In high-level meetings across Africa, from policy forums to development conferences, the conversation about our continent’s digital future is alive and buzzing. Specifically, conversations on scaling, innovations, and public-private partnerships necessary to grow the sector. More recently, discussions on AI strategies and their capability in closing the digital divide are being held across the continent. Yet, for all the talk, we consistently miss the most crucial element: the voices of the people on the ground. We are building a future for Africa without the architects who know the landscape best, the developers doing the work, and the students and educators who use these tools every day.
I have had the privilege of sitting at those tables, contributing to the continental strategy for the African Union through consultations with the AUDA-NEPAD. But my journey didn’t start in a boardroom. It started with a degree in statistics and mathematics, which trained my mind to see problems and solutions. I saw that many of Africa’s challenges required capital-intensive investments, often relying on imported technology and expertise. But I also saw that tech-based solutions were cheaper to build at home and provided invaluable data for forecasting. This realisation pushed me into the world of building, from a women’s empowerment platform to e-commerce sites for local Ghanaian businesses.
This practical, hands-on experience gave me a perspective that often clashed with the established academic and policy narratives. It’s a strategy rooted in a simple truth: you can’t design a solution for a world you don’t understand.
The disconnect between policy and practice
The current EdTech landscape is a perfect example of this disconnect. We have universities with computer labs full of unutilised computers simply because they lack the expertise to leverage them. At the same time, talented developers across the continent are rebuilding the same basic systems, like user authentication portals, from scratch, wasting precious time and resources. We work in silos, reinventing the wheel in Nairobi, Accra, and Lagos, when the code is the same. This fragmentation is our biggest barrier to scale.
Moreover, much of the innovation is driven not by Africa’s own priorities but by external systems like the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Rightfully so, in 2015-2016, most development in Africa was aligned to the SDG’s. While well-intended to bridge the digital divide, it drove profound disconnection. A good example that comes to mind is technology in the health sector. A telemedicine app to drive maternal health is perfectly aligned with an SDG target but does not factor in a rural village where a mother can’t even afford to purchase a simple meal for her child or soap to wash her baby’s clothes. A well-intended technology to solve a problem but appears out of touch because it fails to resonate with the underlying, socio-economic realities.
Until we can convince our brightest developers to align their vision with local priorities, our solutions will only ever scratch the surface and will not achieve scale.
A call for radical collaboration and raw voices
The path forward for EdTech is not a top-down strategy but a fundamental shift towards practical, incentivised collaboration. A structure where governments offer incentives such as tax cuts or other credits to motivate and drive public-private partnerships. This way, Africa will begin to break down the silos, strengthen institutional capacity, and build resources intelligently.
More importantly, we must ensure the right strategic people are in the room when policies are made. With the availability of AI and tech developments, we must rely on real-time insights to make decisions as opposed to data following fiscal quarters. Policy development needs to be all-rounded, with perspectives from policymakers, school educators, developers and students. Raw, unfiltered feedback is important in real time and from the source. Only then can we move from simply reporting on the past to accurately forecasting the future. By identifying trends, spotting patterns, and channelling resources where they will have the greatest impact.
Building an authentic, afrocentric future
The opportunity before us is immense. With the rise of AI, building is faster and more accessible than ever. We no longer have to build everything from scratch, countless tools and libraries are at our disposal. But technology is only a tool. We must adapt our own style, our own context, our own way of doing things to ensure seamless adoption. Building an Afrocentric solution isn’t about having African imagery on a generic app, but about deeply understanding our capacity and our realities and building to meet them.
This is the vision behind initiatives like the Spix Foundation’s Project RESPECT ™ , a platform built for Africans, by Africans. It creates a win-win ecosystem, providing developers with technical support, validation from local education systems, and a direct path to revenue. Simultaneously, it offers students a learning experience that is high quality, engaging, and culturally relevant. It is a model that understands the challenge from both sides of the equation.
Ultimately, this is about more than just technology. It’s about inspiring Africa’s developers to build for home, grow for home, and create solutions that serve local communities. My most rewarding moments have not come from launching a product, but from seeing the power of people coming together to solve a problem affecting their community. If we listened more to the real stories, the real statistics, we wouldn’t just build better apps, we’ll build the future we all deserve.
By Joseph Berkoh
