on that. But what's yours? Absolutely. Thanks, Bruce. We know that in Africa as a content, if we look at the education sector, the education sector is not just broken. Indeed, in today's environment, it is obsolete. And so there needs to be an entire transformation of the education sector. And to do this effectively and efficiently, it really takes marshalling the forces of multi-stakeholders, which of course include the government, the private sector and civil society, which I represent, that really have to engage and begin to communicate to ensure that the students that are being churned out of these universities have been adequately trained to go into the workforce, especially if the workforce is one that's technology focused, to go into the workforce and to add value. And not just that, to be able to actually create employment opportunities themselves. In Nigeria, for instance, 90% of the young people that apply into the universities get declined. So only 10% of the applicants actually get into the universities, complete a four or five year education. But at the end of it, they continue to remain under-employed. They continue to remain under-educated. Or many of them are even unemployed in their entirety. So it's the role of really civil society, government and private sector to ensure that they have the adequate skills, they have the adequate knowledge to be able to go into the workforce as enthusiastic employees or really create jobs in their communities as well in science and technology. We know that science, technology, engineering and math is really the cornerstone of a nation's development. And everyone needs to be engaged. When we look at Nigeria in particular, some data recently showed that, you know, if Nigeria included the number of women coming out of universities and gaining employment, if they had the same opportunity as men, they would be able to drive the gross domestic product of the country up by about 13.9 billion. So this is significant. So we're not just looking at science, technology and engineering and math, but we're looking at it also within the very, very inclusive context in which it really needs to be analysed in. Solomon, I mean, you work in the real world in the trenches of technology. You are director of IBM Research in Africa. What is your assessment of the skills that are present on this continent to carry forth the dream that the minister espouses? OK, prior to touching on the skills aspect of it, I just want to say a few words on why we are so excited about the Square Kilometer array project. Of course, the Square Kilometer array is one of the boldest and most daring visionary projects of the 21st century in terms of discovering what exactly happened between the Big Bang and the first formation of a star. So that's a big vision for the whole world and for the continent to be leading in that itself is, you know, a new story for us. But there's something much deeper than that, which is parallel to what has been happening in the supercomputer world, right? So governments often invest on a decade long project, a big, excess-scale supercomputer. And what you see there is it drives quite a lot of research and development initiatives. You have to rethink how you do nanotechnology, cooling technologies, how you connect chips. So it really leads to a whole set of new types of industries. And we do see the same parallel with the SK effort. How do you build rugged computing that you can actually, you know, deploy in a very heated environment that by itself has not been done yet? How do you interconnect all those, you know, 3,000 radio telescopes in a very efficient manner? Is that the work that is going to be done on the African continent? However, was that work that's going to be done elsewhere for efficiency's sake and brought in? It is going to be done here. That's why you're seeing quite a lot of collaboration between different stakeholders, including government and the private sector. And the truth is, you know, the way we do science has really evolved over time. No one company can invest enough money to innovate on its own. It has to be a collaboration between universities. It has to be a collaboration between government, industries and so forth. But most importantly, you actually have to be where the challenge is. You really need to be having that real world experience and innovating and forming new ecosystems. If you want to tackle this type of grand challenges, that's the only way to do it. Which means we have to be involved in skill development as well. Ecosystems is a good word. We'll come back to it in just a little bit. But back to the question, which was, are we adequately resourced on this continent to deliver all of what you talk about? We absolutely are. And oftentimes, for example, when a company like IBM decides to establish a recent search center, it's often because the skills are available, right? You, of course, have to start with 10 scientists, 20 scientists, or maybe even 50 scientists. But if you start with at a small scale, it gives you the time frame to develop thousands of scientists. You just need to have a very good roadmap, a very well studied roadmap on how you're going to get those skills. You know, education oftentimes takes four to six years for a PhD. But it also makes you rethink even how education is done. You know, is there a way to produce PhDs within two years? OK, but without being too disrespectful to the minister and my education, we're the only African educated people on this panel. I mean, we started out here, but the three of you left the continent to broaden your minds and to grow your skills. Is that an imperative? Well, I would say actually that the lessons I learned before I left the continent are what helped me in my undergraduate and graduate work. So we do have good schools. We need to change them. We do need to change how we do education. But the skills. It says they're obsolete, says our education system is obsolete. It's not adequate to prepare us for a future. I mean, what's your perspective on this one? I mean, is the African education system inadequate? Minister, I'll give you a turn now. She's given me the