Presidential candidate for the African Development Bank, Bajabulile Swazi Tshabalala, is urging Africa to invest in digital infrastructure, citing it as a crucial step for the continent to leapfrog in development.
Speaking on Morning Starr with Naa Dedei Tettey and Joshua Kodjo Mensah, Ms. Tshabalala emphasised that Africa’s productivity lags behind the rest of the world, and that investing in digital infrastructure is key to bridging this gap.
Tshabalala noted that while building physical infrastructure like roads and schools is important, technology offers a faster and more efficient way to develop.
She believed that with significant investment in digital infrastructure, Africa can catch up with the rest of the world.
This investment, she suggested, can be mobilised through a huge private sector effort.
She stated, “Now we have yo think about what does Africa need more than anything and what has been Africa’s challenge. And really it’s about the fact that our productivity is simply not anywhere near where the rest of the world is and what’s is productivity. It’s really about the skills that you have the infrastructure that you have whether its road, rail, digital infrastructure…….”
“But I reduce it to infrastructure because if you think about it, if we are to leapfrog some of the developments globally, if we are going to build schools so that we’ll train our children, we’ll be waiting for the next 100 years but technology offers us an to leapfrog and I believe if we can invest digital infrastructure in Africa to the extent that the rest of the world has invested, that’s a huge capacity and ability to leapfrog and I think this is one area we can mobile a huge private sector effort to do this.”
