Transform Africa Summit to enhance continent’s digital transformation

ZIMBABWE is geared to host the sixth Transform Africa Summit (TAS), as the continent continues to seek ways of enhancing Africa’s digital transformation across multiple economic sectors.

To be held from 26 -28 April 2023 in the resort town of Victoria Falls the summit is a bold and innovative commitment by African Heads of State to transform the continent through access to affordable broadband and the use of ICTs.

Organized and coordinated by Smart Africa, TAS is Africa’s prominent tech and digital event that is expected to gather over 3000 delegates and representatives from more than 100 countries.

Smart Africa is an alliance of 36 African countries, international organisations and global private sector players tasked with Africa’s digital transformation agenda.

Running under the theme “Connect, Transform and Innovate”, the Transform Africa Summit’s mission is to remodel Africa through technological innovations and enhancing digital public infrastructure.

The summit will be characterized by exhibitions and over 50 multiple discussion panels and roundtables have been lined up during the three-day ICT fete.

Smart Africa has taken Africa’s digital transformation agenda and segmented it into flagships, giving each of the 36 member countries a division to lead.

In that regard, Zimbabwe leads on Agri-tech while Rwanda leads on Smart cities, Benin on digital IDs, South Africa on artificial intelligence and Kenya on the digital economy.

Zimbabwe managed to lead Africa’s blueprint on Agri-tech which has seen many countries using technology to advance agriculture through digital transformation.

His Excellency President Mnangagwa, will officially open the summit, hosting other Heads of State that will include President Paul Kagame of Rwanda who is also the Chairman of the Smart Africa Board.

President Macky Sall from Senegal and President Lazarus Chakwera of Malawi have also confirmed attendance at the summit.

Briefing the media in Harare on Monday, Information Communication Technology, Postal and Courier Services Minister, Dr Jenfan Muswere highlighted that efforts to improve the use of ICTs were underway to expedite macro-economic transformation of the country as enunciated by the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1).

Internet and broadband cost continues to be significant barrier to Africa’s digital transformation agenda, leaving the continent with a long way to go in meeting the digitalization goal.

“As a member of Smart Africa, we are committed to ensuring that technology can change the lives of our citizens here in Zimbabwe and across the continent. We are cognizant that this cannot be done alone and therefore we are extremely pleased to welcome the Smart Africa Alliance family to Zimbabwe’s prime resort town of Victoria Falls” said Minister Muswere.

He highlighted under the instruction of the President his ministry was now at the final stages of developing the Agricultural Information Management System.

“We are now finalizing the process of developing an agricultural information management system for us to be able to analyze the whole agriculture production and projects such as the Pfumvudza/ Intwasa program,” he said.

Addressing members of the media at the same event Smart Africa Division Manager – Marketing Events and partnership, Garikai Nhongo said the 2023 summit will also see the launch of a blueprint on smart devices and the bulk internet capacity purchase initiative.

“At the summit, we also intend to launch the bulk internet capacity purchase initiative, where we intend to buy internet capacity in bulk for our member countries.

“We will be launching, hopefully, a blueprint on smart devices and the whole idea is to ponder on how can Africa build its own devices fit for purpose at a good cost and after this has been done the next step would be to implement a pilot to see how this would work,” he said.

He further indicated this initiative would simultaneously lead to the reduction of internet cost by over 50 percent and thus clear up the road for new industries to emerge and aid the opening up of new consumption in the continent.-ebusinessweekly