African innovation conferences take centre stage

Its services are in heavy demand outside the country as well – in Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Mozambique and Angola. We were given a tour of their new data centre about a month before its official opening. The centre, designed to resemble a geometric rock rising from the sea, is strong enough to withstand a tsunami. It can safely store trillions of bits of data and make backups for disaster recovery. A substantial number of clients have already signed up for its services.

Clearly, and this was confirmed during the conference by the Prime Minister, José Maria Neves, Cape Verde is positioning itself as an IT innovator in the West African region and as one of the very few Portuguese-speaking African countries, will expect to provide IT solutions to Mozambique and Angola – both on the cusp of accelerated economic growth. If it can smooth out a few rough corners in terms of the quality of hotel accommodation, it could well become an important conference venue as well. With this in mind, the innovation conference, as a showcase, was logical and it was also important to differentiate this conference from run-of-the-mill ones if its credentials as a host are to be taken seriously.

Another plus point was that the organisers had taken pains to invite a cross section of the African and international media and had made provisions for the journalists to visit places of interest around the island rather than confining them to the conference halls.

This ensured that the event was well covered and journalists were able to get a feel of the bigger picture and place events in context. Emilienne Macauley, formerly with Celtel, ran an excellent media centre. Many conference organisers fail on this point and as a result, their events come and go and no one, bar the participants, is any the wiser.

The conference
Pedro Pires, the former President of the country and winner of the 2011 Mo Ibrahim Prize, set the tone for the discussions by saying: “When we speak about innovation, we are speaking about the future What future for us? What future do we aspire to? What attitude should we adopt? Will we act or acquiesce?”   

Prime Minister Neves, setting the parameters for the forum, pointed out that “No country overcame the challenge of poverty reduction and no region overcame the challenge of development without having to prove its ability to create and innovate.”

He said that Africa needed a transformation of vision alongside physical transformation. “Innovation is not necessarily technological – workplace innovation is crucial,” he went on. He said that innovation was not a specialised course but a process of evolution.

“Much of innovation is based on the store of knowledge and social interaction. It consists of trial and error and learning from mistakes.”

PM Neves, who studied the theory of organisations, said that transformation did not arrive as one big bang but consisted of making small changes that cumulatively lead to bigger, more radical changes. He reminded the audience that the country’s great political writer and thinker, Amilcar Cabral, had said that simply adding water and salt will not cook your rice – you need fire, which is the creative genius.

Bright Simons, president of the mPedigree Network, which works to identify counterfeit medicine, introduced a philosophical dimension when he said that while invention was a solitary activity, innovation cannot be done in isolation. “It is profoundly social in character and while it can be a leveller, it can also be disruptive.”