hairy eyeball. Is isn't Jacka correct on that particular point? I mean, as a co-founder of a school, I would argue that that things are actually changing on the continent. I do think that in the past, if you look five, ten years ago, that was actually the case. And back to Gineka's point, if you think of Nigeria, Nigeria graduates, you know, 1.7 million students from high school. They have universities lost for 400,000. Right. And that's not even talk about the quality. Now, what you're seeing is a lot of innovation going into education. And I'll just give you an example. I'm involved in an initiative called the Africa Leadership University. And the idea here is to create 25 universities across Africa and sort of at the Ivy League level, but do that in Africa and not have to send our kids outside. And the reason we did it is because we founded a school called the Africa Leadership Academy and we get a 4,000 applications every year. We select 100 kids. But, you know, most of them end up in the U.S. for university. And then they come back here. So we said, what can we do to make sure that we can keep those skills and have that quality of education in Africa? And the interesting thing is through technology, we're now going to be able to significantly reduce the cost base to deliver this education through some blended learning and significantly increase the quality. So you get the best professors from all over the world delivering education to this and the first campuses opening Mauritius in September. And that's why I agree that things are changing. But we have a long way to go. Minister. Well, yes, things are changing. I don't agree that education on the entire continent is obsolete. I think there are parts where there's huge inequality and totally inadequate use of technology. Some of the curricula are very old and traditional. But many countries have made changes and are using new frameworks. And you're seeing a greater utilization, particularly of mobile technology in many schools on the continent. So I do think there are changes, but much more needs to be done. Where I think there is a challenge is in a large number of young people moving up the scale in education. I think the basic education has been an attention area for many policymakers, but they tend not to look at what the next steps are. And so in some countries, they've achieved universal access for primary education. They haven't built enough secondary schools so kids kids reach a cul-de-sac. Some countries have still one university. They're producing many more children from secondary school. They can't be absorbed. Others only have as post school universities, whereas you should have vocational education. That's where the entrepreneurship and other opportunities are. Much more in the vocational and technical fields. We still tend to be top heavy with university qualification and entry rather than other forms of education. And if you want to build the number of small and medium-sized enterprises Africa needs, you're going to have to steer more and more young people into vocational and technical education. Absolutely. Solomon, you made the point about ecosystems. And I speak with the South African bias. It's the story I know best. But Elon Musk, who is one of the poster boys of science and technology in the United States, Silicon Valley taking the world by storm, left South Africa, went off to Silicon Valley to seek his dreams. He's got a cousin who runs Solar City, a bunch of really bright and capable people who didn't have an adequate ecosystem at home, who went elsewhere. And the trouble is once they go elsewhere, it's hard to bring people back. How do we deal with that? Well, I think from my perspective, the story is changing. There is then kind of a bending point and an inflection point that's happening. And for the most part, that's because big industrial players are seeing big opportunities. I mean, they project forward to 2050 and they see that there's going to be big opportunities. So they are coming in and saying, let's do research and development together, right? And that type of investment is changing how we are engaging and attracting talent. We've been very fortunate to, for example, bring back many Africans back to our research labs, both in Nairobi as well as South Africa. They look at the vision. They look at what we're trying to do. The key is to inspire them by saying, we have grand challenges, but the way we're going to solve them is by actually innovating the next set of technologies. You know, we're going to be using artificial intelligence, you know, the best sensor technologies, and we're going to be using cognitive computing. When you tell them that, you know, the frontier of science is actually having a role now to transform how the continent is working. It becomes very inspiring. They look at that more than the money or some of the issues that they might have because they have, you know, they relock it. It goes back to your point of how do you inspire them? How do you catch them so that they're back? So what are you doing in real terms? IBM Research Lab, that's the theory. What are you doing practically? Tell me a tale of somebody who's come back and it's just so thrilled that they did and abandoned the opportunity at the Googleplex or wherever they have left to come back. Sure, I mean, I can give you an example from just a couple of weeks ago. A very bright South African who graduated from one of the best colleges in the world, being offered many job opportunities, but she heard about the story of research and development and she started to connect some of her learnings in robotics and machine vision to how it could apply to actually change how we do infrastructure, the role of autonomous systems to really rethink how we put together infrastructure and the person chose to come back because there is a big opportunity to become a thought leader, one of the best scientists in the world. So that's how you have to attract them and tell them that, look, you know, you are the next thought leader but the opportunity is to do great sciences here. We have to relocate. I personally and professionally, I don't think