This archive report was first published on 20 December 2019.
On December 20, 2019, a paper titled A Farewell to Disruption in a Post-Platform World was published by the Centre for Global Development, a Washington DC-based think-tank. The paper, authored by Bright Simons, founder of mPedigree, highlighted the concerns of African countries being left behind by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
According to Simons, the biggest concern is that 4IR concepts are often too broad and fail to account for low-level trends. This is evident in the plight of African start-ups, which struggle to develop policies that make a real difference.
Even countries like South Africa and Rwanda, which have formalised 4IR policy-making, lack clear guidelines on what it means from a day-to-day policy management perspective. The fusion of industries, while true, is still constrained by the economics in different industries not converging as fast as the applications being churned out.
Simons argues that while most people focus on data and algorithms, integrations are far more critical. He believes that hyper-integration is making disruption too expensive, cumbersome, and slow, and only rewards those who can align themselves within newly converging industries.
Kenyan start-ups, in particular, have lacked the muscle to disrupt due to a lack of huge amounts of capital, which bumps them against a profitability ceiling and renders their advantages unsustainable.
Therefore, African governments should focus on creating an environment to invest in integrations that can be delivered as a public resource to lower the cost and other hurdles for truly innovative local enterprises.
