Apps Won’t End African Underdevelopment

The promise of digitization in Africa is a ruse.

(Eduardo Soteras Jalil /Bloomberg / Getty Images)

“Africa is a digital continent.” It’s a slogan that we keep reading, as if it were meant to confound clichéd views of African poverty. In fact, in 2020, mobile technologies and services already accounted for 8 percent of GDP across sub-Saharan Africa. Several major digital companies have been founded on the continent in recent years. […]

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