there's a problem with South Africans being in institutions overseas. No, not at all. What we've got to become really good at is establishing international collaboration. So for example, we're working very hard on partnership initiatives. We are already doing research on lithium-ion batteries at the CSIR, so we've said to our team, speak to Elon Musk. Let's see what we do. And I've been to Silicon Valley, interestingly enough, and met a group of South Africans who are very successful there and who want to work with us to expand the startups, particularly in the information communication technology field. And they're saying there's huge amounts of talent in South Africa. We want to work with you to establish enterprises in South Africa but on the continent as well. Let's create common funds and work together sharing expertise. So for me, global can be very positive for local. I think what I'll add to that is the benefits of technology and collaboration, whether it's with the international universities, with universities here in research and development, technology affords that ease of communication today that perhaps it didn't offer several years ago, five to 10 years ago. Secondly, a lot of young researchers, young developers that are a part of the African diaspora overseas, sometimes see government as a disabling factor to innovation, right, and whether that's hindering from the tax incentive part or from patent introduction and the ease of getting patents rolled out, et cetera. And so the ability for governments to be a part of that enabling ecosystem to offer tax incentives that are attractive for these young people as they think about their innovations and their ideas and monetizing those ideas so that they see a reason, a beneficial reason to come back and play a part of what is going to be the next developed world, per se, in the area of research and development. Acha, is anybody succeeding on that incentive basis? I mean, as a consultant, you understand the world of incentives very well. Is anybody getting it right? Yeah, I think the conversation is, in my mind, quite a bit negative around things are not working. I think the number of things are working, right, across a number of sectors, and we focus a lot on education, but the power of technology to transform the continent and to transform our lives, and I'll come back to this with your question, I think is extremely powerful, right? And we believe that the internet could account for about 10% of Africa's GDP in the next 10 years. And we see the impact, and just to give you a sense, that's about $300 billion. That's the size of the South African economy, right? That's how powerful the internet, we believe, can be for the continent. Where people are getting it right is really starting to look at how do I use this technology in very specific sectors, right? If you look at what the Nigerian former, I guess now, minister of agriculture, who's about to be, who's now then soon to be president of the other, president-elect of the Afghan government bank did to transform how fertilizers are delivered in Nigeria through its e-wallet system. And it wasn't just now that the farmers were able to get the fertilizer more, but also reduce leakages and corruption significantly across the sector. You look at what's happening on the e-commerce front, even on the government front, right? Now if you want to go visit Côte d'Ivoire or Senegal, you don't need to go to the embassy, leave your passport there for three days, hope that you get the visa, da-da-da. You apply online and they send you a piece of paper and you fly and you land there and you get a visa, right? So there are a number of these things that are happening across sectors. We need to see it more at scale, but we're definitely starting to see the inflection point. Okay, so back to the question, where are we then? I mean, how do we get the incentives right to get these people back to this continent to grow the sector? So I think there are a couple of things. One is the government has a role to play, right? So, you know, for us... But are governments doing it well? Are governments enablers or not? So some are, I'll give you this, you know, so we have a metric called the IGDP, the Internet's contribution to GDP. The average in Africa is 1.1%, right? Extremely low. The average of developed countries is 3.7%. Now, Senegal is the highest in Africa at 3.3%. Kenya is the next highest at 2.9%. And everybody talks about what's happening in those countries from a telecom sector perspective, from deploying infrastructure, from having the right strategies in place. So some governments are doing it right. Ronda is looking to do the same thing and really leverage ICT to transform as the next big sector for the country. But I think in many countries, we still have a big problem around, I'm not just gonna blame government, but just government policy prioritization of the ICT sector. I think that can be a challenge. There's a challenge around, and we're almost spoken about it, but I think around financial incentives, right? How do you provide all the startups we're talking about? How do you provide either the venture capital, the early stage financing for these to get going, you know, until they can start raising private equity type money? That's a challenge in many of our countries. The ICT, I agree that some people are coming back, and a number of us too, I studied in Silicon Valley, came back, but still we're very far from having the base of talent that we need to transform the ICT sectors in our countries, right? So I think we have to come down to that level of granularity to understand which countries are doing it and which levers need to be pulled to transform the sector. Questions from the floor, anybody? Is, are we hitting the right notes for you? I'm struggling to see in the dark. I'll take your silence as acquiescence. Otherwise, there is a hand and there is a microphone, two wonderful combinations. So could you tell us who you are, where you're from, and who you'd like to direct your question to? Thank you. I'm Brian Othorua. I work for Pearson and I'm the chair of the publishing industry. I enjoyed