Thoughtworks will be holding it’s Second Annual Agile Africa Conference this Month on 11th and 12th in South Africa and like some of you, I will not be able to attend this event but I got the second best thing. I was privileged to have a chat with the Regional MD of ThoughtWork’s Enyo Kumahor.
Enyo is one of the most Influential Women in Technology in Ghana and on the African continent and what I wanted to learn from her in this chat, was how she thought Information Technology can contribute to growth of the African continent and some ways Thoughtworks is position its self as a company to address some of the issues. Here is what I learnt from here and hope her thoughts Inspire some of you. These are the 5 things she thinks will contribute to the ‘Rising of Africa’
1. Bandwidth:
Enyo pointed out how Internet Bandwidth is still highly priced on the African continent and she thinks if Telecoms were to concentrate on building products that will make people consume more Bandwidth at low prices, this would be a win-win situations for both the customers and the Telecoms. She also talked about how there is still luck of Software that Meets the African needs and this is affecting the Bandwidth consumption in Africa.
2. More Content With The Right Context:
We need to see more content developed for Africans and not just content but with the right context, African developers need to spend more time where the product is going to be used and not just seat back and enjoy the ACs in their offices and keep rolling out updates. There is still a huge gap between the software developers and their consumers and this gap need to go away if we are to grow as a continent.
3. Women In Technology:
As one of the Women who Inspire other women in Ghana and across the African continent Enyo is also an Advocate for more Women in Technology, she told me a story of a women team in an app challenge which she was Judging with the panel having the rest of the judges as males. The App was helping Mothers with their grocery shopping and making the whole process simple for the mother but when it came to Judging the other judges were not even considering it, and when she asked all these men how many of them did grocery shopping, non of them did. This has inspired her to advocate for more women in technology in order to get more of them developing solutions for other women. As part of the work Thoughtworks does Enyo says as a company Thoughtworks is sponsoring and working on intiatives like Code for Girls, RailsGirls and Girl Geek and the main aim is to have women start developing products as early as they can.
4. Job Creation:
We need to create more Content to create more Jobs Enyo says and we should not create Jobs for only 5 people we need content that is going to create Jobs for 50, 100 and more people. We should stop focusing on creating games or social apps that are only going to benefit us alone as developers, Software Engineers in Africa need to take on problems in sectors like Healthcare, Education and Agriculture because this is where most of the masses are and it is where we can see some other parties like the government involved.
5. Infrastructure:
Privacy, Security and Ownership are still an issue in Africa, Just Imagine the biggest Country on the continent(Nigeria) having only 4% of its Leaders both Federal and State using a secure email and the rest being on Yahoo and Gmail, what does this say about the national security if we can’t have government officials communicate securely. We need to address such issues if we need to grow as a continent which is why at Thoughtworks we are putting out products like Tech Radar to help with some of these things.
Well those are some of the things Enyo Kumahor was kind enough to share with me, I know some of you have a few things to add this list so you can go ahead and add those to comments section, and I also know it’s been a long one but I thank you for reading up to here and I will see you in the next one.