working with Mahapandu when she was Minister of Education. I really appreciate the thrust that we are making in high tech innovation and technology and I think we should continue to try and lead the world in that area. But I'm also concerned about what's happening in the rural areas because everywhere where you find people, they are grappling with their day-to-day problems and if you look carefully, there are solutions that they are coming up with. I attended the innovation summit of the European Chamber of Commerce in Geneva and the best presentation there was from India. What they were doing was they had an incubation fund that looked at people in rural areas and how they were dealing with their problems. The innovation there included something as the rudimentaries are shifting the load from the head to the shoulders with their harness, climbing up a palm tree and harvesting fruit from there and creating amphibian bicycles to cross rivers in the rural areas. So they would take the fund, scale it up and bring back to that community and some of the technology like the tree climbing system was being exported to the US with a slogan like they will beat us to the moon but will beat them to the top of the tree. Your question, please. My question is within that context, in addition to what we are doing with the SKA and other high-tech innovation, do we have programs to deal with innovation that is in the rural areas and assist to them scale it up or even commercialise it? Great question. Real-world innovation versus high-academia, Minister. Yes, certainly. What we have done as South Africa is establish what we call technology localisation stations, mainly in rural communities linked to universities and what the stations provide is access to technology and innovation support to communities. We have had two very good examples. One in Limpopo, in Goa Goa, close to Tsanin, where a demonstration plant on fruit preservation and pressing of fruit for juice has now gone to become a manufacturing facility. So it began as a pilot plant with this technology station support and is now a thriving business that communities have economic and ownership employment and support from. Second example is the work we're doing in Indigenous knowledge systems. There are over 4,000 Indigenous plants that are utilised by healers in South Africa without any statutory recognition, no research support, et cetera. We're working with practitioners in order to bring these remedies, their nutraceutical, cosmocitical, into the commercial space with communities and practitioners having ownership. So we've actually got legislation supporting this. So there are a range of initiatives. We've also established sector innovation funds, which are along the lines that you've referred to with the India example, where we're working especially in the agricultural space in a range of sectors to support innovation and research and technology access. Yeah, I mean, one thing I was going to say, I mean, I actually don't think we have a lack of innovation in Africa, right? I mean, we just, whatever the government does, I think people just find ways to do different things, right? And the issue we have is how do we scale it? That's my sense. And how do you go from, you know, everybody doing what they're doing? In many cases, we don't even know about it because they're just solving a problem to how do you scale it. I'll give you an example. We have one of our students who was at ALA, again, this guy called William Kambkwamba. You probably heard of him. He dropped out of school in Malawi because he couldn't afford to $80 to go to school. He went to the library in his village, read about how windmills are produced, built a windmill in his village. He didn't need the government to come and show him how to do it. He just figured it out. It powered the house. People heard about it. We found him five years later, took him to ALA. He went to Dartmouth. Now he's at IDEO. Now he wants to, you know, he has found a part of land in Malawi where he wants to build a wind farm that's going to triple the energy contribution to the country. Now the issue is back to the ecosystem, right? If not not us, but if he had never left Malawi, would he have been able to get there? No, but that's the point. I mean, it's that ability to grow great ideas. It doesn't matter where the seed is germinated, provided it does. And is that the risk then, Injak? I mean, we run the risk of tech being top down and saying, here's a solution, implement. And it's not necessarily practically useful. There's got to be some real world experience in there as well. Absolutely. And I mean, rural areas, you know, in Nigeria, for instance, the unemployment rate in the rural areas is somewhere around 46%. 97% of the young people who walk through our doors at Youth for Technology Foundation say that they want to change the world. Now, what this looks like is to be determined. But an idea is only just that, an innovative idea. Yes, there's innovation, absolutely. But an innovative idea is just that, unless it is monetized, right? And so it's not just teaching and inspiring people towards technology innovation, but it's also teaching them those life skills, those entrepreneurship skills like leadership and empathy to be able to monetize the idea towards greatness, indeed. And the rural areas have a lot to offer. I mean, in our work, we actually believe in this concept called reverse migration, encouraging young people to stay in their rural areas, develop talent, learn as much as possible, and then create jobs through entrepreneurship, as opposed to moving to the urban areas where there's population crisis, there's high crime, et cetera. And so we fundamentally believe that this can happen and happen successfully. There's one of our students, Sunny. He started off with us in one of our programs at Youth for Technology Foundation when he was 22 years old. He was still enrolled in the university. He came in as just learning basic digital literacy. After about a year with us, he graduated and decided he wanted to go into the field of entrepreneurship, and he started a livestock farming. So he farmed grass cutters and sold them his clients to hotels and restaurants, et cetera. And he's doing extremely well, and he's in his local community, so he never left the villages. He ended up hiring his local community, people from his village to work in the business. He's growing his business. His customers now include rural areas and urban areas, but still in terms of that ecosystem, it's being built in the rural areas. And to us, this is just a magical story. Yeah, I agree with most of the comments, but at the same time, I sometimes get a bit concerned. I mean, when I hear all this news about, you know, mobile penetration and how many mobile phones we have and so forth, that's so 20th century. The world has moved on, and we're talking about cognitive computing. I do think that we need to be riding that exponential curve, and we should be thinking 10 years ahead, not 10 years back. Yes, we have to have line technologies, we have to have digital literacy and so forth, but why don't we think about our own big, bold initiative and Apollo mission where within a decade, we say, you know, we use certain technologies like AI, where we know that there's gonna be, I don't know, a thousand scientists that are going to be produced, there's gonna be a million jobs, and we just go ahead and do it. If we have a bold vision like that one, then you just go and implement, and we just drive the whole continent to a newer level instead of always being catching up. And that's one of the things, when someone gets the sense that there's a sense of defeatism almost, like who are we to dare to compete? And Jacob, who are we to dare to compete? So I mean, yes, there's AI technologies, but look at some other technologies, for instance, 3D printing, advanced manufacturing technologies like 3D printing can enable someone, anyone living anywhere to actually create, imagine the world and the future they see the world to be, and actually create that. And so you now begin to think about this concept of micro factories and really enabling that ecosystem and entrepreneurial environment with very, very little capital. You know, a young entrepreneur in an XYZ country in Africa can just dream up an idea, they want to start manufacturing phone cases or what have you. And with limited capital, purchase a 3D printer and begin that business and hire people and actually become an entrepreneur. Will they ever grow a business of sufficient scale to warrant their genius being applied in their domestic market? Or do they have to do the Elon Musk? It depends on what you mean by scale. Take over the world. Well, we'll take over the world with the SKA, we think, but and discover much more about it. But if I'm a young person who has access to these M labs that we deploy across the country and they develop a box, which is a jewelry box, using their 3D imaging technology, and we say we're going to use this as a product that public procurement purchases. That young man employs more people, is making it, et cetera. So I think scale must be scale, you know, and not our scale. It's what the young people, or the young entrepreneur would like to achieve. So I think there are a range of devices and we have to use them really well. On the ecosystem, I think there's this whole thing of an innovation ecosystem. And that's missing on the continent because we're having a lot of inventiveness, a lot of very good knowledge creation, but it falls into a deep hole at some point. Now what we have to create are instruments that close that gap. And we've done so with the Technology Innovation Agency. When we first began it, we thought we would be funding innovation coming out of research bodies, like universities. But we quickly realized, actually young people out there are doing stuff. That's worthy of development for the commercial space. Silicon Valley wasn't created out of the government initiative. This is a point I was going to make, is that in South Africa you also have to encourage the private sector, which is very big, has lots of money to play a far greater role than it's doing. You spoke earlier of incentives. We have a very favorable incentive regime for research and innovation, mainly accessed by the private sector. Solomon, are you benefiting from those incentives at IBM? Yes, absolutely. I think there are some interesting developments that are happening, for example, co-sharing of intellectual property. How do you work together so that you move very fast from research to commercialization? And all of that, we're doing it together. And the interesting thing here is, you learn through trial and error. So every year we're really perfecting the method to get there. Actually, you very well behaved. You put your hand up like the kid at the back of a class. I try to... Your contribution? No, so I actually believe that our issue is not at all an initial vision. I think in Africa we have these visions and these grandiose plans. At the last time we went to Nigeria, I've never seen anybody as bold as this vision as a Nigerian, right? Now, our issue is execution, right? And that's where the rubber hits the road, and that's where we... And not just on technology, we fail to execute. And so the problem for me is, yes, if we say we want to develop a 3D printer or an advanced manufacturing industry, what role does private sector have to play? How many scientists do we need over the next 20 years to do that? Where are we today? There was a starting position. Many countries don't even know the starting position, right? And what are we going to do to get there? And how do we track to say, OK, three years from now, how many have we created? Seven years from now, how many have we created? And that's really the issue. For me it's an issue really about execution at that sort of granular level. Absolutely. At that point, can I pause and take questions from the floor, please? We have several. Who's got the microphone? The person with the microphone is in charge. Yes, sir. Thanks very much. I just want to take a point that you've raised, Bruce, that says the entrepreneurs in Silicon Avenue were not developed by government. I think we should not leave here with that notion as being a complete part of the story. Because government created the condition, the state of California actually made that. And in fact, my second point is that we should always be very careful about comparing ourselves with government in the US now. If we want to do the comparison, we should look at the incentives and the policies that the US government designed even as early as the mid-70s. And if you have a time at some point, we can share with you the frameworks and the legal instruments that government put in place to try and shape the public investment in research and how those public funds are translating. In fact, as a simple example, on the things that we're seeing when they design the space program. And today we have cell phones and we have. So I would hope that we balance that. Thank you for the point. There's a question at the front here, and then another one at the front as well. This gentleman on his iPad, courtesy of the Space Race. Yeah, you had your hand up. No, you didn't. There we go. Top technology. Your turn. OK. I have a question. How do you build an investment culture in Africa? I often hear the word venture capital when I'm talking to young people and they're saying venture capital, when they really need a seed funding or angel investment, like venture capital comes later. So what are your thoughts on building that type of investment culture? Thank you. Who wants to pick up on that? And the jacket looks like it's right up your alley. If you say so, Bruce. Well, you work with the young people. So the industry, in terms of the VC industry in Africa, is still relatively new compared to, of course, developing countries, you know, when most of the young people that we see with our work are actually looking at seed capital from either microfinance institutions or just commercial institutions themselves. They started off the venture, you know, what we call FFF, Friends, Family, and Fools, right? Anyone that will lend them money. And so they built their ventures up to a certain scale. But there's a foundation that needs to be developed. And oftentimes, they haven't built that foundation to be able to go to, whether it's commercial banks or even angel investors. And that's, you know, their books are not, very often not in order. Their financial statements are not in order. They haven't projected their businesses out long enough to understand when exactly they'll break even, when exactly they may be revenue if at all. And so those are some of the challenges that we still face. And we fundamentally believe that that still starts with education. And there's still this ongoing education. There's advancements being made, but there's still a lot that can be done in that space. Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the big issues, the lack of angel investing across Africa, right? And if you, I would say, you know, when Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook, right? You know, he didn't go to Wells Fargo to ask for a loan, right? When the Google guy started Google, you know, they didn't go to Bank of America. And that's what we do here. We try to go to a bank. And that's not what the bank is set up to do. If you look at the people who lead angel investing, you know, in the US or even in Europe, these are typical entrepreneurs who've actually made the money, right? And sort of, you know, they use it to back entrepreneurs also to make more money. And we've not got into that virtual cycle yet. And as such, what you see is governments needing to step in to start to create some of these funds. And you're starting to see that in some country, Nigeria, has put one together for the tech sector. But over time, we just need more of the successful entrepreneurs to kind of see that a bit here in the Cape Town area, right? More of the successful entrepreneurs to step in and do that, but that is a fundamental gap. We need more Peter Teals. Exactly. We need more mega entrepreneurs. Yeah, but we've got to start somewhere. This is about the sowing the seeds. That's why we have the Technology Innovation Agency and our Small Business Development Department is looking at improved support for tech startups. So we have begun, but I think the private sector has to do much more and be much more risk-interested than risk-averse, which I think is the current climate. And that is a challenge. I mean, Gloria Sarobi has been making some interesting comments. There was a report by McKinsey, and she makes the point that business, particularly in South Africa, is doing business the way it did 25 years ago and hasn't evolved its approach. And she's in the South African business sector herself. Questions from the floor? Questions from the floor? Anybody else? Do I have any bits from the floor? Yes, oh, there you are again. There we go. It's another one. Oh, sorry. You're in the same place. My name is Talima Harry. I'm with Youth for Technology Foundation. And there's a coincidence. Yes, totally, a complete coincidence. It's the family business. I had a question about leveraging distance learning technologies. Someone mentioned that previously. And I think that is a powerful tool for institutions in Africa to leverage learning that is generated, or learning tools that are generated internationally, and to leverage content that is developed internationally to help supplement the education in Africa. And I think there's just a huge amount of content out there that is very high quality. And I want to understand how we can better leverage it, how we can better use it. Who would you like to direct your question to particularly? Actually, Leke, I think, was the one who brought that up. Yes, so I'll just give you one example of what we're doing again with Eilu, because you're absolutely right, which is, and you're starting to see more and more of that Africa virtual university trying to do things like that. But if you reflect on when you went to university, and how many really outstanding professors you had in your four, five years at university, generally people can count on one hand, right? How many really truly outstanding professors? And we say it's because typically, especially in the US and in Europe, professors are there to do research, right? And they're not really there to teach. And they're not even happy they have to teach, right? Because they want to get tenure, and they want to do research. So what we're trying to do at Eilu is to say, look, let's find the most amazing professors from anywhere in the world, right? So you get a professor from UCT on economics. You get one from Harvard. You get one from Wharton. And you digitize that course, right? And that's what you offer the students, right? And then you combine that with some peer-to-peer learning. And you combine that with actually hiring people who want to teach. And these don't have to be PhDs, by the way. They could be retired professionals. They could be mid-career professionals. They could be people who just... Just great educators. I mean, just anyone who just really wanted to know how to teach. And by the way, that model then significantly reduces your cost, right? So you can offer an education. We can offer it for five, six, seven thousand dollars versus 60 thousand dollars at Harvard, right? And so that is a bit of a model we're trying. And we're starting to see more and more people going down that path. Minister, it was a very courageous experiment. And I'm sure it'll be revisited. Paniasa Lusufi, who is a local education minister in one of the provinces in South Africa, distributed 70 or 80 thousand iPads into schools. Those have had to be withdrawn because they were being stolen by outsiders from schools. So there was a security issue there. But a courageous step that they'll revisit and look at again. But it's precisely that sort of move that enables access to this kind of education. I wish he had spoken to us before he began the experiment. Did you try that? Because we are doing a pilot which we're now expanding in the Eastern Cape. And we've been largely successful because we got a community compact with both parents and teachers. And we linked the introduction of tablets and mobile technology to introduction of other technologies to improve the condition of the local schools. So we had alternative sanitation. We have renewable energy sources. So we brought a whole range of technologies and really had an engagement with the community. Because in the end, the community has to protect the products. Completely. It cannot be left to Lusufi. We're going to give you a call. So I've given him a call. We're going to be working together with him. Because it's not the first time that this has been tried. They tried with hardware when Angie Mochecha was the MEC and had same problems. So I think we need a different approach. Yeah, think about it. And we are talking and working together. Good, Solomon? Yes, the technology companies are also becoming extremely active in this space because we do have the need for the skills. So we want to take three to six months training data scientists, analysts, data center specialists, and so forth. So what we're doing is wherever we are anyway, we are setting up clouds, hybrid or private clouds, micro clouds. We're working with the universities to set up their cloud infrastructure. And we have ready-made courses that are company agnostic. It doesn't matter where you go and work for HP or IBM, but we do have the courses for mobile computing, data science, and other technology-related courses. So we're actually providing those for free so that students that are interested will go and take those courses and be ready for the next employment. Nijeka, your role is in the empowerment of young people, the unleashing of the creativity of young minds. Just give me a sense, please, of how you are doing it and what the rest of us can learn from your experience. Well, so we started our work 15 years ago in Nigeria, primarily. And when we started that work, we were working with young people, primarily in the rural areas, who had very low courage to really step out of their understanding of what they believe the world should look like. So whether it's, you know, even if their parents were uneducated, they knew in their minds that they needed to become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer. You know, entrepreneurship was absolutely not a viable career for them. And so just giving the young people, like I said earlier, not just the hard skills, those are important, technology or otherwise, but also the soft skills to really live a sustainable life and achieve what they fundamentally feel is changing the world for them and their families is what we try to inspire. Technology is an enabler, but it's not the end. It's a tool that we use to inspire them. I think another point that I was actually going to add here to Solomon's point when he talked about what IBM is doing in terms of creating curriculum and creating, I guess, company agnostic curriculum is we really should really try to think about how the private sector can enter the school. So the secondary schools, especially at that level, bring the lab at IBM to the classroom. How can we engage working, you know, the working environment, the courses, the knowledge, the talent at IBM in the R&D and scientists field? How can we bring that into the classroom so that young people don't have to wait until after secondary school when they're officially unemployed and undereducated to then begin to learn? So bringing the private sector into the classroom, I think, you know, is an extremely powerful approach. I don't think we've done enough of that in Africa, except, of course, at ALA. The theme is coming through strongly. Questions from the floor? Any more questions from the floor? There we go. There is a microphone over there. You're walking straight past the nice man. There we go. Thank you. Hi, I'm Bahi. I'm a global chaper from Egypt. So I work in technology, and as far as I love technology, however, I have a concern. Probably I'll be addressing my friend from IBM or McKinsey about what they are doing about that. I have a concern that we are almost limiting the user to the info we want to get him. As far as we go, more technologically advanced, the data is more personalized, and the results that everyone is getting, if I'm taking an example of search, if you search for Egypt, for example, from South Africa, you will get a result, and if you search from Europe, you will get completely different results. I understand that the results are becoming more personalized, which is what technology is helping us doing right now. However, I believe we are manipulating the scene to an extent, and we're probably locking people inside their own bubble of knowledge, and which is conflicting with the global trend of having. The question. Yeah, the question. What do you guys think about that in terms of, while you're designing that technology, how do you address such a question? How are you thinking about the problem? Well, what you just indicated seems to be a kind of Google specific problem, and well, I'll give you a counter example. I mean, think about personalized medicine. Now, that is a goal that we need to strive for, right? And there's a lot of technologies that need to happen so that based on, of course, you have to build layers of security to make sure that your personal and confidential formation is not going to be exposed anywhere. But the fact that you're personalizing medicine to a specific person, even based on, you know, genomic markers, or the fact that you're specifically providing information to a young person on one kind of health-related activities that he or she needs to do so that 10 years down the line, you know, the person is not going to be suffering from diabetes is going to be a very important advance. Yes, I mean, there are some negatives to some of this development, but I think it's things that we can mitigate. I mean, it depends on what approach a company takes. Any more questions as we prepare to wrap up this particular session? Yes, sir. Hi, my name is Walid Abdul Rahman. I'm a global shaper from Egypt as well. And my question is you've addressed some of it, but not in clear priorities in order to retain talent in the continent, number one, and to close the knowledge gap that we have, what are the key priorities in this ecosystem that we have today in order to enable the youth to be at par with the rest of the world in terms of knowledge and access to knowledge? Love, thank you, great question. Minister, I think it's a nice, closing question for you. Yes, well, I think you can, in fact, regain talent, but the talent must have something of interest that they wish to work with. So the square kilometer array, for example, has been a really good opportunity for us, and we've seen several researchers who hadn't imagined they'll come back and work for a long term on the continent. So it's acting as a catalyst. So it becomes a magnet for talent, which is great. Secondly, I think we've created a set of interventions. We've created 150 research chairs in a range of disciplines, and we're attracting high-caliber academics who have an international reputation, and their master's students are following them to do their PhDs here. So you've got to create the opportunity, but linked to that, there must be knowledge institutions in your country. Because if you produce all these knowledge workers, and there's nothing for them to do, then they'll essentially go overseas. So I think the institutional architecture of Africa is still rather small. It's growing, we're improving, and I agree with the gentleman from Egypt who spoke first that actually we need to move away from this lamenting. I think given where we were 20 years ago, we've moved a huge space with respect to technology, much more attention to research, far more investment, both by governments and the private sector. So I think we're in a very different space. Someone sometimes wants me to reduce it to the basic, and here's my basic example. We built Southern Africa's largest optical telescope in a small little town in the Northern Cape called Sutherland. When we were building that telescope, we had two bed and breakfasts. Today there are 42. Why? Researchers, postgraduate students are all tracking there because they want to use that telescope. So science and the socioeconomic challenges you face in a society actually match in a very interesting way and can interface to address the development challenges that you wish to attend to. Minister, great example. If you are planning to go to Sutherland, please dress warmly. It's the coldest place in the country. And Nijeka, 30 seconds, your thoughts. Well, I know that victims assume the world as it is. Masters of technology actually create the future that they envision for themselves. And like the minister said, we have made great progress over the last five to 10 years, but so has the rest of the world. We need to continue to make that progress in the right direction. Again, with the enabling environment that works the best. So the intersection of the government, private and civil society. Solu? You know, the continent has many countries, many languages, many tribes, but if there is one thing that ties all of us together is the language of science. It doesn't matter where you are in Abuja or Johannesburg science, the laws of physics are the same. And I think we have to use it as a way of inspiring the youth on what they could do. We have to be bold enough to say that the next 10 Nobel prizes will be in Africa, will be given to Africans. We have to be bold enough to say that we're going to ride that exponential curve and the grand challenges that we have will be solved by using 3D printers, as you say, artificial intelligence and some of the cutting technologies. Acha? Yeah, I mean, I will say, I think, you know, technology and for me in particular, the internet will have a transformative impact on the continent. It will, you know, it will disrupt a bunch of sectors, but more importantly, it will transform how we live our lives in Africa. And, you know, I'm hugely excited about it and it's just great to be in Africa. Ladies and gentlemen, please will you thank our panel. Thank you very much for your participation today. I hope you enjoyed the panel discussion. I hope you found it useful. I hope you found it illuminating as well, all about the African continent and enabling a future that some, I think, can see very clearly. Thank you very much.